Hello, I am a technical writer for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services. I would like to announce that an Stsadm Silverlight interactive application is now available on the following TechNet Web sites:
Ø Stsadm Technical Reference for SharePoint Server 2007:
o http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/cc948709.aspx
Ø Stsadm Technical Reference for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:
o http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/dd418924.aspx
You can use the following new features that are included with this application:
1. Click an Stsadm operation to retrieve its description, as well as a link to the full article on TechNet.
2. Benefit from full-text search, which filters out operations that do not match your search criteria.
3. Select either Operations or Properties to filter your display.
4. Display or hide a category by clicking the column heading.
Regards,
Kirk Stark, MCSE, MCSA, MCDBA, MCTS
If you subscribe to our newly-published RSS feeds for Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server, you may have noticed a wave of topics that we updated for the April Cumulative Update.
We updated topics because the Windows SharePoint Services portion of the Cumulative Update fixes a pain point (possible data corruption and definite size limitation) in deleting, merging, and splitting content databases. From the Cumulative Update description, here's the problem, and how you can avoid it:
"If a site collection is very large, an attempt to delete the site collection from a Web application fails. This causes the stsadm -o mergecontentdbs command to fail when you try to move site collections from one content database to another. This issue is resolved by adding an optional -gradualdelete parameter to the stsadm -o deletesite command. If this parameter is present, SharePoint marks the site collection as deleted to prevent further access while a SharePoint Timer job gradually deletes the data in the site collection. After you install the hotfix package that this article describes, the stsadm -o mergecontentdbs command uses this gradual delete functionality by default."
Now that product team added the Site Collection: Delete timer job to run in the background and gradually delete anything marked as deleted, you can delete and move large site collections the way that you always wanted to!
Note: Although the Stsadm mergecontentdbs operation uses the gradual delete functionality by default after you install the hotfix, it's not the default for the Stsadm deletesite operation, so you'll need to remember specify the -gradualdelete parameter.
Here's the list of the topics that we changed as a result of the update:
Escalation Engineer Stefan Goßner posted Content Deployment - Best Practices on his blog. We have now incorporated this information into the following TechNet library articles:
· Determine sites and subsites
· Plan content deployment
· Administer content deployment
· Configure content deployment settings
· Administer content deployment paths and jobs
· Create a new content deployment job
We have also published a new topic, Troubleshoot content deployment, that contains information on troubleshooting common issues and problems you may encounter while using content deployment. We’d like to extend a big thanks to Stefan for all the work he’s done in helping customers troubleshoot issues with their content deployment scenarios.
You may have noticed that our publishing system has been down for a very long time -- at least, it felt that way to us! We've still been updating topics and creating new ones, but you haven't been able to see much of our work.
As of the week of March 30, our publishing system is finally letting us push new content to the TechNet library, so we'll be publishing a series of posts about the content that we're most excited about.
To keep up with our content updates, don't forget to subscribe to our RSS feeds:
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Newly published Office SharePoint Server topics list RSS feed (http://services.community.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/SharePointServerNewContent)
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Newly published Windows SharePoint Services topics list RSS feed (http://services.community.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/WindowsSharePointServicesNewContent)
Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that you establish in your enterprise to guide, direct, and control the use of technologies to accomplish business goals.
Two fundamental areas within SharePoint require governance: The IT services that host Office SharePoint Server 2007, and the information management and architecture for your portals and other Office SharePoint Server sites. A governance plan contains a record of your decisions about these areas and drives your deployment of SharePoint Products and Technologies solutions.
We've just published a sample governance plan (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=146768&clcid=0x409) for a SharePoint collaboration service based on Office SharePoint Server 2007. The plan, written by Joel Oleson, can help you identify key considerations for an IT service implementation.
The following list shows several elements that should be part of your governance plan:
· Lines of ownership for business and technical teams.
· Service delivery requirements for business and IT.
· Customization policy.
· Site management storage and lifecycle policies.
· Education and training plan.
The sample plan provides more detailed descriptions of these and other elements that comprise a comprehensive governance plan.
Our thanks to Joel Oleson for writing this plan. To find more governance articles and tools, visit our Governance Resource Center.
We know that governance is an area of concern for our IT customers. If you have ideas for governance topics, or want to comment on our existing content, please let me know.
Thank you,
Judy Cowan
Writer, SharePoint Enterprise Solutions UA
By popular request, we have packed up and created a download for the stencils that we used to create many of the SharePoint Technical Diagrams. These models are created using Office Visio 2007. You can modify the Visio files to illustrate how you plan to incorporate Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies in your own environment.
Here's the URL for the download package: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=08105458-1d92-44ad-b7e0-744aa853a7bf.
Let us know what you think.
The real power of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is that they can be endlessly customized to meet a wide variety of business needs. The Protean nature of SharePoint is at once its most powerful feature and its most formidable; the complexity of your SharePoint environment can increase by orders of magnitude when you begin to shape it to suit your needs. This complexity can make troubleshooting SharePoint issues a daunting task, as many different data points from different sources must be correlated and analyzed.
The SharePoint Diagnostics (SPDiag) tool greatly simplifies the process of gathering and analyzing troubleshooting data, and can significantly reduce the time needed to diagnose issues. SPDiag provides administrators with a unified interface for troubleshooting SharePoint performance issues, and saves collected data and reports to a SQL Server database.
With SPDiag, you can:
- Collect IIS and ULS log files, performance counter data, event logs, and WMI instrumentation data from a SharePoint farm.
- Filter data to show granular information related to specific servers, Web applications, HTTP requests, event IDs, URI queries, and almost any other data points captured through supported channels.
- Create custom reports that can help reveal performance trends over time.
- Create snapshots of your SharePoint farm that include detailed information about your farm’s hardware, installed software and logical topology.
- Export collected data and reports that can be sent to Microsoft support personnel.
SPDiag is included in the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3.0, available for download at the following locations:
Documentation for SPDiag is available from those download pages as well.
By request we have added a couple of format options for the download of a recent and popular whitepaper: Administrator's Guide of Topics to Consider before Deployment (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=139163&clcid=0x409), by Shane Young and the folks at SharePoint 911 (http://www.sharepoint911.com).
On the download page, you'll see three different format options: docx, pdf, and xps.
Choose the option you like best and we'll track the metrics and popularity of each. Who knows, we might offer these options for future whitepapers.
UPDATE! We are now able to update TechNet articles! The Move All Databases articles have been updated with the new content. Thanks for your patience
Folks that have tried to move their SharePoint databases from one server to another may have noticed the “Preliminary Content” note at the top of the Move All Databases (Office SharePoint Server 2007) topic in TechNet. The procedures that were posted in that topic contained some errors and didn’t explain the differences between moving to a server with a different name and moving to a server with the same name (one requires restoring the Search Shared Services Provider, the other doesn’t).
The final Move All Databases procedure topic is a big improvement over the old one, and includes two different procedures that are intended to cover the most common database movement scenarios.
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If you are moving your databases to a new database server with a new name, we recommend the procedure Move all databases to a different database server.
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If you are moving your databases to a database server that has the same name as the old one, we recommend the procedure Move all databases to a database server with the same name.
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If you are moving your databases to a server that is running upgraded versions of Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server software, we recommend the procedure Move all databases to a database server with the same name.
The two new procedures sound similar, but are very different in practice. Be sure to review both of them to determine which one suits your particular need. Remember that these procedures are for moving all SharePoint databases as opposed to other procedures that may be used for moving individual databases.
I recently completed a technical case study with a school in the UK: Blatchington Mill School (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335971.aspx).
This is the second school I've worked with in the UK. I was attracted to this solution by the sophisticated use of reporting that ties into the school's MIS system. In a nutshell, here's how it works:
1. The MIS system is hosted on a separate server. Here's the lineup of servers in their environment:
For details on the server hardware, see the case study.
2. A separate site collection houses all pages and Web Parts provided by the Capita SIMS (MIS) system. This site surfaces data from SIMS.net for staff, students and parents.
3. Capita SIMS SLG2 Web Parts are installed on target portals (see diagram above). Information that is displayed through each Web Part varies depending on the user’s role. Here's an example:
Blatchington Mill School uses a simple architecture to provide a sophisticated solution. The MIS system is integrated into SharePoint and the reporting features are threaded through each of the targeted portals sites, bringing together each of the school’s core audiences in practical and meaningful ways.
Brenda Carter, Writer, SharePoint Products and Technologies
Greetings, SharePoint fans, and happy 2009! This week, we added a new white paper to our TechNet collection: Administrator's Guide of Topics to Consider before Deployment (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=139163&clcid=0x409).
This paper is provided by Shane Young and the folks at SharePoint 911 (http://www.sharepoint911.com).
This white paper is a great resource for anybody who is new to SharePoint. It walks through the primary topics that require attention before you consider running setup for the first time. And, it links you to some of our best content on TechNet.
Have you noticed the redesign of our Office SharePoint Server TechCenter? It’s the TechNet landing page for SharePoint IT Pro-focused content and the home of our Resource Centers—the pages we build to expose content for top customer issues and key product themes.
Based on customer feedback, we’ve done the following:
- Moved the Resource Center links to the most prominent area (left side).
- Added organizational pivots around lifecycle and role to help you find groups of content.
Here's a screenshot of the newest version, so you can see what we've changed.
We’d love more feedback about the TechCenter. Here are some of the things we’re wondering:
- Have you been to the TechCenter before? If you have, what were you looking for, and did you find it?
- Now that you’ve seen it, what did you like best and least? Is there any information missing? Should we remove something from the page?
- Would you come back to the TechCenter? What for?
P.S. Here's the design we started with, just in case you're curious.
If you’re faced with doing a large SharePoint deployment, you’re probably feeling dizzy and lightheaded at the prospect of prepping, installing, and configuring SharePoint on 40 … 50 … or even more individual servers. It’s a big, complex, and repetitive job that requires a high degree of precision. Fortunately, with the right set of instructions, this is just the sort of job computers can do for themselves.
If you do a lot of SharePoint installations, you probably have discovered already that installation and configuration using the command line is much faster and more efficient than using the UI. And if you’ve performed a command-line installation, you must also know that it’s important to have the installation files, language packs, and option settings all positioned, prepped, and ready ahead of time. From there, creating a scripted SharePoint installation on any number of machines is a relatively straightforward proposition.
The advantages of a scripted vs. manual installation in a large farm deployment should be obvious. The results are consistent and less prone to error. A scripted installation is also less labor intensive and therefore fewer people are needed to perform the job quickly. Best of all, once your scripts have been written and tested, they require only minor modification to be used in a wide variety of installation scenarios.
To help you get your own scripted SharePoint installation efforts off the ground, we’ve published a new white paper that pulls the whole process together and provides lots of examples, sample code, and reference material: Using scripts to automate SharePoint Server 2007 installation. There are sections on planning and preparing for a scripted deployment, scripting the installation of your prerequisites, scripting the creation and joining of the farm, and scripting the set up of various sites and services. To cap it off, there’s also a section on ways to optimize your scripts to make your installations even more autonomous and able to handle a wider range of configurations.
How well does scripting work in the real world? It helps to be compulsively thorough in your planning and machine prep. You also can expect to spend a lot of time testing and revising your scripts before unleashing them on your next deployment. Scripting really shines when you use it to set up large farms, but as you perfect your scripts, you’ll use them even on medium and small deployments. Think of scripting as having a very eager and conscientious intern at your disposal who’ll work quickly and without complaint as long as your instructions are very, very detailed and explicit.
Learn how to script your SharePoint installations here.
As always, we appreciate your feedback.
-- Chris Smith
IT Pro Writer
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) is a Microsoft backup and recovery tool that can be used to protect and recover SharePoint data.
Why is DPM exciting? It requires very little processing on the server because writes are done frequently at the data block level. Data block-level updates are much less resource intensive than either SharePoint or SQL Server full or partial backups.As a result, you can run DPM on a production server during standard business hours!
DPM provides a SharePoint backup that you can use to recover the configuration database, content databases, and Shared Services Provider databases. With a bit of additional scripting, you can use DPM to protect Search as well.
With other DPM tools (file system backup and the System Recovery Tool), you can also use DPM to provide protection for front-end Web servers, including IIS configurations, and customizations.
Although we've had some DPM content out for a while, we’ve just published a white paper that pulls everything together (especially backing up front-end Web servers and customizations) for Office SharePoint Server administrators. Check the white paper out here, and let us know what you think!
- Margo
P.S. Here are some of my favorite DPM resources--let me know if you've got others!
DPM/SharePoint landing page
Data Protection Manager Blog
White paper for helping sell the idea of DPM to your manager: DPM Whitepaper: Protecting SharePoint Products and Technologies
White paper for how to back up Search:
Backing up Office SharePoint Server Search by using System Center Data Protection Manager
