In a standard situation I would strongly advice against installing Tridion software yourself. It is far more efficient to hire a friendly Tridion application engineer to do the installation for you. The reason behind this is simple: They install Tridion on a weekly basis where I struggle to get one installation a year under my belt. Add to that the vast knowledge about known issues that Tridion has available in their knowledge-base and you will arrive to my conclusion.
That said it is useful to install Tridion yourself at least once. Installing Tridion will teach you a lot about the intricacies of the system which will prove useful when facing disturbances. Continue reading