WARNING Converting
a SharePoint web application to claims-based authentication is a
one-way conversion; it cannot be undone. This is a significant and
permanent change that should not be made without proper due diligence.
Ensure that any other functionality associated with this action will
work properly after the conversion.
PREPARING THE SERVER AND INSTALLING OWA VIA THE GUI
As noted earlier, the evolution and
expansion of OWA has changed the installation procedures greatly from
the previous version. The first step to any OWA install is to prepare
and configure the server. OWA has very strict requirements about how
and where it should be installed. You cannot have any other Microsoft
server-level software installed on the same machine. That includes the
following:
- Exchange Server
- SharePoint Server
- Lync Server
- SQL Server
- No version of the desktop Office suite may be installed on the OWA server(s).
As you might suspect, because each Office Web
Apps server has so many great services to offer, it requires its own
Windows server with the proper hardware requirements:
Operating System Requirements
- Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later
- Windows Server 2012 RTM or later
Hardware Requirements
- 8GB RAM
- 4-core processor
- 80GB hard disk space
Installing Prerequisites for Windows Server 2012
If you are installing on Windows Server 2012, then you need to configure the following specific roles and services:
1. Your install account must be a local administrator on the Office Web Apps server. In this example, set contoso\sp_install as a local administrator of the server and then remote desktop to the server as that account.
2. Open your Windows 2012 Server Manager Dashboard and from the left-hand menu select Local Server.
3. Select
Manage on the top-right menu bar, and select Add Roles and Features
from the drop-down menu. The Add Roles and Features Wizard will appear.
Click Next.
4. Select “Role-based or feature-based installation” in the second screen of the Add Roles and Features Wizard and click Next.
5. Select the local server onto which you will be installing the new roles and features. In this example it is owa.contoso.com. Click Next.
6. Check the Web Server (IIS) role, which will invoke the window shown in Figure 1.
7. From the
window select the Add Features button. This will install the necessary
IIS role and IIS management console. Back on the screen, select Web
Server (IIS) and click Next.
8. From the list of Features select the Ink and Handwriting Services and click Next.
9. On the Web Server Role (IIS) screen with lots of boring text click Next.
10. In the Web Server Role (IIS) role services dialog, ensure that the proper settings are selected:
- In the Common HTTP Features section, both Default Document and Static Content options should be checked by default.
- Select Dynamic Content Compression under the Performance section.
In that same section also confirm that the default Static Content
Compression is selected.
- Scroll down to the Security section and select Windows
Authentication. In that same section also confirm that the default
Request Filtering is selected.
11. Expand the Application Development section. Check the box for .NET extensibility 4.5, which will invoke the window shown in Figure 2. From the window click Add Features.
12. Check ASP.NET 4.5, which will invoke the window shown in Figure 3. From the window, click Add Features.
13. Scroll down a little and check Server Side Includes. That will do it. To continue, click Next at the bottom of the window.
14. Click Install to confirm adding the roles and features.
When the installation completes you may or may
not be prompted to reboot depending on the mood of the server. If it
asks you to reboot, please do so before continuing. With all of this
done you have the prerequisites in place and you are ready to install
the Office Web Apps.
Installing Prerequisites for Windows 2008 R2
Installing on Windows 2008 R2 is
possible if that is your only option. To install on old faithful, keep
a few things in mind. Windows Server 2008 R2 must be patched to Service
Pack 1 or later, plus all Windows updates. You also need to manually
download and install .NET Framework 4.5, Windows PowerShell 3.0, and
KB259525. Once you have all those pieces, you then need to add similar
roles and features as you would for Windows Server 2012. To avoid
clicking through multiple pages, you can do it with PowerShell:
1. Open Windows PowerShell.
2. Type the following at the command prompt and press Enter:
Import-Module ServerManager
3. Type the following at the command prompt and press Enter:
Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server,Web-WebServer,Web-Common-Http,Web-Static-Content,
Web-App-Dev,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Net-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,
Web-Includes,Web-Security,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Filtering,Web-Stat-Compression,
Web-Dyn-Compression,Web-Mgmt-Console,Ink-Handwriting,IH-Ink-Support
4. If prompted, reboot the server.
That covers the prerequisites for Windows Server 2008 R2.
Installing Office Web Apps
After completing the requisite configuration on the server and rebooting if you were prompted, you can install the OWA software:
1. Make sure you are still logged into the OWA server with your install account. In this example, it is Contoso\sp_install.
2. Download Office Web Apps to the server and run setup.exe.
3. When the
license screen appears, read everything very carefully, check the box
for “I accept the terms of this agreement” if you do, and then click
Continue.
4. In the Choose a file location dialog, click Install Now to install into the default file location.
5. When the install is completed, you will see the confirmation dialog, and click Close.
This completes the install of the Office Web Apps
software to a single server. The following sections outline configuring
this server using either the HTTP or HTTPS protocols. If you ever need
to add additional Office Web Apps servers to the farm, just follow the
preceding steps to prepare it for configuration.
