A Short History of SIF
Sitecore has traditionally used a Windows executable for installation, which had its fair share of pros and cons. While it was easy for developers to get up and running with a Sitecore instance, deploying scaled instances to larger environments required using the alternative webroot files directly in a custom deployment process.
Sitecore 9 introduced the script-based Sitecore Installation Framework, which introduced all the flexibility teams needed to deploy to various scaled environments (namely Azure). For developers, however, going from zero-to-Sitecore using SIF became relatively complex (new security and app requirements also factored in to this).
9.1 Installation Simplified
Sitecore 9.1 introduces a new single-machine Web Deploy Package that simplifies the setup of the platform for developers. A new prerequisites check handles all the various application prerequisite needs (.NET Framework, Web Deploy requirements, etc.), which saves on a lot of legwork to track down and verify the necessary files individually.
Developers can get started by downloading the Sitecore 9.1 single instance WDP on dev.sitecore.net and installing SIF 2.0. When combined with Jeremy Davis' Low-Effort Solr Install, getting Sitecore 9.1 running locally is a breeze.
In short, you will need to:
- Verify core requirements (Windows 10, SQL Server 2016+, PowerShell, IIS 10)
- Gather installation media (SC9.1 Web Deploy Packages, installation PowerShell script, SIF, Low-Effort Solr Install)
- Run Low-Effort Solr Install
- Install SIF 2.0
- Configure and run Sitecore installation
To demonstrate the above steps, I created a video that covers the installation process: