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Move PowerPivot to a dedicated server but with Kerberos configured

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SharePoint 2013 PowerPivot can now be configured on a standalone server i.e. not part of the farm.

Whilst some may wonder why, this is a big deal from a scalability perspective as that means you can therefore have multiple servers configured to handle increased workload.

A few caveats however:

  1. Do not try and configure PowerPivot to use SQL Clustering - SharePoint "Clusters" (Not technically correct but the same concept) the PowerPivot instances it is aware of,
  2. Do not try and install PowerPivot as more than 1 instance on the same server (Only 1 PowerPivot instance is supported on 1 server)

Reference for installation and Configuration - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn456880(v=office.15).aspx

An interesting thing happened to me whilst moving a Customer of mine's PowerPivot from a SharePoint server to a dedicated server.

This article assumes that you have previously configured PowerPivot and are now simply wanting to move the installation.

Firstly the following is all that is required to move it:

  1. Install and configure PowerPivot on a new server,
  2. Open the Excel Service application settings by selecting and opening properties,
  3. Add the server to Data Model list e.g. SERVER\POWERPIVOT,
    You may add multiple servers if you have configured PowerPivot on multiple and SharePoint will round robin allocate each server for processing,
  4. Remove the old server details and uninstall PowerPivot from the SharePoint server.

You do not need to re-run the PowerPivot 2013 configuration tool to finalize the move.

IF YOU ARE LIKE ME AND YOU RE-RAN THE POWERPIVOT CONFIG TOOL WITH KERBEROS ALREADY CONFIGURED

The PowerPivot configuration tool succeeds but you receive "file not found" errors when opening the PowerPivot gallery then this small but important note below is for you.

I then looked in the _layouts folder on my SharePoint servers only to find that there was no PowerPivot folder yet the config tool told me it was there.

The fix is actually very simple: (KERBEROS SECURITY WILL BE TEMPORARILY "BROKEN" SO EXPECT SOME DOWNTIME)

  1. Open the security of the web application in Central Admin and change it from Kerberos to NTLM (temporarily).
  2. Re-Run the PowerPivot configuration tool and let it fix and apply settings,
  3. Re-Enable Kerberos on the web application.

You should now see the PowerPivot sub-folder under the _Layouts folder on the SharePoint servers.

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