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Follow these steps carefully and read all available resources, especially regarding hardening production installations. Contact http://support.sitecore.net/helpdesk/ for assistance or to report any discrepancies between this document and the product.
Various approaches to installation are possible depending on the choice of database technologies, the administrator’s Sitecore experience and preferences, the status of the solution, the environment (dev, test, content entry, content delivery, etc.). While the setup executable should generally be used whenever possible, a copy or extract of an existing file system or archive can be configured as a new installation (stop IIS before archiving or duplicating an existing solution).
For small implementations including developer workstations and testing environments, Sitecore and the database server can be installed on a single machine, but for larger environments the database server is typically separated from the application server. The content entry environment for business users is also frequently separated from the content delivery environment accessed by Internet users. Component development may be broken into a series of Sitecore servers such as development on a workstation through one or more integration, user acceptance or other tests to content entry and finally content delivery.
With IIS, the web server and the application server are inherently combined in ASP.NET. Sitecore provides versioning, workflow, locking and other services, security, browser-based user interfaces, abstract XML data storage and other facilities enhancing the functionality of ASP.NET for web solutions. Regardless of whether the setup executable, a .zip distributive or archive of an existing solution is used to create a new Sitecore instance and whichever database technology is employed, Sitecore can be broken down into three logical components:
- IIS document root ("WebSite")
- Supporting file system for logs and data ("Data", sometimes stored under the document root)
- Supporting relational databases ("Databases", often stored under the supporting file system)
Sitecore supports multiple relational databases including the free, open source SQLite (http://sqlite.org) database, Oracle 9i/9.1, MySQL 5.0.22, SQL Server 2000 and 2005 including Express Edition. Databases such as Microsoft SQL Express Edition and SQLite can host the database within a single supporting file system (generally under Data). Best practice is to place the IIS document root (WebSite) and the Data folders under a single parent (ProjectName). Demo sites such as SCPrinters may ship with the Data and Databases folders under the WebSite folder allowing for file system directory paths specified in configuration files to be relative to the document root for simplified migration, but also allows for downloading of the license, logs and other resources unless additional security steps are taken on the Data folder (the IUSR_* account or anonymous user should not have read access).
The archive from which the new Sitecore instance is created may also contain SQL Server databases (Databases). Configuration is managed with files such as web.config and the files under /App_Config folder. See Understanding the Sitecore Databases for an explanation of the purpose of each of the Sitecore databases.
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