What’s new in SharePoint 2010 SP1
What's new in SharePoint 2010 SP1
With all the latest buzz on the release of SharePoint 2010 Service Pack1, here is what SharePoint 2010 SP1 adds:
Site Recycle Bin: With this new feature, administrators can restore site collections and/or sites that have been accidentally deleted by their owners. How often does this happen? Hopefully not too often. But when it does, having recoverable copies without getting out backups is a plus. We've had the Recycle Bin feature in SharePoint for lists, libraries, and documents for while now; this is a nice additional safety net.
Broader browser support: SharePoint 2010 SP1 adds support for IE9 in Internet Explorer 8 Standards Mode, as well as for Google Chrome.
Shallow Copy: This new feature allows you to move site collections to new content databases without having to move all the Remote Blob storage content. Thus, only the ownership information is moved, without having to copy the unstructured data in the file store. The Move-SPSite PowerShell cmdlet has been enhanced to allow this feature
StorMan.aspx (Storage Space Allocation page: StorMan.aspx has been reintroduced in SharePoint 2010 SP1. It was removed from the original version of SharePoint 2010. Now that it is back, it adds the ability to display better information to users regarding their quota information. That makes it easier for users to clean up their sites by deleting content they may not need.
Support for SQL Server "Denali" (aka SQL Server 2011) ): Given that SharePoint is heavily integrated with SQL, it stands to reason that new features in the forthcoming Denali version of SQL Server will only make SharePoint 2010 better.
Cascading filters in PerformancePoint Services: Filters values can now be passed from one filter to the next.
Event ID 3351-Login failed for user ‘NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON’
Today 01/04/2011, as part of my monthly checks, I noticed a whole bunch of 3351 errors in the event log on the SharePoint front end web server.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3
Event Category: Database
Event ID: 3351
Date: 1/4/2011
Time: 12:44:45 AM
User: N/A
Computer: MOSSSERVER
Description:
SQL database login failed. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below.
Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON'.
Resolution: First I started to check the application pool account of the portal site and found they were all set as defined. After a thorough investigation found that the Windows SharePoint Services VSS Writer account is running as local system account. Changed the account to the AD Farm Account and found that the issue is resolved.
What Drives Social Media in SharePoint?
Ask a crowd of people whether they believe social computing is important within the enterprise, and you usually see -- at best -- an even split of yes and no answers. More often than not, the majority of people answer no. As I present on the topic at various conferences and SharePoint Saturday events, most people attend my session not because they believe social computing is critical to their business, but because they want to understand why they should care.
With so many people ambivalent to social computing, why is it that one of the top technology trends is the expansion of social computing features across enterprise applications? One problem with perception is that people tend to focus on the consumer social media applications without considering the underlying application of the technologies that power them, and how those features and capabilities might improve the enterprise.
So why should you care about social media in SharePoint? Well, let’s take a look at some of the problems you may be experiencing within your environment:
- You’ve spent months migrating content into your shiny, new SharePoint environment. You’ve moved your information silos from your old, proprietary portal or file shares to SharePoint. NOW WHAT???
- You were sold on the idea of search, but you can’t find anything.
- You can’t tell who owns what.
- You can’t tell what’s new, what’s old, or what has changed.
- You realize that all of your data is now disconnected.
How do you solve these problems? The answer is managed metadata, thoughtful taxonomy, and a solid governance model. The answer is to roll out social computing tools within SharePoint to improve search and provide additional methods for surfacing data within your environment. Think of it as a software stack:
Metadata powers both structured (taxonomy) and unstructured (ad hoc) collaboration, which is then filtered by the various social media tools, which is an extension of search, which makes your team site, portal, and content relevant to end users. Across all of these pieces is your governance model, ensuring all of the moving parts are working together.
Metadata is the key to making social media work inside the enterprise. It makes social media work within SharePoint, it makes your content visible to end users, and it powers search. Metadata makes your environment useable, linkable, relevant. Metadata is the building block of social media within SharePoint.
When thinking through your own social media strategy, its important that you recognize this connection between social computing, metadata, and search. It will help you to sell your team and management chain on the powerful impact of social media in the enterprise, and, more importantly, help you realize the full potential of your SharePoint investments.
SharePoint Security Update
Microsoft announced a security advisory that affects many SharePoint deployments.
Recently Microsoft announced Security Advisory 2416728 (Vulnerability in ASP.NET) and SharePoint. The vulnerability affects the following SharePoint versions
- SharePoint 2010
- SharePoint Foundation 2010
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
- Windows SharePoint Services 2.0
Microsoft has posted an out-of-band security update that should be applied ASAP on the SharePoint web front-end servers for affected deployments. The SharePoint team blog is the best source for more information:
SharePoint Team Blog
Unable to start Windows SharePoint Services Timer Service
Windows SharePoint Services Timer Service- Unable to start the Timer Service- Showed error -Pathto the executable not found.
Well while the summer is coming to end and getting ready for the much awaited winter, today I suddenly noticed that the Notifications and alerts in SharePoint were not working.
As usual, first thing I checked was whether the SMTP service is running-(Started and running) and then I checked the outgoing and incoming email settings.Looks OK as per the defined values. Then I created an alert to check the receipt of an email about the alert created. No luck. This is clearly a problem and something is wrong with the environment. Also I ran the SP Config Wizard to check if there is any other problem in the environment.
Accounts used by application pools or service identities are in the local administrator group
Least Privilege Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010
In the last few years, enterprises have come to care about least privilege—the security concept that relates to an account being given only the permissions it requires to perform its tasks, nothing more. Least privilege is important for security, auditing, and compliance, and it applies not only to the accounts used by human beings, but also by service accounts.
And, like least privilege, enterprises have come to care about service accounts as well. I remember the days when it was perfectly acceptable to create a service account and set “password never expires.” Now, most enterprises have security policies that explicitly forbid such configuration because of the open door it leaves into a system.
During the next few weeks, I’ll be posting steps to help you deploy SharePoint with least privilege and to manage SharePoint service accounts. Let’s start by clearing up some confusion and all-too-prevalent mistakes that I see made with SQL Server, SharePoint administration, and farm accounts—and don’t be surprised that at least some of the confusion is due to the weirdness of the SharePoint setup wizard itself.
3 Accounts
Microsoft describes the administrative and service accounts required for initial deployment but skims over some important details and emphases, so let’s take a look at the three accounts this week, then we’ll return to some refiners next week.
True Errors in SharePoint (and other .NET web applications)
Uncovering True Errors in SharePoint (and other .NET web applications)
Recently this week on 08/12/2010, I came across these errors in SharePoint and was successfully able to resolve the problem.
Have you ever come across an error like this?
Or perhaps one similar to this?
Unfortunately, these types of “unexpected error” messages do not provide any level of detail as to the actual problem, but instead, only inform you, the admin, there was some type of error that prevented the expected page from coming up properly.
When this happens, there are two changes I make in the application’s web.config file, which have always helped uncover the true problem.
To show the call stack:
Change
<SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="false"
DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50"
AllowPageLevelTrace="false">
to
<SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true"
DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50"
AllowPageLevelTrace="false">
To turn custom errors off, so the error and the call stack can be shown:
Change
<customErrors mode="On" />
to
<customErrors mode="Off" />
I’ve seen others mentioning the need to change AllowPageLevelTrace="false" toAllowPageLevelTrace="true", however, I have not had to do this with SharePoint thus far.
One you’ve saved your web.config, the appdomain will be torn down and reloaded on the next incoming request (this happens automatically upon any change to the web.config, by design) and you should be ready to find out your true error
Best Practices in Developing Requirements for SharePoint Projects
This is one of my favorites blog posts from SharePoint Project Management Guru-Dux Raymond Sy.
I had the great opportunity to facilitate "Best Practices in Developing Requirements for SharePoint Projects" webcast for O'Reilly Media last July 28, 2010.
You can download the PPT presentation at: http://bit.ly/d1xbLN
Click the image below to watch the recorded presentation:
As promised, you can download the templates I showed at: http://www.meetdux.com/dl/req4sp.zip
In addition, I have compiled a list of valuable SharePoint resources related to the webcast:
- PM Resources for SharePoint 2010 Projects
- How SharePoint Can Deliver Project Transparency
- 5 Reasons Why SharePoint Ignorance is not Bliss
- Are you doing what it takes to Success at Implementing SharePoint?
- SharePoint Worst Practices: 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid
Lastly, if you want to join this session live, make sure you attend Best Practices Conference in DC from Aug 24-27, 2010
SharePoint 2010 Virtual Labs
Microsoft has published a number of Virtual Labs on MSDN and TechNet, simplifying a range of testing scenarios focused on SharePoint 2010. Customers already familiar with Microsoft’s Virtual Labs know that the resources are offered free of charge, and are available to all, not just MSDN and TechNet subscribers
“Microsoft SharePoint 2010 makes it easier for people to work together. Using SharePoint 2010, your people can set up Web sites to share information with others, manage documents from start to finish, and publish reports to help everyone make better decisions,” Microsoft revealed.
At the bottom of this article, you will be able to find a list of links pointing you to the TechNet and MSDN Virtual Labs for SharePoint Server 2010. Obviously, the TechNet Virtual Labs are focused on IT pros, while the MSDN resources are designed for developers. SharePoint Server 2010 RTM’d in mid-April 2010, along with additional products including Office 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010. As of May 12, 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 along with all the solutions enumerated above became available for purchase to business customers worldwide.
SharePoint Server 2010 Virtual Labs are essentially virtualized instances of the product running in Hyper-V on a Microsoft Server. Customers that want to access the resources will need to be running Windows and use Internet Explorer 8, IE7, or IE6. Since the virtual machines with SharePoint 2010 are running on Microsoft servers, customers don’t need to worry about details such as downloading, deploying or configuring the product. For each Virtual Lab, IT pros and devs get a 90-minute block of time per module, but they can also sign up for more
From TechNet:
TechNet Virtual Lab: Backup and Restore in SharePoint Server 2010
TechNet Virtual Lab: Business Continuity Management in SharePoint Server 2010
TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring Remote Blob Storage FILESTREAM Provider for SharePoint Server 2010
TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring Tenant Administration on SharePoint Server 2010
TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring User Profile Synchronization in SharePoint Server 2010
TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade
TechNet Virtual Lab: New IT Pro Features in SharePoint Server 2010
TechNet Virtual Lab: Windows PowerShell in SharePoint Server 2010
From MSDN:
MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a BCS External Content Type with Visual Studio 2010
MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a Visual Web Part in Visual Studio 2010
MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing SharePoint 2010 User Interface with Silverlight in Visual Studio 2010
Download SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit 1.0
A new collection of resources offered by Microsoft as a free download is designed to streamline the administration and management of SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. The Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit is essentially a package of tools, some of which were already available as standalone releases before SharePoint 2010 shipped. However, version 1.0 of the toolkit comes with functionality tailored to the latest iteration of SharePoint, the Redmond Company emphasized.
There are no less than four tools packaged in the SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit 1.0. Doron Bar-Caspi, Sr. Program Manager, SharePoint, offered a description of the toolkit’s content, which you will be able to find included below. Customers running SharePoint 2010 can now leverage Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) manifests; Load Testing Toolkit (LTK); User Profile Replication Engine 2010 (UPRE2010); and the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) connector in order to perform management tasks.
Here is Bar-Caspi’s description of the tools included in the first release of the SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit:
“• User Profile Replication Engine 2010 (UPRE2010): this tool got a complete overhaul and was converted to PowerShell. It now allows you to replicate Profile and Social data between SharePoint 2010’s User Profile Application (UPA), as well as backward compatibility with SharePoint 2007’s SSP. You can replicate between SSP’s or UPA services, as well as across versions. (Note that only Profile data can be replicated across versions, as SSP contains no Social activity tracking).
• The Security Configuration (SCW) Manifest: SCW is an attack surface reduction feature in Windows Server. This manifest adds roles for SharePoint 2010 Products to Windows Server 2008 with SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
• The Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Connector: enables SharePoint users to interact with content stored in any repository that has implemented the CMIS standard, as well as making SharePoint 2010 content available to any application that has implemented the CMIS standard.
• The Load Testing Kit (LTK): LTK generates a Visual Studio Team System 2008 (VSTS) load test based on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 IIS logs. The VSTS load test can be used to generate synthetic load against Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 as part of a capacity planning exercise or a pre-upgrade stress test.”
The SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit 1.0 is available for download here
Plan SharePoint Server disaster recovery (DR Plan)
When creating a disaster recovery (DR) plan, you need to determine what you are trying to recover from. In other words, think of your disaster recovery plan as "taking out insurance" for your SharePoint environment. There are various levels of protection you might wish to set in place. You may be using a DR plan to create a replica of your portal to recover specific content, or you may wish to develop a plan to create a new environment from scratch (in the event of an actual disaster) that will quickly and effectively replicate the current environment.
For example, on one end of the spectrum, you could make things easy on your operational team and back up your data once every six months or so, but then you run the risk of losing a lot of data if something were to happen (a hard drive crashes, you lose power, and so on). On the other end of the spectrum, you can do a full backup of everything daily to ensure that you always have the latest of everything—but does that make sense for your environment?
To properly capture these types of decisions, we recommend creating a DR operations document.
The following is a framework for a SharePoint disaster recovery document. It is important to note that a DR plan is only effective if it is both complete and accurate.
An effective SharePoint DR plan should contain full documentation on how to recreate an entire SharePoint environment from scratch. This requires a process (and discipline) that is accurate and well-maintained. Every time a SharePoint element (for example, a Web part, xml file, and so on) is altered or added, the "disaster recovery inventory document" must be updated.
Sharepoint Administrative Tasks
I have been asked many a times what is the role of Sharepoint Administrator. In my opinion the Sharepoint Administrator primary job would be to monitor and check the Sharepoint Servers and Sharepoint Access, Build up the Physical Architecture, Logical Architecture and creation of SIte Collections and Sites and Management of Content Databases as per the best practices suggested by Microsoft.
- Some of the Routine SharePoint administrative tasks would be:
- Daily checks to test and monitor the SharePoint Status, health, and the Performance (SharePoint sites Response time, status of host server, SharePoint Server and the IIS Server)
- Daily check of Front-end and Back-end backups for business continuity.(Check the last date of your backups)
- Daily Check of the profile import.
- Daily check of the Search and Indexing features.
- Daily check and installation of Security Updates.
- Daily check the SharePoint Site Access
- Daily Monitoring and Reporting of SharePoint Sites.
- Daily Monitor and analyze SharePoint usage and activity.
- Daily Monitor and analyze SharePoint content and storage.
- Daily Monitor SharePoint Trends and Governance Violations.
- Daily monitor event logs for any errors or warnings. Make sure the number of warnings and errors were minimum and health check of the Sharepoint environment.
10 Tips to improve SharePoint Performance
Microsoft SharePoint as of today mostly used as a Document repository, used to store reams of documents, meaning application performance is a key component for successful SharePoint deployment and adoption. Here are 10 tips to improve the performance of your SharePoint servers.
There are definitely a number of items that limit the scalability and performance of SharePoint deployments. Whether it's the WAN that sits between the user and the web front end (WFE), the network between the WFE and the SQL server, or the storage configuration of the SQL server itself (number and size of content databases), and so on, it seems there are a long list of items that could possibly be a barrier to broader deployment. To make matters worse, the cost of storage is insane when factoring in the growth plans most organizations see for the next three to five years of this soon-to-be highly pervasive application.
Step 1: Separate user and database traffic
A common misconception is that servers connected to a high-speed network segment will have plenty of bandwidth to perform all required operations. But SharePoint places a tremendous amount of demand on SQL -- each request for a page can result in numerous calls to the database, not to mention service jobs, search indexing and other operations.
In order to mitigate the conflict between user and database traffic, connectivity between front-end servers and SQL should be isolated, either via separate physical networks or virtual LANs. Typically this requires at least two separate network interface cards in each front-end Web server with static routes configured to ensure traffic is routed to the correct interface. The same configuration may also be applied to application and index server.
SharePoint 2010 Demo Virtual Machine
The SharePoint 2010 virtual machine image is now available for customers and partners to download here:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9728417
This virtual machine image also include some demo content!
There are also handy bundled Akamai links for speedy global delivery and pausable/resumable downloads.
Some of the other Sharepoint 2010 RTM-downloads you may be interested with:
- Getting started with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
- 2010 Information Worker Demonstration Virtual Machine (Beta)
- Getting started with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010
- SharePoint Server 2010 performance and capacity test results and recommendations
- Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Evaluation Guide
Award Winning SharePoint Administration Tool-Control Point New Release
Many a times people keep asking what were the responsibilities of a SharePoint Administrator.
Some of the important jobs performed by any Share Point Administrator would be
- Manage SharePoint Permissions
- Analyze SharePoint Usage and Activity
- Move / Copy Sites
- Clean Up, Manage and Configure SharePoint accounts and sites
- Analyze SharePoint content and storage
- Monitor SharePoint trends
- Set up alerts and Enforce policies
- Audit your SharePoint environment
- Identify governance violations
- And More!!!!