To the SharePoint : Databases

Support your DBA!

Margo Crandall — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:33:00 GMT

We’ve just finished creating a new downloadable book for SQL Server database administrators who support SharePoint environments. If you work with one of those lucky folks, you may want to point them to:

SharePoint guidance for SQL Server 2008 database administrators (Downloadable book)

We’ve also updated a number of our other articles to refer to features in SQL Server 2008 that you can take advantage of in a SharePoint environment.

As always, let us know if you have any comments or questions!

Margo Crandall, Prinicipal technical writer (Database, Backup/Recovery, Disaster recovery, and Availability)

Article updates for the April Cumulative Update

Margo Crandall — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:44:00 GMT

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:

Windows SharePoint Services topics	Office SharePoint Server topics
Delete a site collection (Windows SharePoint Services)	Delete a site collection (Office SharePoint Server)
Merge content databases (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)	Merge content databases (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
Move site collections to a new database (split a content database) (Windows SharePoint Services	Move site collections to a new database (split a content database) (Office SharePoint Server 200
Back up and restore site collections by using built-in tools (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)	Back up and restore site collections by using built-in tools (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
SharePoint Timer job reference (Office SharePoint Server)	SharePoint Timer job reference (Office SharePoint Server)
Job-gradual-site-deletion- Stsadm property (Windows SharePoint Services)	Job-gradual-site-deletion- Stsadm property (Office SharePoint Server)
Deletesite: Stsadm operation (Windows SharePoint Services)	Deletesite: Stsadm operation (Office SharePoint Server)

Finally Finally Finished: The Move All Databases Procedure

oscarblog — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:04:00 GMT

UPDATE! We are now able to update TechNet articles! The Move All Databases articles have been updated with the new content (more than once!), and the download version of the article has been pulled down. 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.

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.
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.
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.

Using the new features in SQL Server 2008 with Office SharePoint Server 2007

Douglas Goodwin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:27:00 GMT

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 includes several new and enhanced features that are important for deploying Office SharePoint Server 2007. New and enhanced SQL Server 2008 features are especially relevant for SharePoint deployments in four principal areas:

Performance
Availability
Security
Resource management

You can improve Office SharePoint Server performance by implementing the new database backup compression feature in SQL Server 2008. The ability to compress database backups is a significant improvement for Office SharePoint Server users; it enables you to significantly decrease the size of your database backups and shipped logs.

You can improve Office SharePoint Server availability by implementing the new log stream compression feature in SQL Server 2008. One of the performance-limiting factors of database mirroring is network throughput between the principal and mirror servers. SQL Server 2008 supports compression of the log stream, which consists of the inserts, updates, and deletes that are transferred between servers. Log stream compression can help maximize network throughput, especially in environments where network conditions are poor.

You can improve Office SharePoint Server security by using the new Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) feature in SQL Server 2008. TDE enables you to encrypt entire databases and requires no application awareness or modification. TDE encrypts data as it is written to disk and decrypts data as it is read from disk.

You can improve Office SharePoint Server resource management by using SQL Server 2008 Resource Governor. SQL Server Resource Governor enables you to maintain and administer your SQL Server resources, such as CPU and memory. You can use SQL Server Resource Governor to precisely control how your SQL Server resources are allocated. With SQL Server Resource Governor, you can apply thresholds to incoming connections based on assigned criteria.

For prescriptive guidance about implementing some of the new features in SQL Server 2008 that enhance the deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007, see Integration of SQL Server 2008 and Office SharePoint Server 2007.

For information about SQL Server 2008 system requirements, see Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server 2008.

Douglas Goodwin, Writer
SharePoint Server UA team