FIX: Sharepoint 2013 Configuration Failed at Step 3

I’m currently testing the new Sharepoint 2013 at home and I’ve hit a road block during the Sharepoint Product Configuration phase of the setup [been two days until now].  There are already so many articles written about the issue and I’ve tried almost all of the top known solutions to no avail.   After giving up on the web articles, I went over to all my downloaded white papers from the MS site and found the Deployment Guide.  The answer to my issue was found in p. 41 in the deployment guide.  If you are curious about the under the hood details, please read the entire deployment guide before going through the final deployment.  If you just want to execute a quick fix, follow the 3-Steps that I provided below.  It is not a step by step procedure because I am assuming that you have some form of admin knowledge regarding SQL, Sharepoint and Active Directory.  The root cause of the problem – I was following a good security admin habit – never to use a DOMAIN\Administrator account to manage a SQL Server and Sharepoint Server.  With that mindset, I was using a different account “SPAdmin” to setup Sharepoint.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:  Sharepoint 2013 Configuration Failed at Step #3

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
“Task configdb has failed with an unknown exception. Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: An error occurred while getting information about the user spadmin at server RIGELRESEARCH.local: Access is denied”

SYSTEM DESCRIPTION:.
1. W2012ES-Windows Server 2012 Essentials Converted to Windows Server 2012 Standard running as a Hyper-V 2012 Host and as Domain Controller – DOMAIN.local

2. W2012-Windows Server 2012 Standard with SQL Server 2012 and Sharepoint 2013 installed

User Accounts:
DOMAIN\Administrator
DOMAIN\SPAdmin [to setup Sharepoint]

FIX:
1. Read Sharepoint 2013 Deployment Guide p.41 and understand SQL 2012 and SP2013 permission requirements.
2. Setup SPAdmin Account with correct permission in SQL Server 2012 and in Active Directory per Deployment Guide [see figure 2,3]
3. Login using the SPAdmin Account to the Sharepoint Server that you are configuring. NOTE: Any other account will generate the error.

CAUSE OF FAILURE:
I logged in as DOMAIN\Administrator to the Sharepoint\SQL Box but when I ran the Sharepoint 2013 Product Configuration, I was using the account DOMAIN\SPAdmin in Step1 of the wizard.  Although I provided the correct SQL Roles to SPAdmin prior to the setup as dbcreator, securityadmin, public, serveradmin, setupadmin and sysadmin, during the creation of the Sharepoint Configuration DB, the SPAdmin account did not become a “db_owner” of the Sharepoint Configuration Database [see Figure4].  When the SPAdmin failed to become the db_owner, the wizard came to an Exception state because it cannot further edit the database.

I highlighted the solution to the issue in p.41 below.  In my case, SPAdmin was not the db_owner of the Sharepoint Config database because it was created by the DOMAIN\Administrator account even if SPAdmin was set to dbcreator role prior to the setup.

Read Sharepoint 2013 Deployment Guide p.41

Figure1-Sharepoint Products Configuration Wizard Step #3 Failed

Figure2-Setup SPAdmin Account – Server Roles

Figure3-SPAdmin Domain Account Membership

Figure 4-SPAdmin Role when the Configuration Wizard  failed.  I was logged in as DOMAIN\Administrator to the SQL Server Box. SPAdmin account did not become the “db_owner” dbo

Figure 5-SPAdmin Role when Configuration was successful. I logged in as DOMAIN\SPAdmin