If you’re planning to deploy SharePoint Server on-premises, the very first thing you need to get right is the system requirements. Skip this step, or get it wrong, and you’ll end up staring at failed installations, performance headaches, or errors that are frustrating to diagnose. I personally suffered a lot.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know — hardware, software, SQL Server requirements, and prerequisites — for both SharePoint Server Subscription Edition and SharePoint Server 2019. Let’s take it step by step.
What Is SharePoint Server Subscription Edition?
SharePoint Server Subscription Edition (also referred to as SPSE) is the latest version of SharePoint Server for on-premises deployments.
Microsoft introduced it as a major shift in how SharePoint is licensed and delivered — moving to a subscription-based model rather than a one-time perpetual license purchase. Think of it as SharePoint’s “evergreen” release that gets continuous updates rather than being replaced by a new numbered version every few years.
One of the biggest advantages of SPSE is that it supports a direct upgrade path from SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019 — something that wasn’t possible in older versions where you had to upgrade step by step.
For example, with older versions you had to go from 2010 → 2013 → 2016 → 2019. With Subscription Edition, you can jump straight from 2016 or 2019 in a single hop.
Things to Check Before You Start
Before jumping straight into the installation, there are a few baseline checks you should always run on your server. Getting these right from the start saves you a lot of trouble later.
For all installation types:
- Make sure you have enough hard disk space for the base installation itself.
- Keep extra space available for diagnostic activities like logging, memory dumps, and debugging — these can eat up space faster than you’d expect.
- Microsoft does not support installing Microsoft Office and SharePoint Server Subscription Edition on the same computer. Keep them on separate machines.
For production environments specifically:
- Always maintain at least twice as much free disk space as you have RAM. So if your server has 32 GB of RAM, keep a minimum of 64 GB free disk space available.
- Plan your storage with growth in mind — content databases grow over time, especially in large organizations.
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Hardware Requirements for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition
The hardware requirements for SPSE vary depending on the type of deployment you’re setting up. Here’s a clear breakdown:
| Installation Scenario | Deployment Type | Processor | RAM | Hard Disk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single server role (with SQL Server) | Development or evaluation with minimum recommended services | 64-bit, 4 cores | 16 GB | 80 GB (system drive) + 100 GB (second drive) |
| Single server role (with SQL Server) | Pilot or user acceptance test running all available services | 64-bit, 4 cores | 24 GB | 80 GB (system drive) + 100 GB+ (second drive and additional drives) |
| SharePoint server in a multi-tier farm | Development or evaluation with a minimum number of services | 64-bit, 4 cores | 12 GB | 80 GB (system drive) + 80 GB (second drive) |
| SharePoint server in a multi-tier farm | Pilot, UAT, or production running all available services | 64-bit, 4 cores | 16 GB | 80 GB (system drive) + 80 GB (second drive and additional drives) |
Pro tip: These numbers are minimums, not recommendations for production performance. In real-world large enterprise farms, plan for significantly more RAM — 32 GB or higher for application servers — especially if you’re running resource-heavy services like Search or User Profile Synchronization. For the database server, SSDs are strongly recommended for SQL data and log file drives.
A few additional hardware tips worth noting:
- Search is resource-hungry. If you’re deploying a large-scale search environment with a lot of content, your indexing servers will need more CPU and RAM than what’s listed here as the minimum.
- Network matters. Plan for at least a 1 Gbps network adapter. In multi-server farm deployments, all SharePoint and SQL servers should ideally be on the same low-latency, high-bandwidth network segment.
- Storage type counts. High-speed SSDs for your SQL Server drives make a noticeable difference in SharePoint performance, particularly for content database reads/writes.
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Software Requirements for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition
Supported Operating Systems
SharePoint Server Subscription Edition supports the following operating systems for SharePoint servers (the servers where SharePoint itself is installed):
- Windows Server 2019 Standard or Datacenter
- Windows Server 2022 Standard or Datacenter
- Windows Server 2025 Standard or Datacenter
Both Server with Desktop Experience and Server Core installation options are supported. Server Core is a stripped-down installation with a smaller attack surface — a good choice if your team is comfortable managing servers via PowerShell and remote tools.
For database servers (where SQL Server runs), the supported operating systems are:
- Windows Server 2019 Standard or Datacenter
- Windows Server 2022 Standard or Datacenter
- Windows Server 2025 Standard or Datacenter
SQL Server Requirements
Getting SQL Server right is critical for SharePoint. Here’s a detailed table of what’s supported:
| Component | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Supported SQL Server Versions | SQL Server 2019 CU5 or later (Standard or Enterprise), SQL Server 2022, or any future SQL Server for Windows that supports database compatibility level 150 |
| Azure SQL Managed Instance | Supported only if SharePoint farm is hosted in Microsoft Azure |
| SQL Server Express | ❌ Not supported |
| Azure SQL Database (non-Managed) | ❌ Not supported |
| Editions | Standard or Enterprise |
| Collation | Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS (do not change this unless absolutely necessary) |
| Authentication | Windows Authentication (recommended) |
| SQL Server Agent | Must be running |
| Minimum SQL Roles for Farm Account | dbcreator, securityadmin |
| SQL Feature | Full-Text Search (required for some SharePoint features like search and content processing) |
| Max Degree of Parallelism (MAXDOP) | Set to 1 for all SQL Server instances used by SharePoint |
| Memory Configuration | Avoid dynamic memory allocation — set a fixed max memory for SQL Server |
| Disk Configuration | Separate drives for SQL data files and log files (highly recommended) |
Why MAXDOP = 1 matters: SharePoint’s database queries are not optimized for parallel execution. Leaving MAXDOP at its default can cause “CXPACKET” waits and performance degradation. Setting it to 1 is an official Microsoft recommendation for all SQL Server instances serving SharePoint.
Software Prerequisites
SharePoint Server Subscription Edition requires a set of prerequisites to be installed before you run the SharePoint setup. The good news is that Microsoft provides a built-in tool called prerequisiteinstaller.exe that handles most of this automatically.
However, if your server doesn’t have internet access (which is common in locked-down production environments), you’ll need to download and install these manually.
Here’s what gets installed:
| Prerequisite | Notes |
|---|---|
| Web Server (IIS) Role | Required for SharePoint to serve web content |
| Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8 | Minimum required .NET version |
| Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015-2022 (x64) | Starting with SPSE Version 23H1, the 2015-2022 package replaces the earlier 2015-2019 package |
| Windows PowerShell 5.1 | Required for SharePoint management cmdlets |
You can also install all required Windows roles and features manually using PowerShell. Here is the command to configure them in one shot:
powershellInstall-WindowsFeature NET-WCF-Pipe-Activation45, NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45, NET-WCF-TCP-Activation45, Web-Server, Web-WebServer, Web-Common-Http, Web-Static-Content, Web-Default-Doc, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Http-Errors, Web-App-Dev, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Health, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Log-Libraries, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-Security, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-Filtering, Web-Performance, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Dyn-Compression, WAS, WAS-Process-Model, WAS-Config-APIs -IncludeManagementTools
Note for offline servers: If your server can’t reach Windows Update, add the
-Source D:\sources\sxsparameter to the command above (replaceD:with your Windows Server installation media path). This installs Features on Demand from local media instead.
Important things to keep in mind:
- The minimum supported Microsoft Office client version with SharePoint Server Subscription Edition is Microsoft Office 2013.
- Microsoft Office and SharePoint Server Subscription Edition cannot be installed on the same machine.
- SharePoint Server PowerShell cmdlets require Windows PowerShell — they are not compatible with PowerShell Core 6.x or PowerShell 7.x.
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Hardware Requirements for SharePoint Server 2019
SharePoint Server 2019 has similar hardware requirements to SPSE, but it’s important to verify these separately before deployment.
| Installation Scenario | Deployment Type | RAM | Processor | Hard Disk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single server role (with SQL Server) | Development or evaluation with minimum recommended services | 16 GB | 64-bit, 4 cores | 80 GB (system) + 100 GB (second drive) |
| Single server role (with SQL Server) | Pilot or UAT running all available services | 24 GB | 64-bit, 4 cores | 80 GB (system) + 100 GB+ (second drive and additional) |
| Web server or application server in a three-tier farm | Development or evaluation with minimum services | 12 GB | 64-bit, 4 cores | 80 GB (system) + 80 GB (second drive) |
| Web server or application server in a three-tier farm | Pilot, UAT, or production running all available services | 16 GB | 64-bit, 4 cores | 80 GB (system) + 80 GB (second drive and additional) |
Note: You should always have enough space for logging, memory dumps, and debugging in any type of installation. For production, maintain at least twice the free space as the amount of RAM on the server.
Software Requirements for SharePoint Server 2019
| Component | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Operating System | Windows Server 2016 Standard or Datacenter, Windows Server 2019 Standard or Datacenter, Windows Server 2022 Standard or Datacenter |
| Database Server | Microsoft SQL Server 2016 RTM or Microsoft SQL Server 2017 RTM for Windows |
| .NET Framework | .NET Framework 4.7.2 |
| Browser Support | Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, Google Chrome (latest), Mozilla Firefox (latest) |
| SMTP Server (Incoming) | Exchange 2016 or Exchange 2019 |
| SMTP Server (Outgoing) | Any SMTP service that supports TLS 1.2 |
| Office Online Server | Optional, but required for browser-based document viewing and editing |
| Windows Management Framework | 5.1 |
| Microsoft WCF Data Services | 5.6 |
| Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime | v1.0 SP1 (x64) — required if using User Profile Synchronization service |
| Microsoft Identity Extensions | Required if using the User Profile Synchronization service |
| Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client | Required |
Offline installation tip: The SharePoint 2019 Prerequisite Installer will try to download many of these components from the internet. If your production server is behind a firewall, pre-download all prerequisites before you begin and use the command-line parameters to point the installer to local files.
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SQL Server Requirements for SharePoint Server 2019
| Component | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Supported SQL Server Versions | SQL Server 2016 RTM, SQL Server 2017 RTM for Windows |
| Editions | Standard or Enterprise |
| SQL Server Express | ❌ Not supported |
| Collation | Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS |
| Authentication | Windows Authentication |
| SQL Server Agent | Must be running |
| Minimum Roles (Farm Account) | dbcreator, securityadmin |
| Full-Text Search | Recommended — required for some SharePoint search features |
| Max Degree of Parallelism (MAXDOP) | Set to 1 |
| Disk | Separate drives for data and log files (recommended); RAID for reliability |
| Memory | Set a fixed max memory — avoid dynamic allocation |
Important notes:
- SQL Server Express is not supported for SharePoint Server 2019 in any scenario.
- You cannot install Office 2019 client and SharePoint Server 2019 on the same computer — Microsoft explicitly does not allow this.
- For High Availability using Always On Availability Groups, you’ll need SQL Server Enterprise edition — the Standard edition does not support this feature.
Quick Comparison: SPSE vs. SharePoint 2019 Requirements
Here’s a side-by-side view of the key differences to help you quickly see where the two versions diverge:
| Requirement | SharePoint Subscription Edition | SharePoint Server 2019 |
|---|---|---|
| Supported OS | Windows Server 2019, 2022, 2025 | Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022 |
| SQL Server | SQL 2019 CU5+, SQL 2022 (database compatibility level 150) | SQL Server 2016 RTM, SQL Server 2017 RTM |
| Azure SQL Managed Instance | ✅ Supported (Azure-hosted farms only) | ❌ Not supported |
| .NET Framework | 4.8 | 4.7.2 |
| Server Core Support | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Visual C++ Prerequisite | 2015-2022 Redistributable (x64) | 2015-2019 Redistributable (x64) |
| Upgrade from 2016/2019 | ✅ Direct (N-2 upgrade supported) | ✅ Supported from 2016 only |
| Licensing Model | Subscription-based | Perpetual license |
Common Mistakes You Should Avoid
I have installed in many SharePoint environments and know the pains it can create.
So, before you sit down to install SharePoint, keep these pitfalls in mind — they’re the ones that trip up even experienced administrators:
- Not checking MAXDOP: Many people forget to set MAXDOP = 1 on SQL Server. Always do this before running SharePoint’s configuration wizard.
- Using SQL Server Express: This is a common mistake on dev machines. SharePoint simply won’t install or function properly with SQL Express.
- Installing SharePoint and Office on the same server: Microsoft explicitly blocks this. Don’t try to work around it.
- Ignoring the disk space rule: Not maintaining 2x RAM in free disk space can cause SharePoint to behave erratically in production, especially during large search crawls or backups.
- Running prerequisiteinstaller.exe on an offline server without pre-downloading components: The installer will fail silently or partially install prerequisites. Always prepare an offline prerequisites bundle if your server doesn’t have direct internet access.
- Changing the SQL Server collation: The SharePoint databases require
Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS. If your SQL Server instance uses a different collation, you’ll hit errors during SharePoint database creation.
Conclusion
Getting the hardware and software requirements right before deploying SharePoint Server is not just a checklist exercise — it genuinely decides whether your farm runs smoothly or keeps throwing errors from day one.
In this tutorial, we covered the complete requirements for both SharePoint Server Subscription Edition and SharePoint Server 2019, including hardware specs for different deployment types, supported operating systems, SQL Server versions, software prerequisites, and the common mistakes you should avoid.
Whether you’re setting up a small single-server environment for evaluation or a multi-tier production farm for your organization, always start with the right foundation. Make sure your SQL Server is properly configured (especially MAXDOP = 1 and the correct collation), install all prerequisites before running the SharePoint setup, and plan your storage and RAM with room to grow. Once the requirements are in place, the actual installation becomes a much smoother experience.
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Hey! I’m Bijay Kumar, founder of SPGuides.com and a Microsoft Business Applications MVP (Power Automate, Power Apps). I launched this site in 2020 because I truly enjoy working with SharePoint, Power Platform, and SharePoint Framework (SPFx), and wanted to share that passion through step-by-step tutorials, guides, and training videos. My mission is to help you learn these technologies so you can utilize SharePoint, enhance productivity, and potentially build business solutions along the way.
