I am a freelance CAD designer who had decided it's time to set up a PDM system. I was going to go with WorkGroup PDM 2015, but with the end-of-life announcement I wanted to test 2016 PDM Standard to see if I should wait and implement my new PDM with PDM Standard 2016 SP0, or go with the proven WorkGroup PDM 2015. I am a 1 license site (home office) and I assume there will be many others in similar circumstances. To add a twist, I wanted to install my vault on a NAS drive (WD MyCloud EX2). I use Windows 7 Professional.
I have never installed WorkGroup PDM or used Enterprise PDM, so I understand the initial position of not allowing newbies like me to do beta testing of PDM Standard.

I got everything up and running, so  I thought I'd share my experience and comment on the PDM Standard Beta Installation Guide.

1. I had already installed Beta 3, so you can ignore the Client Installation section completely.

2. Complete the Server Installation steps.

3. BEFORE doing the Vault Creation steps, START SolidNetWork License Manager Server Manager (found under SolidWorks 2016>Tools). This will activate the product and start the processes.

4. (Optional) NAS drive setup steps:

     a. Create a new Share and set access to Public. I called the share "Vault".

     b. Map the drive. I set the share as my V: drive.

     c. Add a new folder "PDM-2016"

5. THEN run the Archive Server Configuration. Click on your PC icon and for the New Root Folder Path, select the mapped drive folder "V:\PDM-2016". When prompted for a password, enter your PC logon password.

6. NOW you can do the Vault Creation steps.

7. When you get to the "Select MS-SQL database server", the field should be populated. IF IT IS BLANK, check to see if the service SQL Server is running (use Windows Task Manager). It will probably show Stopped, so start it.

8. Similarly, if the License Server field is blank, be sure SolidNetWork is running.

9. Do the Vault View Creation steps.

To help me get up to speed with PDM Standard, I reviewed the MySolidWorks training videos for EPDM. The one on "Creating and Checking In Documents" was really helpful.

Have fun!