My goal was for the last weekend to install Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 with Service Pack 1 in my lab environment. One requirement for this cool Microsoft product is to install and configure a SharePoint farm. For sure I choose the latest editions from the Microsoft product family: SharePoint 2016 and Windows Server 2016.

Issue:

When installing SharePoint 2016 on Windows Server 2016, the prerequisites installer fails with the error “AppFabric installation failed because installer MSI returned with error code : 1603“.

This is a generic MSI error message and does not give any indication about how to get the issue fixed. In my case, uninstall or reinstall only makes it worse.

What Windows Server AppFabric 1.1 exactly does and why SharePoint needs this component, you can find more information here.

Here is the step by step guide to installing AppFabric 1.1 on Windows Server 2016. If you were to install the executable straightaway, it will fail as there are some dependencies:

Resolution:

To properly setup AppFabric, you need to check the following settings:

• Installed IIS server role
• Modified PSModulePath system variable

Important: if your installation has already failed, you have to check and clean up the local groups on the server. In my case AS_Observers local group hasn’t been removed after failed installation. Before you trying to start the installation again, remove this group:

Also remove AS_Administrators group if it exists.

And then et voilà, this component can be (finally) installed successfully:

When you’re done, don’t forget to download cumulative update 7 (KB3092423) for Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server with all the updates for clustering.

I know it’s not a big science fiction, but I found this issue in many forums and blogs. These couldn’t really help me, that’s why I decided to write this short blog post.

I hope it helps you!