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Getting started with Search Server 2008 Express

Posted on 2 Sep 2009 at 16:11

David Moss explains how to get going on Microsoft's free Search Server 2008 Express

Hit Install Now once you are ready. For me, roughly five minutes after installation started the job was done, and I was being prompted to run the initial configuration wizard. I chose to do so and got a warning that services like Internet Information Service, SharePoint Administration Service and the SharePoint Timer Service might have to be restarted, so this is clearly a wizard that needs to be run at an appropriate time of day.

You are now offered the choice between overwriting the SharePoint site that already exists, or creating a new one with a different web address. Alternatively you can choose to not create a default site at all. I opted to overwrite the existing site on the grounds that I hadn't actually done anything with it other than add a couple of documents to the default library - and because I wanted to see what would happen to that library's contents if I did overwrite it.

Let's just say that the new default site that greets you borders on the minimal: you get a search box to enter your search values, and a button that leads to the site's settings and other administration tasks you might want to set up, but the friendly SharePoint Services 3 look that you might be used to has flown out the window, so be very sure you're completely up to speed on what's about to happen before you decide to go for this upgrade.

I decided to see what would happen if I uninstalled everything and tried to re-install Search Server 2008 Express without there being any pre-existing SharePoint Services 3 setup

Having done the overwrite and discovered that the configuration was going to be a fairly smooth one, I decided to see what would happen if I uninstalled everything and tried to re-install Search Server 2008 Express without there being any pre-existing SharePoint Services 3 setup. This created more than a few problems - the uninstall failed to clear everything away, so that when I attempted a fresh installation I was forced to spend a fair amount of time messing around deep in log files to see where the problems lay.

Once that was sorted, the new installation went ahead just fine, so I then decided to go completely mad and uninstall it again... This time however, the re-installation went perfectly smoothly, so clearly there's some problem with the way the uninstall routines for separate installations work, compared to the single uninstall.

All this "sorting out" took me the best part of six hours because the error messages kept changing as I isolated each element and took it out of the equation - my advice would be to go for the single install rather than trying to install SharePoint Services 3 first. So why did I do it that way? Because Microsoft's documentation told me it was one of the requirements, but didn't mention that there was no need to install it if you hadn't already done so.

If you do have an existing SharePoint Services 3 installation, I'd strongly advise you try all this out on a test server first, especially if you're planning to carry out a straight upgrade to an existing installation. Next month I'll walk you through the process of getting Search Server 2008 Express ready to accept your searches, and we'll find out just how easy it is to locate something in the fridge.