• "How Toy Story 2 Nearly Vanished" or "TEST your backups, people!"

    Here's a link to a video short created by Pixar on how they lost almost all of Toy Story 2 and didn't have a good backup.

    I always recommend customers test their changes and plans for changes on a TEST environment before implementing anything in production (this is especially true for ANY change in permissions).  Most of us rest comfortably at night knowing that somewhere, there is a team of reliable people responsible for database backups and that they can be called upon to restore your data should you need it restored. 

    TRUST BUT VERIFY

    But, have you ever tried to actually have that team restore last night's database backup as a test?  Can they actually restore the data to a location of your choosing where you can walk through your documented recovery steps?  Oh, wait!  You do have documented recovery steps, right?  You have tested and understood those, too, right?  When I was responsible for production data on a Project Server, I tested data restores from the backup media itself once every three weeks.  I restored the data to a test server and provisioned PWA against that server with those databases.  Because of this, I could reassure managment (and keep my job) that if the worst did happen, I could restore the data with a high degree of confidence.  I know I slept better because of that.

    Please work with your backup team closely so you know how often the backups take place, where they go, and that they can be recovered.  Once you know the data can be recovered, please test restoring it to a test environment to make sure you know how to do it and please document those steps.  The documentation is critical because you may be on vacation the next time there's a hard drive failure that wipes out your data and the poor guy or gal who has to do the recovery may have no idea how to proceed.

     

  • What has been fixed in a CU?

    A user contacted me via email the other day with a simple question - "Where can I get all the KB articles for Project Server 2010 and Project 2010 client fixes from June 2011 to February 2012?"  The user said that, ideally, a spreadsheet including all fixes in those CUs would be the most useful.

    CUs for Project Server are cumulative, so the latest CU includes all the fixes from all the CUs prior.  For example, take the April 2012 CU announcement on the Project Admin Blog.  If you go to the link for the April 2012 Project Server 2010 CU, there is a section titled "Issues that this hotfix package fixes".  Each CU will have this section and that section will detail what has been corrected with each CU.  There is no spreadsheet I am aware of that lists all CUs fixes since a certain service pack, so you have to read each CU's KB article to determine what's fixed.  Then, you can plan out your testing to hit those issues if you have been affected by them or want to increase your confidence level that the CU actually fixes what it says it fixes.

    Because the CU releases are all announced on the Project Admin Blog, you can search that blog for "CU Announcement".

    Doing so resulted in links to

    August 2011      http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectadministration/archive/2011/09/01/microsoft-project-server-and-sharepoint-2007-and-2010-august-cu-2011-announcement.aspx

    October 2011     http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectadministration/archive/2011/11/02/microsoft-project-server-and-sharepoint-2007-and-2010-october-cu-2011-announcement.aspx

    December 2011 http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectadministration/archive/2011/12/14/microsoft-project-server-and-sharepoint-server-2007-and-2010-december-2011-cu-announcement.aspx

    February 2012   http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectadministration/archive/2012/02/29/microsoft-project-server-and-sharepoint-server-2007-and-2010-february-2012-cu-announcement.aspx

    April 2012          http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectadministration/archive/2012/04/27/microsoft-project-server-and-sharepoint-server-2007-and-2010-april-2012-cu-announcement.aspx

     

    If you are interested in post upgrade validation testing for Project Server 2010, use the links below to test functionality in your test environment (you do have a test environment, right?) after an upgrade on a Project Server with a copy of production data on it.

    You can perform initial testing using the “Initial use setup”.  Consider using an automated testing tool if human resources are hard to come by to reduce the validation testing window. After you complete the above checks, proceed to the following series of tests.  Document the results. 

    Full Functionality Validation Testing Links are here:

    1. Test security settings in Project Server 2010
    2. Test enterprise data settings in Project Server 2010
    3. Test database administration settings in Project Server 2010
    4. Test look and feel settings in Project Server 2010
    5. Test time and task management settings in Project Server 2010
    6. Test queue settings in Project Server 2010
    7. Test operational policy settings in Project Server 2010
    8. Test workflow and project detail pages in Project Server 2010