Tag: SP2010
SharePoint 2010: (pilot , poc) Sites, webs, contentdb’s, what you should(n’t) do
by mysticslayer on Oct.28, 2011, under SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Foundation
Before I begin my blog I will thank everyone who thought this allready over and made it available thru all types of conferences worldwide.
First of all, this is my own comment about how to do work around with Sites, Webs, content database, etc. This is my own opinion based on what I’ve learned the last years and my based on my own experience combined with the experience from others.
So, let’s start with an example which causes me to write this blog:
A mid-size company started of with a simple pilot of SharePoint 2010. This pilot was to discover how SharePoint works, and does it fit within the organization. We agreed before we started to start all over again when the company decided to go further with SharePoint. Well after an half year the company decided to go further with SharePoint, but yet the pilot environment was allready promoted to production before we could started all over again.
Allright I thought, when everything is ok, and we don’t have any issues regarding the environment we can do that, because the physical as the logical architecture was future proof designed. Multiple Content Databases, multiple site collections, etc. The only thing we had to was give some servers more memory. That’s all.
I had installed, configured and designed the infrastructure, so I knew that kind of issues can happen, when a pilot environment will be promoted as a production environment. I wasn’t committed when others had the intranet designed with sites,templates, etc for the Pilot. But well, I’ve made some critical decisions in the infrastructure, but maybe I forget to mention it correctly. My bad.
In februari I was asked to go further with the environment, and we attached Reporting Services, Datawarehousing, etc. No issues there.
But now, when the point arrives we grow larger and larger, and when I checked the databases it was all good, because all databases where used. But then I saw one big problem. Yes, they didn’t use the Site Collections I’ve made in the start, but created just sub SPWebs. Ouch, yes here we go.
So, now we have to migrate 25 GB of subwebs to one of the Site Collections I created at the start. Well. it takes days to do it well, everything you have done in the early stages are allready critical in the organization, so you can’t make mistakes. Everything has to work as before when your migrated. Well convert to SPSite is one hell of task to do.
I think I’ve tested the migration over and over again. Used the information given by Gary Lapointe, and went further with it. Came up with more then 257 errors. Well okay, that isn’t much, but it doesn’t tell the errors you’ll get functional. Yes functional!!
Every site, list, workflow, CQWP has to be tested. And I mean, really tested if it works as before. I can tell you, I have to replace every CQWP, some lists are getting corrupted, content types are missing, list pages are gone, pages are not behaving as they should.
So before you decide to start of with a pilot think as a production site, because it will help you a lot and other a lot. SharePoint 2010 is scalable, ensure that your sites are scalable as well. Think scalable act scalable.
Do’s
Don’ts
Restore Site SharePoint 2010 issues with site collection owners
by mysticslayer on Sep.27, 2011, under SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Foundation
We’ve had some multiple issues regarding the Site Collection owners, and we had to fix these in a fashioned time. After restoring we had the issue that we couldn’t change the primary and secondary site collection Administrators. So it was difficult where the bug was for us. But it wasn’t a bug.
After a new fresh install of the SP farm we still had these problems… so we had to search it out. After a long search it seemed that the UserAccountDirectoryPath was the issue. When the User Account Directory Path is filled in the table [dbo].[AllSites] of your content database you can do what you want, but you can’t change the owners.
So we had to remove the UserAccountDirectoryPath: Set-SPSite -Identity “http://site” -UserAccountDirectoryPath “”
And voìla it was fixed. With two Quotes it removes the UserAccountDirectoryPath. You have to this allways if you’re restoring your Site Collection to another farm.
Restoring SharePoint databases with other schema (SharePoint 2010)
by mysticslayer on Aug.17, 2011, under SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Foundation
I just started out today to restore some Content Databases to test out my new created features on my development environment, to check if everything works as planned. But yet, I’ve figured out that I had some issues creating and deleting sites.
So I checked the ULS logs and nothing to see, I checked event viewer and also there no errors containing the message which I had: “Supported method not found” or something in that other.
Well I remember when I installed Service Pack 1 of SharePoint Server 2010 and tried to remove a site I had the same message. This was related to some bug or something. So I installed June CU Refresh and that worked perfectly. Well in this case I had both installed, so that shouldn’t be the problem.
So I checked the status of my Content Databases and what I noticed was that the schema version of the database wasn’t the same version as June CU Refresh. And the message was that I could update. Also the strange notice is that my Content Databases aren’t updated when you restore a database and attach it to SharePoint.
So what I did was run with powershell the following script:
$contentdb = Get-SPContentDatabase | Where-Object {$_.Name -match "WSS_ContentDB" }
Upgrade-SPContentDatabase -Identity $contentdb
Voila, content database is getting updated.
SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 is released (SharePoint info)
by mysticslayer on Jul.30, 2011, under maintenance, Reporting Services, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Foundation, sql server, Update
So after some time Microsoft just released there first Service Pack for SQL Server 2008 R2. This package contains alot of improvements regarding to performances for Analysis Services.
You can download SP1 here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20302
Also when you’ve running SharePoint Server 2010 with Reporting Services integrated you should update your Reporting Services to the latest Service Pack. Also an important notice to this, you should also download the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Feature Pack to accomplish some other improvements.
You can download SP1 Feature Packs here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26728
When you’ve downloaded the Feature Packs you should also install the following components to all SharePoint Servers:
- rsSharePoint.msi
- sqlncli.msi
- SQLSERVER2008_ASADOMD10.msi
The first one is the SQL Server 2008 r2 Reporting Services Add-In for SharePoint Server 2010
The second is the SQL Server Client 2008 which you also have to install when you install the prerequisites for SharePoint Server 2010.
The third is also a component which is used in the prerequisite for SharePoint Server 2010.
There was an error in the callback content and structure
by mysticslayer on Jun.16, 2011, under iis, Internet Information Services, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Foundation
I ran today in this message in the SiteManager.aspx of SharePoint Server 2010: there was an error in the callback content and structure
So allright, I checked the search engines and did find some answers regarding this problem, but you know what. When restart your IIS server on your Web Front End the message doesn’t go away. Hmm odd, how could that be, well I figured out that it does a call back to another server, in my case it was one of the other SharePoint Servers in the farm. After resetting this server it removes the message and everything works fine again.
Powershell: Update all Document Libraries with MajorVersionLimit and MajorWithMinorVersionsLimit
by mysticslayer on Jun.15, 2011, under blog, Powershell, SharePoint 2010
I had to write a Powershell script to run thru all sites in a Web Application to enable Versioning. As well Major as Minor versions. With of course a limit on Major and Minor versions.
Next script should do the trick:
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -erroraction SilentlyContinue
$siteURL = $args[0]
$site = Get-SPSite($siteURL)foreach($web in $site.AllWebs) {
Write-Host "Inspecting " $web.Title
foreach ($list in $web.Lists) {
if($list.BaseType -eq "DocumentLibrary") {
Write-Host "Versioning enabled: " $list.EnableVersioning
$host.UI.WriteLine()
Write-Host "MinorVersioning Enabled: " $list.EnableMinorVersions
$host.UI.WriteLine()
Write-Host "EnableModeration: " $list.EnableModeration
$host.UI.WriteLine()
Write-Host "Major Versions: " $list.MajorVersionLimit
$host.UI.WriteLine()
Write-Host "Minor Versions: " $list.MajorWithMinorVersionsLimit
$host.UI.WriteLine()
$list.EnableVersioning = $true
$list.EnableMinorVersions = $true
$list.MajorVersionLimit = 2
$list.MajorWithMinorVersionsLimit = 5
$list.Update()
Write-Host $list.Title " is updated with MajorVersionLimit 2 and MajorwithMinorVersionsLimit = 5"
}
}
}
SharePoint Timer Job deploying on Farm with wrong SPServer
by mysticslayer on Mar.24, 2011, under SharePoint 2010
It started all out with Reporting Services not running Workflows when Integrated, but yet I had still to do some workflow activities. So I thought of using a simple Timer Job that runs every hour or so to check if data has been changed. Well it worked out very well, but when deployed on a farm with multiple servers in it, I get a problem. It started to send e-mails… and not just one every time in the hour, but every content database it ran thru. (After I figured it out on the web by Robin of Sevenseas. Link
So I thought well allright, I should be using the SPJobLockType.Job with a Server specified. Well I did so. And as I did but with the wrong server name. Well it couldn’t be worse, it deployed the Timer Job successfully, and I started to debug. Didn’t notice the wrong server name though, but I set the server name into Title of the Timer Job, to check if the server is specified. Easy trick, easy done.
But what I see is that it added a totally wrong server name. Yes a server name not from the farm, it wasn’t even there in the domain. But still no error messages, and the timer job still runs like a charm. Yes you can fool the OWSTimer with wrong SPServer specified… because it doesn’t validate it.
SharePoint 2010 workflow problems BI Center.
by mysticslayer on Mar.09, 2011, under Reporting Services, SharePoint 2010, Visual Studio 2010
I’m working for a cliënt two days in a week, and he added a simple Subscription that creates a mhtml file into a document library. On that library is running a List Workflow that detect if there are any changes or new items added. If so, it should send emails to the stakeholders.
Well everything seems to be ok, and creating that kind of workflow with SPD shouldn’t be a problem, right? Well it’s going to be totally wrong.
When starting the workflow manual it’s fine, when adding a document by hand it’s also fine, but the problem starts when we’re adding mhtml files by subscription. So I thought that it had to do with the permissions. Well it weren’t exactly the permissions.
Here is an example of a manual added workflow by SPD. And what I am getting when subscription had run.
So I checked the ULS logs to find out which problems I’m having.
So I thought, well maybe I can run it with code. Just added some simple by using WorkFlowActivited and SPUtility. Well that didn’t do the trick. I’ve got even more errors. I even couldn’t debug my workflow.
And as you can see, it’s all run by ReportingServicesService.exe instead of SharePoint 2010. So we’re running in an NotYetSupportedException from Reporting Services instead of SharePoint 2010. Well there is some work to do for Microsoft.
Service principal names, kerberos, IIS 7.0 and error 401: The requested resource requires user authentication
by mysticslayer on Aug.07, 2010, under Internet Information Services, SharePoint 2010, Software, Windows Server 2008
The last couple of days I was working at a customer where Kerberos was needed for SharePoint 2010. Of course I started to set the different Service Principal Names for my App Pool accounts, farm accounts, machines, etc. Not to hard to do it, but I ran everytime in a 401 error: The requsted resources requires user authentication.
Strange I thought, but yet I sended the Domain Administrator more commando’s and it didn’t help. So I checked everything, checked for duplicates, etc. Still I ran into these errors.
After some search I found out that there are some problems with IIS 7.0 regarding Kerberos, and I needed to configure the applicationHost.config to solve these issues with Kerberos. enabled the kernel activation mode, etc. But, it didn’t make any difference, rebooted several times, removed the Kernel Activation Mode and removed again the changed on the applicationHost.config.
I knew that we’ve made C-Name records and it gave me a wonderfull idea to change the C-Name records to A records. These changes where applied, and wow, in less time as expected I opened IE and opened the different web apps. In less then a second the page was displayed from my web app. When you run in these problems, change your C-Name record to A-record and it will fix all your problems with SPN’s, Kerberos and IIS 7.0
MOSS 2007 / MSS 2010 virtualization problems.
by mysticslayer on Jan.20, 2010, under Virtualization
In the last couple of years I installed alot of different farms for SPS2003, MOSS 2007 and yet I started with the installation of MSS 2010.
Most organizations started using Virtualization software like VMWare ESX of other virtualization software. As far as I know I had to most problems with MOSS 2007 on virtual boxes. The most problems where database servers or badly configured boxes.
When you’re using SQL Server or other database server you’ll will see that when they are bad configured your farm is performing very very bad. Why?
One of the biggest reasons is that when you’re running a database direct on a Virtual Hard Drive it will not perform as well. Why? Mostly the vhd’s are using the same LUN on a SAN or physical disk. The best option here is to use pass-through disk to a LUN on a SAN.
Second when you’re running a DB server on a Virtual Box and you allocate shared memory and shared CPU’s it will also cost performance. This is also for MOSS or SP2010. You should use one-on-one CPU. So if you need 4 virtual CPU’s you’ll also need 4 cores and not sockets. For another example check your NUMA(Non Uniform Memory Access).
If you have a virtualbox with 8 cores and 32 GB of memory then your NUMA is 4 GB. So you can maximum allocate 4 GB of memory to a virtual server. If you allocate more memory it can cost your performance.
If your using VLAN’s and you have multiple Virtual Switches ensure that your MOSS or SP2010 environment is using the same Virtual Switch. If the latency is higher then 1ms your performance will drop. MOSS and SP2010 will only have a good performance with a very low latency.
Also if you’re running an AD server and this server is also running poorly your SharePoint environment will also perform poorly. SharePoint authenticates alot.
Most hardware performance issues are written above. Look at it when you’re making SharePoint environment virtualized. 80% of the problems are the DB server of the Indexing Server of your SharePoint environment.
