Content Deployment - Best Practices

Article on Content Deployment "Best Practices"

Stefan Goßner — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:04:56 GMT

In the past I have released several blogs about the various problems that can occur with Content Deployment.

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Eric Golpe — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:05:13 GMT

Thanks! This is timely and important info for all who ar einvolved with WCM in SharePoint!

Great post on Content Deployment in SharePoint

Phil Wheat — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:36:20 GMT

One of the more mis-understood features in SharePoint is the Content Deployment functionality that was

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Francesco — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:35:32 GMT

Hi Stefan,

great post!

Just one question concerning problem 3:

if I modify BlueBand.master (the one provisioned with the out of the box site definition) to fit my needs and then I make a full deploy to an empty site, what happens? Will I have my modified BlueBand.master or the original one?

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:56:25 GMT

Hi Francesco,

I haven't tested this. The reason is that modifying the items coming with the site definition is highly discouraged. You should instead create a copy of the item and then modify the copy. In general it can cause problems with content deployment when items coming from the site definiton are modified.

Cheers,

Stefan

My "Content Deployment - Best Practices" article has been updated

Stefan Goßner — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:35:32 GMT

Today I have updated my Content Deployment - Best Practices article with additional common problems.

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Serv� Hermans — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:04:00 GMT

Stefan, thanx for this great compilation.

I have two things to add that may be worth mentioning. First of all people tend to forget to change the output location of the content deployment files. By default that is c:\windows\temp\contentdeployment. But if for some reason that fails, the content deployment files will appear under %tmp% which is often %userprofile%\local%20settings\temp\contentdeployment. If that is the case either change the content deployment output path through central admin or change the environment path variable of the export and import servers.

Second thing is that although you should precreate the web application and create the site collection through STSADM withouth applying the template, people forget to deploy solutions to the web application. Just a minor thing.

The third thing is about the message that 'Web part or Web From Control type could not be found, or is not registered as safe. The web part will still be exported'. In that case check if you have a content by query webpart which has an empty List reference. You can check that by exporting the web part properties and check the list property of the DWP file.

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:15:51 GMT

Hi Serve,

with content deployment both locations are used: the extracted files end up in the %tmp% directory. the compressed packages end up in windows\temp. So you always have both locations.

Regarding solution deployment: usually you should not do this before the deployment is done. Reason: solutions usually activate features on the site collection which can cause conflicts.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Brent — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:15:41 GMT

Hi Stefan,

Could you explain more about your last comment, "Regarding solution deployment: usually you should not do this before the deployment is done. Reason: solutions usually activate features on the site collection which can cause conflicts."

I understand the reason, but are you saying that deploying solutions should be done after content deployment? I thought the needed to be done before...what if they contain a feature that isn't installed yet, won't this cause content deployment to fail or am I missing something here?

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:04:18 GMT

Hi Brent,

the solution needs to be available on the target server - and modules have to be in the GAC and feature definitions need to be available in the features folder.

But you are not allowed to deploy the solution to the target site if this deployment activates the features on the target or adds items to the target.

In some cases it might be required to split the solution into two parts: the actual installaton the server and the feature activation part.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Helmut Schmidt — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:52:24 GMT

Hello Stefan,

concerning the problem case 12 A:

Would there be a downside to just choose "Never delete the changelog"?

Would the logs grow uncontrollably? If yes: Are there ways to access/delete them manually aor automatically delete the oldest?

I'm at a position right now, where content deployments happen *very* sporadically. Ususally there are some weeks inbetween, but it can also be months.

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

John — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:36:33 GMT

Hi Stefan,

RE: Problem 13: Timeouts during content deployment.

I am getting the timeout and when doing a Check Status, see that the job has failed.

Drilling into this shows the following.

"The connection to the destination server was lost after the remote import job was started. The import job might still succeed. Content deployment will continue to attempt to reestablish a connection with the destination server."

Nothing is being deployed to the target server.

Does the error description refer to another "timeout" issue unrelated to the polling for the report? The job appears to be "running" for about 10 min 30 sec but the following suggests otherwise.

Objects Exported 1387

Objects Imported 0

Content Size (in MB) 7.86

Deployment Time 00:00:25

Start Time 2/23/2009 5:14 PM

End Time 2/23/2009 5:15 PM

Any help would be appreciated.

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:31:50 GMT

Hi John,

this comment is for the timeout you resolved with "check status".

Usually when you look at the report afterwards you should see the real problem here - if it can be determined.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:59:09 GMT

Hi Helmut,

they would grow uncontrollably. You cannot delete manually or delete the oldest.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

John — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:30:27 GMT

Hi Stefan, further to my timeout enquiry above, here are 2 Application errors from the Event Viewer on the Source Server.

The content deployment job 'XXXXX' lost its connection with the destination server after the remote import job was started. The import job might still succeed. Content deployment will continue to attempt to reestablish a connection with the destination server.

Failed to transfer files to destination server for Content Deployment job 'XXXXX'. Exception was: '(null)'

Any ideas?

Thanks

john

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:14:12 GMT

Hi John,

please see the "RemoteTimeout" section in the above referenced "Pimp my content deployment job" article.

Cheers,

Stefan

Content Deployment - Best Practices

Content Management Techniques [Shady Khorshed - MVP] — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:27:50 GMT

Stefan Gobner “Escalation Engineer for SharePoint (WSS, SPS, MOSS) and MCM” updated his important article...

Content Deployment Best practices in SharePoint

Moustafa Arafa Blog — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:47:53 GMT

Hi all, Excellent post for content deployment in sharepoint best practices by Stefan Gobner - Escalation

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

John — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:22:57 GMT

Hi Stefan,

I checked out your reference to remore timout but that is not related from what I can see as it just controls wether or not the status appears as timed out when it actually has failed.

I did eventually reboot both the source and destination servers and with no other changes the problem has resolved itself and now everything works...it remains a mystery.

Thanks for a great resource btw.

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:11:23 GMT

Hi John,

that is not correct. It controls how long it waits for a status update. Usually the import has not failed when the "timed out" status shows up.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

nirmal — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:09:56 GMT

hi stefan , for us - problem 10 ( deadlock issue ) happend when using content deployment as well.

what i've observed is it always happens when some content deployment job fails and we try to execute another one or with in a short span of time. im debugging to get more details on that that now.

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Kai — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:20:43 GMT

Hi Stephan,

I am attempting to deploy content from a large (7 GB) site collection (with many sub-webs) using the Content Deployment configs thru Central Admin. I have been having problems with incremental deployments, so am trying a few variations.

I have a question that I think is related to Problems 5 & 6 you have outlined.

I tried last night to deploy just the root web to an empty site collection and received a new error. I have not done a full deployment of the entire site collection yet. I just tried to deploy the "/" site but not the child webs. The error I received is that an SPFolder object could not be imported because it's parent web does not exist. The parent web listed in the manifest.xml is a subsite (/sites/cities/london). This SPFolder appears to be either a document library using a content type we created, or the content type itself (content type was created thru the admin web page, not thru a feature). The content type was created at the top site. I'm confused by the reference to the subweb.

I think I have two questions: Am I allowed to break up my deployment in to multiple jobs so that I deploy just the root web first, then create separate jobs to deploy the child webs? and... Is there a way to change the parent of this SPFolder object in the source site collection so that the parent is actually in the root web?

Thank you!!

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:50:08 GMT

Hi Kai,

in general that is allowed. I assume that you here have a dependency between the root web and the sub web. E.g. your rootweb references an item in a library in the subweb.

Then it will not work as always all dependent items are exported as well. But if the web this items is in does not exist because you did not export it the import will fail.

So ensure that you set the granularity in a way that you always pick all dependent objects as well.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Terri — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:06:12 GMT

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for the post!

I am hoping you might be able to help us. We seem to be having problems with features being activated on our destination servers when running incremental deployment. Just recently we activated the Reporting OOB feature on the source farm and assumed it would be activated on the destination farms during the next incremental deployment. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Are you aware of a limitation with features and incremental deployments -- do features only get activated on the destination servers during full deployments? Or do you know of an issue specific to the Reporting feature and content deployment?

Thanks and take care,

Terri

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:52:16 GMT

Hi Terri,

site collection and site scope features should automatically be activated. Server and farm scoped feature will not be activated.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

John — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:49:18 GMT

Hi Stefan,

Are any advice on the following?

We have a scheduled incremental CD job that runs once/day at off-peak hours.

- The last scheduled run aborted with Status of this run: failed and 2 error messages.

- The export completed succesfully with a package containing 56259 objects and content size of 65.04 MB.

- Import failed reporting nothing but the following 2 error messages:

4/1/2009 3:13 AM

Value does not fall within the expected range. at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.GetWebRelativeUrlFromUrl(String strUrl, Boolean includeQueryString, Boolean canonicalizeUrl) at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.GetWebRelativeUrlFromUrl(String strUrl) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportObjectManager.FixLinkInFile(String fileUrl, Guid webId, String oldTargetUrl, String newTargetUrl) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportObjectManager.FixBrokenLinks() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.DeserializeObjects() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.Run()

4/1/2009 3:13 AM

Content deployment job 'Remote import job for job with sourceID = 'guid' failed.The exception thrown was 'System.ArgumentException' : 'Value does not fall within the expected range.'

Would appreciate it if you have any ideas as to what goes wrong here,

thanks and regards,

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:57:54 GMT

Hi John,

that needs to be investigated in more details.

please open a support case for this.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Kyle — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:30:39 GMT

Hi Stefan,

We cannot get incremental deployments to run between our "authoring" and production web application, (these applications are on the same domain in the same farm, same SSP) if we choose to not deploy user names. We are not deploying security information. If we choose to deploy user names, the job fails with a Save Conflict - Your changes conflict with those made concurrently by another user.

My question is can we deploy user names and not deploy security information? I am getting conflicting information about these settings. Can't we just deploy both usernames and security and set the target (production) application as read only?

Thanks for your time.

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:46:01 GMT

Hi Kyle,

you should raise a support case to get this analyzed.

Cheers,

Stefan

Technet article on how to troubleshoot Content Deployment has been released

Stefan Goßner — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:47:58 GMT

Many of you might know the Content Deployment - Best Practices article I have written a while ago. Together

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Riza — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:33:48 GMT

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for your article.

Concerning problem 14.

There is a case, there two individual sites in the different

web app and both sites have site columns named xyz with same

data types and they want to copy one site

to under the another one. It will fail because duplicate column names,

these columns are created by SharePoint UI, I know if columns

should be created by feature if it is used in multiple sites

but I have a client situation,

I have two questions;

1) I create new site column from content type settings page,

it creates column also it references column to content type

then if I use this content type in my list in both sites import

does not fail when I copy site1 to under site2 because each site

column is referenced by different content types but if create site

column if I create site columns from site settings> site columns page

then if I go to content type then add this column,

import fails. Why?

2)If I create site columns from site settings> site

columns page then If add this column directly to list, it creates

list column and when I delete the site column in order to successful

copy operation will not cause any problem for the list to edit or

insert items but if content type used in the list(site columns created

by ui then manually referenced to content type), in order to delete

custom site column I need to remove from content type. When I remove

from content type and delete from site, after import operation I am not able to

edit or insert deleted custom site column in the list.My list is completly useless.

What is the work around on this issue?

Thanks and Best Regards

(wss 3.0 with service pack 2)

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:29:55 GMT

Hi Riza,

sorry I haven't looked into this. Please open a support case with Microsoft to get this analyzed in more detail.

Cheers,

Stefan

MOSS Content Deployment MUST READ

Raúl Ribeiro — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:17:43 GMT

Hi, If you use or want to you content deployment, in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you should

New and updated content deployment topics address customer pain points

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Escalation Engineer Stefan Goßner posted Content Deployment - Best Practices on his blog. We have now

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re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Gavin Pollock — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:19:15 GMT

Hi Stefan,

Your posts have helped me huge amounts in the past with content deployment jobs, but I have hit something that I can't find any reference to anywhere.

A content import job is failing with the following error message. Any pointers would be most appreciated!

Cheers

Gavin

You cannot delete a hidden column. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.RemoveField(String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, String bstrFieldName) at Microsoft.SharePointSPFieldCollection.Delete(String strName) at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPField.Delete() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ListSerializer.CreateOrUpdateField(SPList list, String fieldName, XmlNode fieldNode) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ListSerializer.UpdateListFields(SPList list, Dictionary`2 listMetaData) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ListSerializer.SetObjectData(Object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context, ISurrogateSelector selector) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.ParseObject(Type objectType, Boolean isChildObject) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.DeserializeObject(Type objectType, Boolean isChildObject, DeploymentObject envelope) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ObjectSerializer.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportObjectManager.ProcessObject(XmlReader xmlReader) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.DeserializeObjects() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.Run()

Content deployment job 'Remote import job for job with sourceID = ae8ad253-69df-4629-bae6-941645045228' failed.The exception thrown was 'Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException' : 'You cannot delete a hidden column.'

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:24:18 GMT

Hi Gavin,

it seems the schema for the list has changed in an unexpected way. The object model of SharePoint does not allow to delete a hidden field.

It seems that someone has unhidden the field on the source system and then deleted it.

Incremental deployment has catched the fact that the column has been deleted and is now trying to deploy the delete action to the target. As this is a delete action it does not deploy the previously changed state that the field is no longer hidden.

That sounds as if the issue is by design. If this is a frequent issue for you I would suggest to open a support case with Microsoft to request a design change request.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Gavin Pollock — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:17:27 GMT

Thanks Stefan,

I will debug the export cabs to figure out exactly which list this is and see if I can see what is happening.

The only strange aspect of it is that we are doing an export to a blank site collection! So there is no existing list to update, it must be part of the package that some dependency is applying a modification to a list that has already been imported as part of the same package!?

Cheers

Gavin

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Simon — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:30:55 GMT

Hi Stefan,

Just recently our content deployment, within the production environment, from our source server(within our domain) to our WFE farm(in the DMZ) started to throw an error about the change token.

Deployments had been running daily so I don't see how they could have got out of sync.

Thanks,

Simon

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:52:41 GMT

Hi Gavin,

then it is a list that is part of the site definition. These lists are created during the provisioning of the site during import.

If later the list is imported you will get the same result.

As outlined above: don't change items that are part of the site definition.

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:25:34 GMT

Hi Simon,

did someone restore the source DB from an older state or used STSADM -o mergecontentdatabase?

Or has the last update on source happend long ago?

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Simon — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:36:57 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply.

The site has been live for 2 months with content deployment running every hour.

There is no access to the WFE servers by the content editors and the initial deployment was done to a blank site some 4 months ago.

Simon

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:32:43 GMT

Hi Simon,

has the SOURCE farm been updated regulary between the initial deployment and the time when the problem has occurred?

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Simon — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:40:12 GMT

Hi Stefan,

The source farm, there is only one server there, has people currently content editing for our internet facing publishing site.

Both the server(source) and destination(destination x2 server NLB'd) are of the same version with no WSS/MOSS updates applied since SP1 and December 08 Infrastructure Update. As regards Windows updates as far as I know there have been no updates applied to either source or destination but I'll have to check on that as I have to request access to the production servers file systems.

Simon

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Joel — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:25:57 GMT

Hi Stefan the great whole help that could provide me, I am new en the use of Sharepoint, nowadays has presented the situation to content distribute of the server development to production server, for valitdation and later use, after following the steps of guide content distibution of microsoft, i do not take idea of as that marks the following mistake.

Hi Stefan, de antemano le agradezo toda la ayuda que me pueda

proporcionar, soy nuevo en el uso de sharepoint, y actualmente se me ha

presentado la situación de distribuir el contenido del servidor de desarrollo

al servidor de producción para su validación y posterior uso, buscando en la

red encontre la guia para la distribución de sitios de Microsoft.

Despues de seguir los pasos como ahi se indica aun asi me marco el siguiente

error, la verdad no tengo idea de que pueda ser, agradeceria mucho que me

ayudara; un saludo y gracias.

Error

No se pudieron comparar dos elementos en la matriz. en

System.Collections.Generic.ArraySortHelper`1.SwapIfGreaterWithItems[TValue](T[]

keys, TValue[] values, IComparer`1 comparer, Int32 a, Int32 b) en

System.Collections.Generic.ArraySortHelper`1.QuickSort[TValue](T[] keys,

TValue[] values, Int32 left, Int32 right, IComparer`1 comparer) en

System.Collections.Generic.ArraySortHelper`1.QuickSort[TValue](T[] keys,

TValue[] values, Int32 left, Int32 right, IComparer`1 comparer) en

System.Collections.Generic.ArraySortHelper`1.Sort[TValue](T[] keys, TValue[]

values, Int32 index, Int32 length, IComparer`1 comparer) en

System.Collections.Generic.ArraySortHelper`1.Sort(T[] items, Int32 index,

Int32 length, IComparer`1 comparer) en System.Array.Sort[T](T[] array, Int32

index, Int32 length, IComparer`1 comparer) en

System.Collections.Generic.List`1.Sort(Int32 index, Int32 count, IComparer`1

comparer) en System.Collections.Generic.List`1.Sort(IComparer`1 comparer) en

Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.WebSerializer.GetDataFromObjectModel(Object

obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) en

Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.DeploymentSerializationSurrogate.GetObjectData(Object

obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) en

Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.SerializeObject(Object obj,

ISerializationSurrogate surrogate, String elementName, Boolean bNeedEnvelope)

en Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.Serialize(Stream

serializationStream, Object topLevelObject) en

Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ObjectSerializer.Serialize(DeploymentObject

deployObject, Stream serializationStream) en

Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPExport.SerializeObjects() en

Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPExport.Run() *** Excepción interna:

Referencia a objeto no establecida como instancia de un objeto. en

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeature.EnsureProperties() en

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeature.get_TimeActivated() en

Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.WebSerializer.ExportFeatureComparer.System.Collections.Generic.IComparer<Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ExportObject>.Compare(ExportObject

exportObject1, ExportObject exportObject2) en

System.Collections.Generic.ArraySortHelper`1.SwapIfGreaterWithItems[TValue](T[] keys, TValue[] values, IComparer`1 comparer, Int32 a, Int32 b)

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:58:52 GMT

Hi Joel,

the solution for your problem is listed here:

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2008/04/12/moss-common-issue-content-deployment-fails-with-failed-to-compare-two-elements-in-the-array.aspx

Cheers,

Stefan

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Mridul — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:36:54 GMT

Hi Stefan,

I'm facing this challenge where I have to provide a method to keep a custom list on source and target servers in sync.

There is a custom list that is maintained on source and is content deployed to the target.

Items in this custom list are changed/ added on the target as well. Therefore, a very good candidate for the "problem 15" you mentioned in this article. :)

Is there a way to exclude this custom list from content deployment? Then one of the solution could be: developing a custom syncronization routine via webservice. Source would get changed content via webservice (residing on target) and updates the source custom list accordingly.

If we cannot exclude the custom lists from content deployment... then is there a way to avoice content deployment failure/ duplicate records on the target?

I could still use the webservice approach to get the content from the target. BUT, then sync. has to be made immediately before the content deployment otherwise there would be a greater risk of overwriting changes on the target.

Any suggestion/ help to achieve a stable solution for this problem would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!

re: Content Deployment - Best Practices

Stefan_Gossner — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:35:50 GMT

Hi Mridul,

no it is not possible to exclude a list from content deployment. If changes are done on source and target you should do them in different lists. You could use custom web parts to show content from two different lists like on list.

Cheers,

Stefan