It’s Boxing Day. And to celebrate, I thought I’d demonstrate how easy it is to “unbox” Commerce Server 10 (CS10) and get it up and running.
Easy and Commerce Server up-and-running??? Really??? Well, to be honest – the product was not the easiest thing in the world to install in the past. In fact, it sucked pretty atrociously dependent on the version. With CS10, we have started the process of migrating all of the deployment technology to open standards such as Wix and PowerShell. The result? Yes, it is absolutely possible to get Commerce Server fully up-and-running with CS10 in less than 10 minutes.
And this is just the beginning, as it’s our goal to make each and every release even easier to get up and running as well as in the future start leveraging cloud technologies such as Azure to truly make it point-and-click…
The Pre-Requisites
I started with a Hyper-V VM with 4GB of RAM, Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, and Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate. I then applied all of the updates such as SQL2012 Service Pack 1. And then downloaded the Commerce Server 10 RTM software (available securely to all customers and partners). My VM host is nothing special – it’s a 6-year old dual 3.0 GHz Xeon with 32GB of RAM and WD Velociraptor 10K RPM SATA disks.
Part 1 - Running the Installer
To start, simply run the new installer by double-clicking on it. Note the start-time of 11:48 AM. 
Then, if you don’t need to change any of the defaults – which we don’t – simply hit the new Install button. You’ll spend the next few minutes waiting while it performs its tasks looking at a screen similar to the following:
When that’s done, the Configuration will be launched and you’ll be presented with a screen similar to the following (note we are now 2 minutes into the installation):
Simply hit Next and fill in the connection string to your SQL Server database using the following screen and hit Next:
Then, provide an account for the Staging service to run and hit Next:
The configuration process will take a few more minutes to run. While that’s happening your screen will look like:
When that has finished, you’ll get to the Setup Complete screen (note: we’re now 3 minutes in):
Simply go ahead and hit the Exit button and fire up Internet Explorer (or the browser of your choice).
Part 2 - Getting the Site Template
With your browser open, go to our Web site at http://www.commerceserver.net/ and pull up the Technical Resources page. For a shortcut, it’s http://www.commerceserver.net/Technical%20Resources/.
Go to the Commerce Server Site Templates link and you’ll be presented with our CodePlex project for out-of-box shopping experiences for CS10. Simply hit the Download link to go ahead and retrieve the latest file and save a copy to your server:
Once that is done, I suggest pulling up the documentation. We have prepared links for common scenarios. In this case, I have chosen to simply Popup a Site:
The next set of steps that need to be performed are all called out here. The first is to Unblock the zip file as noted:
Once that is done, it’s time to extract the zip as I have shown:
Once that’s complete, it’s time to fire up PowerShell and finish the configuration. But first – a quick time check – we’re now exactly four minutes into the process and it’s 2/3 of the way complete.
Part 3 – Configuring the Template via PowerShell
With PowerShell up and running, simply change directories to the \Deployment folder under where the site template was extracted:
Then, run the Deploy-Unpup.ps1 script as noted:
When that has completed, you’ll see a screen similar to the following (and note we’re now only 7 minutes in – though don’t be alarmed if this takes a few minutes dependent upon the speed of your server):
At this point, go ahead and run the Deploy-Base.ps1 script as noted:
That will take another couple of minutes to run as all the configuration settings are applied and sample data is imported:
When that has finished, it will look similar to the following – go ahead and hit the localhost link to fire up your site (and note that we’re technically “done” and only 8 minutes in):
After the Application Pool starts you'll be at the home page of a fully functioning Site Template:
And that is literally it – a fully functioning Commerce Server 10 installation in 8 minutes! 
What’s Next
Once you have done the steps in this post, you can edit the site and customize it in Visual Studio or any of our schema editors. Furthermore, if you want to explore alternate deployments, we have other scripts for that. And lastly, if you want to make your own contributions – it’s now community source, so feel-free.
And to prove that this was completely kosher, I have also posted a video of the whole thing from which I grabbed these screenshots!
Happy Boxing Day and hope this helps!