How to Tell if a SharePoint Installation is Standalone or Farm

This is oddly useful information when you start to run into a situation where you’d like to scale a SharePoint server, but find nuances that it may be a standalone installation.

Look in the registry under:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\WSS"

There will be an entry for "ServerRole" which will tell you the installation type

Stand Alone – SINGLESERVER

Farm Stand Alone – WFE

Farm Complete – APPLICATION

Thanks to this forums post: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/a498bb63-c706-471a-ad3f-1e6c63d4e3cc/

Incoming search terms:

• check if your software is a stand alone
• Standlone vs farm