Install Sitecore like a CI nerd. In minutes.

This Thanksgiving break gives me a chance to document the latest way I have been spinning up Sitecore 9 servers in development. The SIF tool is a very powerful tool, and I am sure I will be using it in CI for the next several years. It lets you configure every single parameter of your install, but it's not so friendly for spinning up development machines.

The Tools

So, it's the community to the rescue to solve this problem. In the video below, I take you through the whole process, beginning to end, of installing Sitecore 9 on a dev machine. To speed up the process, I use a few tools. The first tool is the Low Effort SOLR install script written by Jeremy Davis. This script will download SOLR directly from Apache, configure it for SSL and turn it on. A SOLR install in 2 minutes? Beautiful.

The second tool I use is the SIF-less Sitecore installation tool written by Rob Ahnemann. The name isn't quite right because it still uses SIF, but what it does do is create the proper PowerShell script to install Sitecore quickly. Fill in some fields, click the generate scripts button. Or just let SIF-less do the installation for you.

The third tool is Chocolatey. If you don't use this yet, you need to. Its NuGet for applications. Pick the 10 apps you need in your dev, script it and let is run.

All in all, you get a running Sitecore 9 install in about 12 minutes, maybe faster on faster gear. And since it is all PowerShell, it's pretty easy to put into a single script for a CI-like development build.

The Machine Setup (before installing)

In the video, I am using a brand new windows 10 machine. Turning on IIS and the ASP.NET features, including ASP.net 4.7. Once I can figure out how to use DSC on Windows 10, my life will be better. I have manually installed SQL server 2016 SP1 Express as a default instance (personal preference), and installed SQL Management studio 17.3.

Finally I run this Chocolatey script to install all my tools including VS 2017 and Java (needed for SOLR)

choco install googlechrome -Y
choco install jre8 -Y
choco install winrar -Y
choco install javaruntime -Y
choco install git.install -Y
choco install dotnetcore -Y
choco install nodejs.install -Y
choco install notepadplusplus -Y
choco install conemu -Y
choco install visualstudiocode
choco install visualstudio2017professional -Y

Extra credit: Why not configure your Visual Studio code extensions while you are at it?

code --install-extension msjsdiag.debugger-for-chrome
code --install-extension ms-vscode.csharp
code --install-extension ms-vscode.powershell
code --install-extension eamodio.gitlens
code --install-extension abusaidm.html-snippets
code --install-extension xabikos.javascriptsnippets
code --install-extension formulahendry.auto-close-tag
code --install-extension vsmobile.vscode-react-native
code --install-extension refactor11.sitecore-rocks-vscodev

On with the show...