1dent1ty cHa0s

I'm a stickler for installs and installation related issues, I will spend days working on it…this is day one.

FIM Synchronization Services Installation

No issues that I could see – everything seems to work like it did before and my RC0 install script worked.

FIM Service and Portal Installation

This is where I encountered my errors…but it starts out well enough. Let's start out with the good news first:

Love the fact that you can change the name, probably won't use it much myself, but customers are always asking for this. Also, note that you can re-use indicating an upgrade or re-install. I did expect to be able to specify a SQL Alias here; however, so I think I'm going to file this as a bug.

This interface needs some work, it would be better if it told you what was required on the certificate instead of having to select a certificate, and get an error after clicking Next.  From what I can tell you need a certificate with a valid Subject (not sure if it requires Subject Alternative Name) and the Server Authentication assertion (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1), most commonly known as an SSL certificate.

In my case, I selected what I thought was a valid certificate but I did get an error later on into the installation that I think is because of this choice.

Very cool – offer the installer the ability to fix this during the install, excellent work! Now for the bad news…

• Sync Service still supports installation against a SQL Alias (to force Named Pipes access for instance) but the Services and Portal installation does not
• Questionable whether or not selecting an issued certificate works or not – I got the following error later on during the installation which invoked the JIT debugger:

System.InvalidOperationException occurred in Microsoft.IdentityManagement.FindPrivateKey.exe [3124]

• Still indications from my install logs that the installer is not so good about handling existing WSP solutions in SharePoint and recovering from them – these are difficult to clean up I admit

More later once I confirm the certificate issue and reinstall SharePoint on my test server.