SharePoint 2013 includes a
prerequisites installer application, which ensures that SharePoint has
all the necessary software components to operate. Such components
include various hot fixes, SQL Server Reporting and Analysis
components, .NET 4.5, Microsoft Sync Framework, Windows Server
AppFabric, and Windows Identity Framework. . . to name a few.
The prerequisites installer is available in the root folder of the SharePoint 2013 installation media and named PrerequisiteInstaller.exe. Executing this application with no command-line argument parameters will present you with the dialog shown in Figure 1.
Note When
executing any of the installation applications for SharePoint 2013, be
sure to run as an elevated privilege administrator if you have Windows
User Account Control enabled.
As you can see in Figure 1,
the prerequisites installer also configures the server with the
Application Server and Web Server (IIS) roles, which SharePoint 2013
requires to operate.
The prerequisites installer does not require
all the packages to be available on the server before installing them
and will attempt to download any package before installing. Of course,
in certain scenarios, automatic download of software may violate
company policy in a secure environment, so the prerequisites installer
allows the administrator to choose which packages to install using the
command line, by providing the path to previously downloaded packages.
Running the prerequisites installer from the command line with the ‘/?’ option will display the dialog shown in Figure 2.
