The Local Farm Is Not Accessible. Cmdlets with FeatureDependency are not registered. How to fix this properly

So you have started to administer SharePoint 2010 using a non-farm account. You try to open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell and you are greeted with this error:

“The Local Farm Is Not Accessible. Cmdlets with FeatureDependency are not registered”

You Bing this error and find a lot of blog posts that suggests you to open SQL Server Manager and give DBO permissions to all the related SharePoint databases; content, config etc.

Please don’t do that.

Here’s the proper way to give your account the needed permissions:

Open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell with an account that already has farm permissions.

Permission the desired account using:

> add-spshelladmin -username domainusername

That’s the proper way of doing it.

You can also check which accounts has shell admin rights:

>get-spshelladmin

 

SharePoint 2010 cumulative updates

This table summarises the know SharePoint 2010 cumulative updates.

Release Date	Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010	Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010	Version
August 2012	KB2687355	KB2687353	14.0.6126.5000
April 2012	KB2598321	KB2598151	14.0.6120.5000
October 2011	KB2596508	KB2596505	14.0.6112.5000
June 2011	KB2536601	KB2536599	14.0.6106.5000
April 2011	KB2510639	KB2510639	14.0.5136.5002
Service Pack 1 (SP1)	KB2460058	KB2460045
August 2010	KB2266423	KB2276339	14.0.5123.5000
June 2010	KB2028568	KB983319KB983497KB2281364KB2124512KB2182938 (Japanese only)

SharePoint Server 2010 PowerShell cmdlets

Now that PowerShell cmdlets will replace the stsadm.exe used in SharePoint Server 2007, it can be a little bit difficult to get an overview of the new commands.

A newly published article on TechNet: Index of SharePoint Server 2010 Windows PowerShell cmdlets will help you get this information in a structured way.

There is also a Stsadm to Windows PowerShell mapping (SharePoint Server 2010) available to help transitioning to the new way of administrating SharePoint 2010. 

What’s new in SharePoint Server 2010?

If you ever have wanted to know what new features the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 brings to us, you can follow these links from Microsoft.

What's New

From the TechNet site, we have the What's New in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 articles.

And from a development perspective we have these MSDN articles:

What's New in SharePoint Foundation 2010

and

What's New in SharePoint Server 2010

Guides

SharePoint Server 2010 Overview Evaluation Guide

SharePoint Server 2010 Walkthrough Guide

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Evaluation Guide for IT Professionals

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Professional Developer's Evaluation Guide

Training Kit

SharePoint Server 2010 Training Kit

VHD

If you want to download and take SharePoint Server 2010 for a test, you can use this VHD:

SharePoint Server 2010 / Office 2010 Evaluation VHD

Installing SharePoint Server 2010 on a development system. Part 2.

This is the 2nd part of my post on Installing SharePoint Server 2010 on a development system.

Now it’s time to run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.

Click Next.

You will be asked if it is ok to restart certain services during the wizard. Click Yes.

Since we will creating a new server farm, select that option and click Next.

Specify your SQL Server name, the config database name, and the username/password used to connect to the SQL Server. Click Next.

Now, if you don’t have updated your SQL Server 2008 to the latest service pack and/or CU, you will get this error, which leads you to this KB article

In my case, I had SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 installed, but needed the cumulative update package 2.  I applied the CU and Ok.

Enter the far passphrase and click Next.

In this step you set the port number used by the Central Administration Web Application. If you don’t have any specific needs, leave it with the default value. You also set whether the authentication provider should be NTLM or Kerberos. Click Next.

Click Next and the Wizard will start its processing.

Click Finish.

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations, your SharePoint Server is installed and configured.

Installing SharePoint Server 2010 on a development system. Part 1

In this post I will guide you through the process of setting up a SharePoint Server 2010 development server. The platform I will cover here will be Windows Server 2008 (R2) and not Windows 7. (Which is, in contrast to SharePoint Server 2007, is both doable and supported). Also, I will not cover installing an instance of SQL Server 2008.

When we first insert the media (either a DVD or if you have mounted a downloaded .iso file), you will be greeted by this splash screen:

We will start by clicking the Install software prerequisites. This handy utility will install and configure all the features, components and updates before running the actual SharePoint Server installation.

Click Next to continue

 

Check to accept and click Next.

When the preparation tool has finished, you will need to restart your system.

Click Finish to do so.

After the re-boot, the prerequisites are all installed and enabled.

Click Finish to continue. You will then have to re-start the SharePoint setup by starting the Splash.hta executable. This time we are ready to install SharePoint by clicking on “Install SharePoint Server”.

Enter your product key and click Continue.

Accept the terms and click Continue.

Since we will be running the SQL Server on a separate system, we select the Server Farm option.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Select the Complete option and click Install Now.

After the installation has completed, you will have the option to run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard:

Leave it selected and click Close.