How to install SharePoint 2013 on Windows Server

2012 R2
Posted on October 19, 2013 by iouchkov

[Update 26.02.2014] Many thanks to everybody commented on this

post. As Falk already mentioned in the comments, a Service Pack for
SharePoint 2013 has been recently released. This release makes this
article obsolete, as any compatibility issues seems to be resolved. Please
install SP 2013 SP1 on Server 2012 R2.

If you are reading this post, most probably you have difficulties to install
SharePoint 2013 on Windows Server 2012 R2. According to the official
Microsoft Statement, this is not supported until release of Service Pack 1
for SP2013. However, if you don’t want to wait and also already love
advantages of R2, within this post I will share my successful experience
installing SP2013 on Windows Server 2012 R2.

1. Login to your R2 server as Administrator. You can as well perform this

step under the Farm Administrator account, which should be also local
administrator on the server. Start Power Shell as Administrator and
execute following statements:

1 Import-Module ServerManager

2  

3 Add-WindowsFeature NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45,NET-WCF-TCP-
Activation45,NET-WCF-Pipe-Activation45 -Source D:\Sources\sxs
4
 
5
Add-WindowsFeature Net-Framework-Features,Web-Server,Web-
WebServer,Web-Common-Http,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-
Doc,Web-Dir-Browsing,Web-Http-Errors,Web-App-Dev,Web-Asp-
Net,Web-Net-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-
Health,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Log-Libraries,Web-Request-
Monitor,Web-Http-Tracing,Web-Security,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-
Windows-Auth,Web-Filtering,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-
Performance,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Dyn-Compression,Web-
Mgmt-Tools,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-Mgmt-Compat,Web-
 Metabase,Application-Server,AS-Web-Support,AS-TCP-Port-
Sharing,AS-WAS-Support, AS-HTTP-Activation,AS-TCP-
Activation,AS-Named-Pipes,AS-Net-Framework,WAS,WAS-Process-
Model,WAS-NET-Environment,WAS-Config-APIs,Web-Lgcy-
Scripting,Windows-Identity-Foundation,Server-Media-
Foundation,Xps-Viewer -Source D:\Sources\sxs

Note: D:\ is your Windows installation media.

2. Download all prerequisites from the Internet and save it on local disk
of the server, e.g. C:\SP2013Prereq:

SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Native Client

Microsoft WCF Data Services 5.0
Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client (MSIPC)
Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64)
Windows Identity Extensions
Windows Identity Foundation (KB974405)
Windows Server AppFabric
CU 1 for AppFabric 1.1 (KB2671763)

3. Install all prerequisites directly from the prerequisites folder in the

download sequence, EXCEPT the last two (AppFabric and CU 1 for
AppFabric).

4. AppFabric requires special configuration, therefore installing it usual

way is not be enough for SharePoint. Install it using following statement
from command line:

WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe /i
1
CacheClient","CachingService","CacheAdmin /gac

Note: The syntax with quotas is correct, it separates commas, not the

components.

5. Install AppFabric1.1-RTM-KB2671763-x64-ENU
6. Restart your server

Congratulations! Now you will be able to start SharePoint 2013 installer

directly and to continue with SharePoint 2013 installation and
configuration.