PowerShell Sitecore Install Script

Update (4-17-2016): Here I discuss enhancements I've made to the script since last year as well as a video tour of the config file used by the script.

Download from GitHub.

I've been searching for a solution to automating Sitecore installations in any environment higher than my personal development VM--for that we already have SIM. I can be stubborn and exacting, sometimes to a fault, and while a manual install affords me complete control over an environment, it also is horribly time-consuming. Also, if I'm being honest with myself (I'm sure this plainly obvious to you) this process is mistake-prone.

Search for a Solution

The following are the three most prominent examples of existing solutions I looked at, but I looked at many more.

Sitecore Instance Manager

I've been using SIM for a while now to manage my Sitecore instances on my development box. It's a wonderful solution, but it's not suitable for a production environment without a lot of post-install intervention. I also looked at the console app for SIM. Alas, while it seems to extend SIM to the command-line, it does not allow for greater flexibility in how SIM installs a Sitecore instance.

Sitecore's Installer

Jeremy Davis had the very clever idea of deconstructing Sitecore's .exe installer to get at the underlying .msi file. He successfully identified all of the command-line switches the .msi accepts. I very nearly settled on this approach. After all, one would expect Sitecore's own installer to follow Sitecore's installation guideline's recommendations. It does a better job than SIM, but you are also rather constrained in some of your options and that was a deal breaker for me.

PowerShell Script

All-star Alex Shyba wrote a PowerShell script to automate his installs. His use case is the same as mine for SIM, however: he built the script to install development instances. Like the previous solutions discussed, concerns such as file system permissions, user mappings in SQL, using a domain account for the application pool identity, and CD-hardening are left as post-install exercises for a human.

Inspiration

Alex's script gave me the push I needed to write my own. My goal is to completely automate a production-ready Sitecore CM or CD server install. Once you run my script the only thing left to do is install your desired modules. Actually, let's take a minute to unpack that, because buried inside that sentence is a subtle point on my deployment philosophy, and it impacts the way I designed my Sitecore installer. I believe that any Sitecore change that can be managed through a .update package (or .zip module) should. For me, this includes managing changes like SwitchMasterToWeb, scalability, and web.config amongst many others. Thus, my over-arching design philosophy for an automated install is to do everything I would normally in SQL, IIS, the file system, and (yes...) the .config files but only enough to create a working instance and no more. Once the installer is done, the instance should be 100% ready for management via .update packages. That is my goal.

The Solution

I decided to make my script available on GitHub for a couple reasons.

• I suspect and hope other will want to make use of it
• Community feedback will help me improve it

Major Features

• Install Sitecore with or without the databases.
• Script sanity checks SQL and input validation prior to making any changes
• Write output to the screen and to a log file.
• Fine-grained control of the application pool identity (built-in or domain account)
• Assign recommended file system permissions on web server.
• Add application pool identity to recommended local groups on web server.
• Create user mappings for login in SQL.
• Install database files on any valid path or UNC
• SQL Login used during install doesn't have to be the same account executing the script.
• May specifiy a host name and port used for MongoDB
• May supply a Solr base address
• Choose to use SQL as a session state server
• Many CD-hardening options

One limitation of the script today is I do not support choosing MongoDB as a session state server. My suspicion is that this would be a very easy change to make, and I will be including it soon. The script is strictly limited to automating the Sitecore install itself, not MongoDB or Solr. While it's not necessary, it would be a good idea to provisions those applications first if you plan to use them. Speaking of Solr, if you do plan to use it, then be sure to check out my other PowerShell script to change the search provider from Lucene to Solr.

Finally, I built this script to install Sitecore 8.0. I've briefly tested it with Sitecore 7.5 and it mostly works, but breaks on some assumptions about the existence of .config files like SwitchMasterToWeb.config.example and Sitecore.ContentSearch.Solr.DefaultIndexConfiguration.config.example. Even earlier versions of Sitecore would need some more adjustments (example: deal with with differences in databases.) Depending upon the level of interest expressed I will consider making the script compatible with prior Sitecore releases.