Sitecore XP scaled installation using Distributed installation script

Question

Background:

We are doing Sitecore upgrade from 9.2 to 10.2. We are referring SC 10.2 XP Scaled topology guide from Sitecore official downloads page to set up Sitecore installation in one of our non-prod scaled environment. We starts with CM set up and going to use SIF approach.

Where we stuck:

In the guide, there is a note mentioned as below:

NOTE If you use this script to install the Sitecore XP Scaled topology, each server role must be installed on a separate computer and there must be no previous Sitecore installation on any of these computers

The second statement put us in confusion since we have 9.2 instance running in the server where we are going to set up 10.2.

What guidance we need:

1. Can you please clarify that we are using correct script to set up XP scaled topology?
2. If previous installations are running in servers, will this script not allowed the new installation (10.2)?
3. If yes, we need your help by sharing useful links to set up XP scaled topology.

Additional information:

After extracted the Sitecore XP scaled WDP package, we are seeing two Powershell scripts in XP1 configuration files.

1. Install-XP1-Distributed.ps1
2. XP1-SingleDeveloper.ps1

Extracted view of Sitecore XP1 scaled WDP package:

Extracted view of XP1 configuration files:

If Distributed installation script has some limitations with previous Sitecore versions, can we use XP1-SingleDeveloper.ps1.

But we confused with the naming convention XP1-SingleDeveloper..Why SingleDeveloper file is presents in scaled topology packages since this kind of file we have used for Standalone environment setup.

Your help much appreciated.

Answer 1

Sitecore 10.2 can be installed along side Sitecore 9.2. Sitecore developers (consultants) working on multiple projects do this all the time on their local laptops.

Just a quick note before answering your question: It is recommended that you set up a parallel environment keeping Sitecore 9 and 10 instances completely separate. This separation has a lot of benefits as you will be able to deploy, QA, test CI/CD pipeline etc. without affecting Sitecore 9.

However, if you are ok with the above mentioned risk of having two environments on the same box then you need to first verify that the server that you are planning to install Sitecore on meets the hardware/software requirements of 10.2 (ref installation guide). If your server supports it then you should be able to simply follow the installation guide and install Sitecore 10.2 XP scaled.

Answers to your questions

1. Yes, that is the correct script for installing XP scaled topology
2. Already answered your second question. You can install Sitecore 10.2 side by side with Sitecore 9 if your server has the min hardware/software to support Sitecore 10.2 instance.
3. As you have mentioned you want to install scaled XP topology, you should be using Install-XP1-Distributed.ps1. Since you are on IaaS (VM) setup, and not an app service, if you use Install-XP1-Distributed.ps1 it will install all services like cm, cd, processing etc. all on one machine. If you are spinning this up only for testing purposes then you are ok with having all services in one VM, but in an actual implementation you will have separate VMs, and you will need to install Sitecore separately on each of the VM.

The right way to do this is to write a custom PowerShell so that it installs the required services only, OR another way to do it is to let it install everything and delete the services that you do not need.