Parallel to this whole effort, the SharePoint team was developing a system that allows developers to construct pages and assemblies that need to be validated and tried out before they go into production. Unknown to us, they called their work creating a ‘Sandbox’ because isolates developers from the real system.

Two entirely different systems with absolutely no connection.

Thank you,

Vidas Matelis

https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=512658

The first item on the “sandboxed solutions” is only needed if you are going to run apps that require it. It hasn’t been my experience that this is needed for PowerPivot. The word “Sandbox” means two totally different things. Sandbox to SharePoint is an environment where you can test applications in a controlled environments. Sandbox is also an early name for embedded PowerPivot databases. The two have nothing to do with each other. But I will check my SharePoint contacts to see if the script will be needed and why.

The second item is a bug and is documented on the blog here: http://powerpivotgeek.com/2009/11/17/installing-powerpivot-for-sharepoint-on-a-domain-controller/ for those that need more information.

I haven’t see the error about EWA. But I must admit that most 1-box installations that I do, the farm service account is a domain admin. My guess is that since we use the farm service account as our service accounts also, that this is the root cause of the problem. You have the right solution, just add it to domain admins.

Again, thanks.

In that perspective, an installation guide should have clear instructions on whether a true single setup (with AD) is possible or not.

If you setup domain controller on the same machine that will run SharePoint, the following Windows PowerShell command would need to be run to enable Sandboxed Solutions.
Note: Script was written by Jie Li and copied from here.
$acl = Get-Acl HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName
$person = [System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]“Users”
$access = [System.Security.AccessControl.RegistryRights]::FullControl
$inheritance = [System.Security.AccessControl.InheritanceFlags]“ContainerInherit,ObjectInherit”
$propagation = [System.Security.AccessControl.PropagationFlags]::None
$type = [System.Security.AccessControl.AccessControlType]::Allow
$rule = New-Object System.Security.AccessControl.RegistryAccessRule($person, $access,$inheritance, $propagation, $type)
$acl.AddAccessRule($rule)
Set-Acl HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName $acl

Here are steps on how you can run this script:

copy script to file sp.ps1
in command line enter “PowerShell”
enter “Set-executionpolicy unrestricted” (without double quotes)
enter “C:\Scripts\sp.ps1″ (without double quotes)
enter “Set-executionpolicy restricted” (without double quotes)
enter “Exit” (without double quotes)

and

If you are running domain controller on the same machine, you are not done yet. It is very important that you monitor your setup, as you might have to do some tricks, to make it work!
If you are running this on virtual machine (Hype-V), then I would recommend that you create your machine snapshot just before your setup will reach half way, in case you will need this recovery point.
There is a know issue when you install PowerPivot on domain controller described here. Basically in the middle of the setup your service “SQL Server Analysis Services (GeminiBI)” might change logon credentials from the domain account to “Local system account”. You should prepare for that and change logon credentials back to domain account as described in the post above.

and

After installation try to create and deploy PowerPivot to SharePoint. Check if during interaction with published PowerPivot you are getting error message:

“Excel Web Access”
An error occurred during an attempt to establish a connection to the external data source. The following connections failed to refresh:
Sandbox

If you are getting error message above, then add your SharePoint administrator account (in our case account is \SPAdmin) to the active directory user group “Domain Admins” and restart your machine.

Installing AD on the same server is possible, but with complications. See http://powerpivot-info.com/post/66-step-by-step-guide-on-installing-powerpivot-for-sharepoint