Tuesday, July 9, 2013

AX 2012 R2 CU6 Enterprise Portal deployment on SharePoint Enterprise 2013

This is a follow up on a previous post (AX 2012 R2 - Issue Deploying Enterprise Portal on SharePoint 2013).

It seems like KB 2851881 is the key to get the deployment to succeed and this fix is included in AX 2012 R2 CU6. The information in Enterprise Portal on Microsoft SharePoint 2013 [AX 2012]  seems to need an update after the release of CU6, since KB 2830441 (setup) and KB 2824690 (Claims Mode authentication) was not needed or actually included in CU6 (not described as part of the update). My guess is that KB 2830441 is included and that KB 2824690 is only needed in environments utilizing Claims based authentication.

After many hours of work, I was finally able to install and deploy Enterprise Portal on SharePoint Enterprise 2013 in a new environment based on AX 2012 R2 with CU6 slipstreamed (Windows Server 2012).

Short summary of the steps taken (bypassing details for all SQL Server services):
  1. Install and configure AX 2012 R2 core solution with CU6 slipstreamed (complete initial check lists)
  2. Optionally install and configure additional AX components (I included Reporting Extensions and Help Server in addition to the Client, Debugger and Management Utilities on each of the dedicted servers in my PoC environment consisting of many servers)
  3. Install and configure SharePoint (see details below)
  4. Install AX Client, Debugger (optionally) and Management Utilities (I met some new issues never seen before at this stage, but I solved this by manually installing the prerequisites)
  5. Create new configurations and verify access to AX (a Best Practise of mine)
  6. Install Enterprise Portal (I choosed to have the installer Configure and Create the Web Site) and wait until setup is finished (can take some time)
Details related to SharePoint
  • Run the SharePoint 2013 Products Preparation Tool (separate program in SP 2013, account for several restarts of the server)
  • Install SharePoint Enterprise 2013 (Complete, do not run the SP Products Configuration Wizard)
  • Download KB 2767999 (March Update for SP Server that seems to be required or the minimum for AX 2012 R2 EP)
  • Apply KB 2767999
  • Download KB 2817414 (June Update for SP Server)
  • Apply KB 2817414
  • Run the SP Products Configuration Wizard (I used "Create a new server farm")
  • Run the SP Configuration Wizard from Central Admin or manually configure the services you need (I used the Wizard approach and I didn't create the Site Collection at this step)
  • Create the Site Collection (Team Site, SharePoint 2013 mode)
  • Start the Claims to Windows Token Service (the AX Prerequisite Validation Utility gives a warning if this service is not running)
I should mention that I'm not an SharePoint expert...

Valuable sources
  • Initial deployment administrative and service accounts in SharePoint 2013 (>)
  • Install SharePoint 2013 on a single server with SQL Server (link) (>)
  • Updates for SharePoint 2013 (>)
Proof (the message given in the light red area "Experience all that SharePoint 2013 has to offer. Start now or Remind me later" is expected, since the site template for EP is not yet updated to SharePoint 2013).

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