Are you developing for SharePoint in a commercial organization? Eager to get coding before a well-thought-out development environment is planned and stood up?
Cool your jets! Avoid the temptation to get started early and begin creating solutions in a Stand-alone SharePoint installation!
DO NOT develop in a Stand-alone SharePoint environment if you’re doing serious work!
Wait for your project team to formalize the environmental architecture and provision real farms in which you will do development, even if a farm consists of a single SharePoint server and separate SQL instance.
I have delivered the bad news to a development team up against a tight deadline that their performance problems and some system errors are the result of the Stand-alone deployment.
For starters, if you have Visual Studio, SharePoint (with a boatload of Services enabled), SQL Express, troubleshooting tools, and the Kitchen Sink running in what is likely a 2-core, 4 GB virtual instance on an over-subscribed virtual host, you are already asking for Big Trouble.
Don’t paint yourself into a corner with a Stand-alone deployment!
Most likely you are unaware (as was I until I researched a bunch of errors) that a Stand-alone deployment will not support all ‘normal’ SharePoint functionality. If you look at the Services status page, you won’t see a clue that anything is amiss!
See these caveats from the authoritative TechNet article on single-server SharePoint 2013 installations:
Consider the following restrictions of this method of installation:
- You cannot use this method on a domain controller or in a workgroup environment.
- This method is not supported for production on a domain controller.
- If your computer is in a workgroup, you cannot install AppFabric for Windows Server.
- A Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Express Edition database cannot be larger than 10 GB.
- You cannot use user profile synchronization in this type of installation. If you want to use user profile synchronization, you must use a server farm installation of SharePoint 2013. For more information, see Install SharePoint 2013 on a single server with SQL Server or Install SharePoint 2013 across multiple servers for a three-tier farm, and Synchronize user and group profiles in SharePoint Server 2013.
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