This article describes the configuration of SharePoint Server 2010 and is a part of a series describing the complete installation of SharePoint Server 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2. If you want to configure SharePoint you need a lot of things to do based on your requirements and often a lot of patience if you think about the user profile service application which still isn't easy to deploy.
Update: 60 min - Install SharePoint with PowerShell easy and fast
Because of the wide range of possibilities to configure SharePoint 2010 I will just name three of them including diagnostic logging, usage and health data collection and outgoing e-mail. Sure they aren't that complicated to deploy but in my opinion they are the ones to start with and based on that the remaining services and service appliations. All of the used resources are listed at the end so you can take a look for best practices or other tips by Microsoft.
If you need to download the guide you can take a look at the end of the post where you will find a link to a downloadable PDF document including all the steps listed in this series. It includes about 30 pages describing the steps absolutely needed to successfully deploy SharePoint in a devlopment environment. If I remember right there aren't additions or differences... just everthing in one piece.
Your work doesn't really end with the successful deployment of SharePoint 2010 since things like Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 or Office 2010 are still needed. Anyway installing them is a much easier job so I skiped it. I usually install them in the virtual image too since one customer has Office 2010 and another Office 2003. In order to test different settings I won't install these applications on my host machine.
I'm interested in your overall thoughts about this guide on how to install SharePoint. Just drop a comment and let me know about things which are good or things which need improvement. This won't be the last installation guide or even the last guide at all. Thank you for your patience and attendance...
Please have a look at
There you can find an overview of the complete series and of course the farm topology and the deployment scenario.
Diagnostic logging
Configure diagnostic logging because writing event log files can reduce performance.
If you need best practices for configuring diagnostic logging check out reference [2] at the bottom of the article.
Configure usage and health data collection
Next it is necessary to configure usage and health data collection.
Otherwise it will be configured automatically if you create a search service application where you can’t rename the database.
Outgoing e-mail
Next you can specify a mail server to send alerts, invitations or notifications.
If you don't specify an outgoing mail server you will be remembered by the SharePoint 2010 health analyzer.
Summary
Configuring the 3 things above isn’t that difficult. The remaining services are a little more advanced and right now I don’t have the insights to describe detailed configuration steps.
I will describe it later…
Resources
Here are the resources used in this article:
Next steps