Sitecore Upgrade 10.2 to 10.4 — Part 1: Step-by-Step Vanilla Instance Installation (Developer’s Perspective)

Rahul Hariyani

4 min read

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May 31, 2025

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A hands-on, developer-focused guide for installing a Sitecore 10.4 vanilla instance using SIF as the first step of a full upgrade process.

Hey everyone — welcome to my blog series on upgrading Sitecore from version 10.2 to 10.4!
Now, you’ll find plenty of upgrade blogs online, but most of them just cover high-level steps. In this series, I’ll be sharing exactly what we did, step-by-step, from a developer’s point of view.

This isn’t a one-post job either — upgrading Sitecore is a big task, so I’m splitting this into multiple parts. In this first part, we’ll focus on setting up a fresh vanilla 10.4 instance locally using SIF. I’ll also mention some issues I faced during installation and how I resolved them.

📌 Our Upgrade Approach

Let’s say you’re currently running Sitecore 10.2 XP. Here’s the approach we followed:

1. Install a Sitecore 10.4 vanilla instance locally.
2. Take the existing databases from higher environments, upgrade them, and attach them to the local instance.
3. Upgrade the solution code and deploy it to the local instance.
4. Upgrade all the Sitecore modules being used (I’ll cover a few module upgrades in future posts).
5. Validate everything end-to-end.
6. Move the upgraded instance to higher environments (I’ll dedicate a separate blog post to this since it involves several configuration tweaks).

Note: During this entire process, we kept our existing 10.2 server running in parallel. You can choose to install the upgraded version on a different server and switch over once everything’s validated.

🛠️ Vanilla Instance Installation — SIF Way

We’ll be installing the XP Scaled version using Sitecore Install Framework (SIF). I did try the SIA route initially, but faced issues where the xConnect services would get created but not start properly. Switching to SIF resolved this for me — so you can choose whichever method you’re comfortable with, but I’ll be covering the SIF way here.

📋 Detailed Installation Steps

1️⃣ Create a Project Directory

Create a folder, for example:
C:\SourceCode\Sitecore10.4Upgrade\XP1104

You can name it as you like — I’m just using this to give you a reference.

2️⃣ Download Sitecore 10.4 Installation Packages

Head over to the official Sitecore download page:
Sitecore 10.4 Download

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Download the XP Scaled (On-Premises Deployment) WDP packages.

3️⃣ Extract Packages

Unzip the downloaded package and copy the required files into your project directory:
C:\SourceCode\Sitecore10.4Upgrade\XP1104

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4️⃣ Add Your Sitecore License

Copy your Sitecore license file to:
C:\SourceCode\Sitecore10.4Upgrade\XP1104

5️⃣ Certificate Cleanup (Recommended Step)

I faced a couple of certificate-related issues during repeated installs. Running these PowerShell commands beforehand helped avoid those:

Get-ChildItem cert:\LocalMachine\root -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Issuer -ne $_.Subject}

Get-ChildItem cert:\LocalMachine\root -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Issuer -ne $_.Subject} | Move-Item -Destination Cert:\LocalMachine\CA\

Run PowerShell as Administrator when executing these.

6️⃣ Extract Configuration Files

Unzip the XP1 Configuration files package (XP1 Configuration files 10.4.0 rev. 010422.zip) and copy all files to:
C:\SourceCode\Sitecore10.4Upgrade\XP1104

7️⃣ Install Prerequisites

In PowerShell (Admin mode):

cd C:\SourceCode\Sitecore10.4Upgrade\XP1104

Install-SitecoreConfiguration -Path .\prerequisites.json

8️⃣ Install SOLR 8.11.2

If you don’t have SOLR 8.11.2 installed already, install it now.
Update the Solr-SingleDeveloper.json file to adjust values like:

• SolrPort
• SolrInstallRoot

as per your system setup.

9️⃣ Install SOLR Configuration

In PowerShell (Admin mode):

cd C:\SourceCode\Sitecore10.4Upgrade\XP1104

Install-SitecoreConfiguration -Path .\Solr-SingleDeveloper.json

🔟 Update XP Installation Script

Edit the following fields in XP1-SingleDeveloper.ps1 according to your local setup:

• Prefix
• SitecoreAdminPassword
• SqlServer
• SqlDbPrefix
• SolrUrl
• SolrRoot
• SolrService
• XConnectCert
• IdentityServerCert

1️⃣1️⃣ Run the Installation Script

Once all values are updated, run the following command in PowerShell (Admin mode):

.\XP1-SingleDeveloper.ps1

✅ Final Checks

• Verify Sitecore Install Framework (SIF) version:

Get-Module SitecoreInstallFramework –ListAvailable

If version 2.4 is not installed, install it using:

Install-Module SitecoreInstallFramework -SkipPublisherCheck -Force

📌 Things You Might Miss

• Make sure SQL Server is up and running.
• Confirm SOLR service is active and accessible on the defined port.
• Don’t forget to update hosts file entries for your instance.
• If you’re using self-signed certificates, you might need to trust them manually after install.
• Validate all xConnect services are running — you can check this in IIS or using Get-Service in PowerShell.

🎉 Conclusion

And that’s it for Part 1! You should now have a working Sitecore 10.4 vanilla instance installed locally via SIF.

In the next part, I’ll walk through how we upgraded the databases from higher environments and attached them to the new instance — along with the issues we hit and how we fixed them.

👏 Final Thoughts

If you’re assigned a Sitecore upgrade task, chances are you’ve already installed a few instances before. But when it comes to upgrades — especially between minor versions like 10.2 to 10.4 — the devil’s in the details, and having a step-by-step guide like this can save a lot of headaches.

💬 Got questions or ran into issues during your install? Drop a comment — I’d love to help out! And stay tuned for Part 2 where I’ll cover database upgrades.