How do I verify SharePoint 2013 farm installation and configuration?

Question

We are having consultant coming and install/Configure the SharePoint 2013 farm. Is there like a test script or pdf or word that I can follow to make sure that farm is configured fully (not partially). For example, search is optimized and scaled (and working properly and configured), iFilter, Web traffic Analytics and so many other things. I only have 3 days to check everything after they have completed their work.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you do not have much experience in SharePoint, i can recommend SPDocKit. It makes an inventory of your farm within seconds and without installation.

What you need from there is the "Bestp-Practices Report". Unfortunately it contains a lot of Best Practices which only apply to some customers (e.g. Enabling BLOB-Cache). So you need some experience to interpret the results. Not every red cross means you have to fix that.

Some tips:

• Do not expect a "Full Installation". There are components which do not make sense to configure for a majority of customers but cost time to get them running properly (e.g. AccessServices) or cost extra money (e.g. Reporting-Services for SharePoint).
• Installation should be performed with PowerShell-Scripts. Either own-written scripts or AutoSPInstaller. If installation and Service-Application creation is performed via GUI, you should not accept the farm.
• CentralAdmin has a ton of links. Finding what you need there is hard for beginners. SharePoint guys with an experience greater one year should find entries in CentralAdmin very fast. If he seeks around you might have a junior.
• SQL-Server gets installed by most SharePoint Consultants in a "Next next finish" way. But there is lots of possible optimization for stability and performance. Look what he does there.
• Even if it costs money: Claim a documentation of what was installed and what was configured after installation.

List of things to check:

• Is a WarmUp-Script implemented
• Is a Sync-Connection configured in UserProfileService? Most Installations should use AD-Import instead of FIM.
• Check Search-Topology if all components are up and spread correctly across servers. Are Content-Sources configured correctly and are there no top-level errors during crawl. Is a SearchCenter implemented and correctly linked in SSA
• Is Kerberos configured on your WebApplications
• How about SSL for your WebApplications? Did he ask you if you want to externally publish your SharePoint now or in future? Then you should use one global URL from the beginning (sharepoint.company.com instead of sharepoint.company.local)
• Is the SharePoint 2013 Addin-Infrastructure working
• Check if MySite Task Aggregation works
• Maybe you need to add SharePoint URLs to IE's local intranet zone via GPO.
• Check which Service-Accounts are used for which Service. I have seen Installations running with "Administrator" or a personalized admin-account as Farm-Account.
• Check if any SQL-Server Database contains a GUID in its name. Those things likely where installed via GUI instead of PowerShell
• Some things to check on SQL-Server: Is there an own Server or an own instance on an existing Server (not installed together with other applications in one instance), Is it running under a non-admin Service-Account, has this account the right "Perform Volume Maintenance Tasks", Collation Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS, Is Kerberos configured, Is Agent up and running, is database mail enabled and an operator configured, are alerts configured, is TempDB optimized, do your recovery models match the backup-strategy, was autogrow optimized, is DBCC-CheckDB implemented

Answer 2

This listing won't likely be a complete, but I'd attempt to do the following:

• Verify the latest installation was configured successfully. PSConfig, which is also known as "Configuration Wizard" of SharePoint, is ran after the installation, but also after each update (patch) has been installed to the SharePoint. It needs to run successfully, which should already confirm a number of things. This can be confirmed at Central Administration's Upgrade status view. The page will show the Configuration Wizard's run results and if there were e.g. any warnings recorded.
• While at the above mentioned, confirm that the latest patch installed is indeed what you requested - not from the year 312 AD.
• At the Central Administration, any recorded warnings/errors should be basically at zero. These are shown at the main page of the CA, but also below the Monitoring-category.
• Also below the Monitoring-category are the results of Timer Jobs. Check that no Timer Jobs are hanging (not finishing), and that the history page's 2000 last runs shows a succeed run on each. That should verify again a lot.
• When you have a site collection, do the effort to setup SharePoint's search and that you can search successfully.
• In your Search Service Application, check that n number of results are being crawled.
• Verify you can successfully add your AD users as the users to the site, and that the login/authentication works as you have requested.
• Do e.g. an alert to a document library, and verify that the STMP server or such forwards the emails as intended.
• If you have requested Office Web Apps, confirm that you can use and edit Office documents in your site.
• Verify there's a configured backup for your farm.