Enable Windows 2012 R2 Features for SharePoint 2013 SP1

The information regarding installing SharePoint 2013 Sp1 on Windows 2012 R2 is limited, especially what do you need to do an offline installation. In our case, we have Windows 2012 R2 configured with a standard configuration from the server team and deliver to us. These servers have no internet connection at all. So we have search on line and found some good articles to start with. Here are the ones I have referenced to:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/cjrawson/archive/2014/04/06/offline_2d00_sharepoint2013sp1_2d00_prerequisites_2d00_server2012r2.aspx

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/14582.sharepoint-2013-install-prerequisites-offline-or-manually-on-windows-server-2012-a-comprehensive-guide.aspx

http://soussi-imed.over-blog.com/article-installing-sharepoint-2013-on-windows-server-2012-r2-120547920.html

Before you run the Prerequisite, you need to configure server roles and enable some features. If you can run the feature-enable PowerShell script from those articles, congratulations!! In our case, we could not.

So, we have to manually using UI to enable required roles and features. All of the articles I have read so far mentioned following features are needed:

Roles

• Application Server
• Web Server (IIS)
• IIS 6 Management Console

Features   

• ASP.NET 4.5
• Windows Identity Foundation 3.5

During the process, you also need to enable IIS Support (separate item to check the check box). There are few required features needed that would install together.

We followed and enabled all of them in one of our servers. However, Prerequisite returned en error regarding it could not configure IIS. After looking into the error log, we found out Prerequisite was looking .NET 3.5, which was not mentioned in any of the articles we found.

Once we have .NET 3.5 enabled, it went through like a charm.

I believe sometime when we put down some information to share, we may accidentally assumed something was there or available. In this case. .NET 3.5 was needed but not mentioned.

Before you start your journey, make sure .NET 3.5 is also enabled with your Windows 2012 R2 servers.

Good luck!