Installation Guide for the XM Scaled Topology A guide to installing the Sitecore XM scaled topology August 31, 2021 Sitecore Experience Platform 9.3.0 Installation Guide for the XM Scaled Topology Table of Contents 1. Choosing a topology .................................................................................................................. 4 1.1. On-premise topology options .............................................................................................. 5 2. Sitecore Installation Framework ................................................................................................. 7 2.1. Set up Sitecore Installation Framework ............................................................................... 7 2.1.1. Install the SIF Module using MyGet ............................................................................... 7 2.1.2. Validate the installation ................................................................................................ 8 2.1.3. Run multiple versions of SIF ......................................................................................... 8 2.1.4. Run a specific version of SIF .......................................................................................... 8 2.2. Install Sitecore Installation Framework manually ................................................................. 9 2.2.1. Unblock a .zip package ................................................................................................. 9 2.2.2. Extract the Sitecore Installation Framework .................................................................. 9 2.3. Customizing the Sitecore Installation Framework .............................................................. 10 2.4. Run SIF remotely ............................................................................................................... 10 2.4.1. Enable PowerShell remoting ....................................................................................... 10 2.4.2. Start a remote installation .......................................................................................... 10 2.5. Install a SIF configuration file ............................................................................................. 11 3. Installation requirements ......................................................................................................... 13 3.1. Client requirements .......................................................................................................... 13 3.1.1. Browser requirements ............................................................................................... 13 3.1.2. Client hardware requirements .................................................................................... 13 3.2. Server requirements ......................................................................................................... 14 3.2.1. Hardware requirements for a server running a single Sitecore installation ................. 14 3.2.2. IIS requirements ......................................................................................................... 14 3.2.3. Operating system requirements ................................................................................. 15 3.2.4. .NET requirements ..................................................................................................... 15 3.2.5. Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 redistributable requirements ............................................ 15 3.2.6. Database requirements .............................................................................................. 16 3.2.7. Enable Contained Database Authentication ................................................................ 16 3.2.8. Search indexing requirements .................................................................................... 17 3.2.9. Installing Solr ............................................................................................................. 17 3.2.10. Antivirus software considerations ............................................................................. 17 3.2.11. Prerequisites for using the Sitecore Installation Framework ..................................... 18 3.3. Server file system requirements ........................................................................................ 18 3.3.1. File system permissions for ASP.NET requests ............................................................ 18 3.3.2. File system permissions for system folders ................................................................. 19 3.3.3. UNC share is not supported ....................................................................................... 19 3.3.4. Sitecore cannot operate from a virtual directory ......................................................... 19 4. Install the prerequisites ........................................................................................................... 20 4.1. Automated installation of prerequisites ............................................................................ 20 4.2. Manual installation of the prerequisites ............................................................................ 20 4.2.1. Clear the Web Platform Installer download cache ....................................................... 21 4.3. Install a search provider in a scaled solution ..................................................................... 22 4.3.1. Install the Solr Certificate ............................................................................................ 22 5. Set up a production environment ............................................................................................ 23 5.1. Set up the certificates ........................................................................................................ 23 5.1.1. Set up server certificate SSL authentication on IIS ....................................................... 24 5.1.2. Setting up the client certificates .................................................................................. 26 5.1.3. Set up an SSL certificate for Solr ................................................................................. 29 5.2. Install the Sitecore XM scaled topology .............................................................................. 29 5.2.1. Use SIF to install the Sitecore XM Scaled topology ...................................................... 29 © Copyright 2021, Sitecore® - all rights reserved. 2 Installation Guide for the XM Scaled Topology 5.3. Configure the parameters in the SIF configuration files ..................................................... 32 5.3.1. Microsoft Machine Learning Server ............................................................................ 33 5.3.2. Blob and Table storage endpoints .............................................................................. 34 5.4. Distributed installation script for the Sitecore XM Scaled topology .................................... 34 5.4.1. Distributed installation script prerequisites ................................................................ 34 5.4.2. Run the distributed installation script for the XM Scaled topology .............................. 35 5.5. Enable telemetry reporting in production .......................................................................... 36 6. Post-installation steps .............................................................................................................. 38 6.1. Configuring Sitecore Identity server .................................................................................. 38 6.2. Configure Azure Search ..................................................................................................... 39 6.3. Rebuild the search indexes and the Link database ............................................................ 40 6.4. Content expiration ............................................................................................................ 40 6.5. Configuring session state providers .................................................................................. 41 6.6. Warm up the servers ......................................................................................................... 41 6.7. Security hardening ............................................................................................................ 41 6.8. Importing the client translations ....................................................................................... 42 7. Uninstall the Sitecore XM Scaled topology ................................................................................ 43 7.1. Uninstall a Sitecore instance using SIF ............................................................................... 43 7.2. Uninstalling the XM Scaled topology in a distributed environment .................................... 44 8. Appendix ................................................................................................................................. 45 8.1. Common issues ................................................................................................................ 45 8.2. Access rights ..................................................................................................................... 47 8.2.1. Use Windows Authentication with SQL Server ............................................................ 47 8.2.2. Use Windows performance counters .........................................................................