SharePoint 2016 stand-alone configuration

Details

SharePoint 2016 no longer supports stand-alone configurations "out of the box". However, it is still possible to set up SharePoint 2016 on a single server for test and development, but it requires a manual step during installation.

After SharePoint installation is complete, but before running the SharePoint 2016 Products Configuration Wizard, run the SharePoint 2016 Management Shell. Ignore the warning that appears. Run the following command:

New-SPConfigurationDatabase –DatabaseName SharePoint_Config `
  –DatabaseServer <your-server-name> `
  –AdministrationContentDatabaseName SharePoint_Content `
  –Passphrase (ConvertTo-SecureString <your-passphrase> –AsPlaintext –Force) `
  –FarmCredentials (Get-Credential) -localserverrole SingleServerFarm

This program will display a credentials (login) dialog. Make sure that in the login dialog, you enter your user account in the format ServerName\UserName. If you don't the command will fail.

If by any chance the command fails, it may leave partially configured SharePoint databases on the server. In that case, use the SQL Server Management Studio to delete the SharePoint_Config and SharePoint_Content databases before starting again.

Once the command succeeds, you can run the SharePoint 2016 Products Configuration Wizard and it will take you to the next step.

And while I am at it, here is the command to change the port number for SharePoint Central Administration:

Set-SPCentralAdministration <port-number>

Last but not least, when you install SharePoint, you may be tempted to manually install some prerequisites, as the prerequisites installer fails thanks to Microsoft asinine "enhanced" Internet Explorer security configuration. Like me, you may have attempted to install AppFabric by hand, only to have the prerequisites installer fail afterwards, even if you uninstalled AppFabric. The reason? It hates the environment variable PSModulePath. Delete it, and re-run the prerequisites installer. You may want to save its value though and restore it later (together with whatever path was added by AppFabric itself.)

Some additional information from Microsoft: