Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

SharePoint Daily for January 8, 2009

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re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

Carlos Fernandez — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:22:29 GMT

stefan thanks for providing this knowledge. But only using incremental deplyment is not realistic. There are numerous issues that occur with an incremental deployment that can only be fixed with a full deployment. Couldnt this problem be avoided by preceeding a full deployment right before a full deployment. That way one can avoid the synching issue.

re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

Stefan_Gossner — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:42:27 GMT

Hi Carlos,

I assume you mean an incremental right before a full, right?

The issue is: if incremental succeeded you have all the content in the db and a full will not change anything.

In case that incremental failed you will have exactly the situation listed above which needs to be avoided.

In addition: it would only "work" in case that no updates have happend between incremental and full deployment.

But as outlined before: if incremental succeeded and no updates have happend - why shoudl you do another full deployment as the content is already update to date?

So if you have a problem with incremental you should fix this issue rather than doing a full deployment to hide the issue.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

Carlos Fernandez — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:09:39 GMT

Hey Stefan,

Sorry, yes I did mean an incremental before a full. And your right the scenario I posed still causes the problem you described above.

So are you suggesting that if an incremental deployment fails, and cant be resolved, that the best course of action should be to clear the site collection (deleting the db) and perform another full deployment?

re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

Stefan_Gossner — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:24:33 GMT

Hi Carlos,

before using the full again you should try to analyze why the incremental failed. If it (e.g.) failed on export it could be a concurrancy issue (e.g. an authoring action interacting with export). Here you should just try the incremental again. Usually it succeeds now.

If it is on import you could try a retry as well although the chances that it works now is smaller.

Only if you cannot resolve the issue and don't have the time to open a support case with Microsoft to analyze why the incremental fails you would have to go the step with a new empty target site collection and the downtime that means to your system.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

Darren — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:53:42 GMT

I think the best solution is to try to avoid using content deployment altogether. Avoid having an "authoring" server.

We have been struggling with our site for almost a year now, and CD is still extremely broken. Incremental deployments fail at least once a day, and occasionally (approx once a month) fail so consistently that we are left with no option but to do a full deployment to get the content across. This, of course, can cause even more problems down the track. The end result? As Stefan mentioned, you occasionally have to blow away the entire site collection and do a full deployment into that. Not a great option for an Internet site like ours...

We won't be using MOSS content deployment on our next Internet site. It's just not worth the trouble.

re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

John — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:26:38 GMT

Hi Stefan,

I understand your original post very well; it's something that should be stamped on the MOSS box, out of which all the OOTB CD functionality arises. But even after several readings there's still 1 point that seems clearly inconsistent:

"To ensure that the target and the source site collection are in sync it is mandatory to use full deployment only once...etc" and thereafter only use incremental deployment.

Yet:

"that also means: whenever you see a need to do a full deployment you should do this full deployment into an empty site collection ...etc".

Why would subssequent full deployment be 'needed' at all?

More to the point: Why does OOTB CD at all allow full content deployment into a non-empty site collection to create the error in the first place?

re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

Stefan_Gossner — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:00:15 GMT

Hi John,

you are right: it should not be necessary.

But due to the complexity of content deployment it can happen that an incremental deployment fails while a full deployment works.

Some customers use this to resolve such issues.

Why the implemented method allows to do this and does not restrict this is more a philosophical question...

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

John — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:08:29 GMT

Hi again Stefan,

Many thanks for the reply above. These posts here, and not least your consolidated CD best practice, are invaluable.

I have a follow-up on the above regarding incremental deployment at the site collection level:

Would an incremental CD at the root site collection level include the addition of a new site (and its contents) to the site collection?

To me the answer would have been a foregone conclusion: 'yes'. But perhaps not it seems.

many thanks

re: Common Problem with Content Deployment: mixing incremental and full deployment

Stefan_Gossner — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:56:10 GMT

Hi John,

if you did not explicitly restrict the sites that get deployed then it will deploy all the new subsites as well.

Cheers,

Stefan