Sean Wallbridge
We recently inherited a SharePoint implementation that my gut was telling me wasn’t up to the level the customer expected from their previous provider. The first question was, is this farm ready to scale?
When you install SharePoint 2010, you get the question of whether you are installing complete or standalone (and even when you choose Complete, it still tries again… I could see why this would be confusing… 
). Anyways, the customer wanted to ensure they could grow their farm (add more servers) and that they were using the full version of SQL they purchased.
They weren’t, and here’s how you can tell if this has happened to you…
In the registry, there will be an entry for “ServerRole” which will tell you the installation type
- Stand Alone – SINGLESERVER (uh oh)
- Farm Stand Alone – WFE
- Farm Complete – APPLICATION
And if SQL Express was used (installed if you choose standalone … unless you are installing SharePoint on a Domain Controller in which you can’t, not that you should )
