Jeremy Taylor

Run all SharePoint 2010 Health Analyzer checks / jobs

Posted by Jeremy on 25 June 2011 1 comment

When you install a new farm, you might be curious to find out what the Health Analyzer results are. Instead of waiting for the checks to happen (basically timer jobs scheduled at different intervals), you could force them to run all at one go, so you can review the results and address them.

You can easily run this in PowerShell. All it does is start all the timer jobs with ‘Health’ in its name. That fires off all SharePoint 2010 Health Analyzer jobs for your new farm in one go.

# Check to ensure Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell is loaded
$snapin = Get-PSSnapin | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell'}
if ($snapin -eq $null) {
  Write-Host "Loading SharePoint Powershell Snapin"
  Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell"
}
Get-SPTimerJob | Where {$_.Name -like "*Health*" -and $_.Name -like "*-all-*"} | Start-SPTimerJob

Storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration for SharePoint Server 2010

Posted by Jeremy on 12 May 2011 1 comment

Ever wondered if there is a formula for calculating content database sizes? Want to have a start into learning more about SQL design and database capacity planning for SharePoint 2010?

Luckily, there is an awesome Technet document on SQL server design and capacity planning and it covers some great points to consider when planning your storage with SharePoint 2010.

Is Microsoft SQL Server clustering supported on VMware?

Posted by Jeremy on 8 May 2011 No comments

When planning SharePoint environments in a fully virtualised environment, a very relevant (and appropriate) question to ask is… “Is Microsoft SQL Server clustering supported on VMware?”

Its time to look at some links that I came across that might be handy for you in future. You could bookmark this page, so you can add it to your ‘To Read’ list.

Question:
Is Microsoft SQL Server clustering supported on VMware?

The answer:
Yes! Read more »

Visio stencils for SharePoint

Posted by Jeremy on 7 May 2011 No comments

There may be a time when you need to whip up a network diagram of your SharePoint farm. Like me, you may think..’where do I begin? and What do I use to create professional looking network diagrams?’.

Answer is here:

SQL Database mirroring with failover clustering for SharePoint 2010

Posted by Jeremy on 28 April 2011 No comments

I was asked a question in my previous post on my High Availability Options for SharePoint. I thought it would be good to share this as a seperate post.

The question was:

How can I implement both solutions? (Database Mirroring & SQL Clustering)

Clustering (active\passive) – For prevention of hardware failure.
+
[Mirroring] – For prevention of clustered shared storage failure.

My answer:

There are a few different scenarios or ‘modes’ that you can consider if you plan on implementing both solutions at the same time.

1. High-Safety mode Session with Automatic Failover

- Principal on active node in Cluster A.

- Mirror on another clustered node on Cluster B or standalone box.

- Requires a witness server- Synchronous database mirroring

- When cluster failover takes place, the mirror becomes the principal in Cluster B.

- When the passive node in Cluster A becomes active, it becomes the new mirror.

- You can fail back and forth.

2. High-Safety Mode Session Without Automatic Failover

- Same scenario above except not automatic failover with database mirroring.

- No witness server required

- Requires manual intervention to failover database mirroring.

- Synchronous database mirroring

3. High-Performance Mode Session

- Database mirroring Principal will be on the failover clustered instance.

- If cluster fails, the mirror can be activated.

You also must consider the following:

- Assess your environment. Will it support Clustering?

- Assess your shared Storage capabilities – may consider SAN replication or virtual storage.

- These solutions WILL require additional storage, so check on your storage capacity.

- Clustering over geographical distances.. i.e. two data centres – latency, bandwidth?

- Mirroring over geographical distances – latency?
For more information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191309(v=sql.100).aspx

SharePoint High Availability (HA) Options – DR, SQL database mirroring, log shipping and clustering

Posted by Jeremy on 20 April 2011 4 comments

Hey!

I got a few requests to have this available online.. its a presentation file I put together on SharePoint 2010 High Availability options with SQL.

Here is a link as promised to my presentation (pptx) on SharePoint 2010 High Availability Options.
It covers some basics on Disaster Recovery, SQL database mirroring, log shipping and clustering with SharePoint with some Technet links.
SharePoint 2010 HA Options

If you can contribute to the links to this file or initiate a discussion, send me an email or comment here.
Appreciate your feedback!

Review hardware and software requirements (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint)

Posted by Jeremy on 22 March 2011 No comments

I was looking at what hardware and software requirements Microsoft had to say for FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.

There are a few things to note:
RAM:
Minimum – 4GB RAM
Recommended – 16GB RAM

CPU:
Minimum – 4 CPU cores, 2.0GHz CPU
Recommended - 8 CPU cores, 2.0GHz CPU

Hard Disk:
Minimum – 50GB disk
Recommended – 1TB disk

Operating System:
1. Windows Server 2008 SP2 x64. All regular Standard/Enterprise/Datacenter versions are supported.
2. Windows Server 2008 R2 x64

Some additional points:

The server must be fully updated with the Service Pack and updates and restarted before you install FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
Do not install FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint on a server that runs a Domain Controller.
Use the server for FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint only. Do not install FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint on the same server as SharePoint Server 2010.
Make sure that the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint server name is not more than 15 characters long.
.NET Framework version 4 is not supported. Only .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1.
Ensure that the user who runs the installer is a member of the Administrators group.
Do not run FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint as a local administrator or a domain administrator.
Plan to install Windows updates after a controlled shutdown of FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
Exclude the FASTSearch folder from anti-virus scanning to prevent the anti-virus software from falsely identifying FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint data files as malware.
If you are using a proxy server and wanting to use FAST across multiple SharePoint farms, there are additional steps you need to perform.
If your anti-virus software allows it, it is recommend that you exclude the following FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint processes from scanning:

cobra.exe
contentdistributor.exe
create_attribute_files.exe
docexport.exe
FASTSearch.exe
FASTSearchExec.exe
fdispatch.exe
fdmworker.exe
fixmlindex.exe
fsearch.exe
fsearchctrl.exe
ifilter2html.exe
indexer.exe
indexingdispatcher.exe
jsort2.exe
make_pu_diff.exe
MonitoringService.exe
pdftotext.exe
procserver.exe
qrserver.exe
spelltuner.exe
truncate_anchorinfo.exe
walinkstorerreceiver.exe
walookupdb.exe
webanalyzer.exe

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Capacity Planning

Posted by Jeremy on 20 March 2011 No comments

This is a GREAT document if you want to look at capacity planning for FAST Search Server 2010.
If you have a multi-server SharePoint 2010 farm running on the Enterprise license with a dedicated Search Server, then your FAST Search Server 2010 would be of no extra licensing cost to you.
(Enterprise license is per server. Each FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint 2010 consumes one enterprise server license. Disclaimer: please consult a Microsoft licensing specialist ).

When you read this document, you will understand how to:

Define performance and capacity targets for your environment
Plan the hardware required to support the number and type of users, and the features you intend to deploy
Design your physical and logical topology for optimum reliability and efficiency
Test, validate and scale your environment to achieve performance and capacity targets
Monitor your environment for key indicators

I enjoyed this and I thought I would share this with you..

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=65b799e3-825c-4398-8cd7-3311d3297997&displaylang=en

Why enabling in-browser viewing of PDFs is risky in SharePoint

Posted by Jeremy on 13 March 2011 No comments

I was at a session by Maurice Prather on Secure Coding for the Administrator at the Australian SharePoint Conference 2011. It was a good session and there was a mention of the risks of PDF handling in the browser.

I did some more reading and found that Maurice had written an article which explains the risks of PDF (Pretty Dangerous Files) well.
In short.. you can embed javascript in a PDF document. Java script can be used to also delete/modify a wide variety of things in a SharePoint side through the client object model.

I thought this will be useful to make note of it in my blog. Here is a link to Maurice Prathers article on PDF (Pretty Dangerous Files):
http://www.bluedoglimited.com/SharePointThoughts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=328

You enjoy..

SharePoint Solution Deploy, retract, upgrade – What causes your SharePoint farm to go offline IISRESET (web server outage).

Posted by Jeremy on 10 March 2011 2 comments

You may have had questions or have had others ask you:

Does a WSP deploy perform an IISRESET?
We are upgrading a solution, will it cause an outage?
What causes an outage when working with SharePoint WSP files?

Over the years, I have had many discussions / meetings with clients & colleagues about this and I would like to publish my findings and the links that I have had with me for a while. Let’s clarify this ambiguity:

Here are answers straight up in three scenarios:
Deploying a solution
Do you need to prepare for an outage / IISRESET?: Yes

Retracting a solution

Do you need to prepare for an outage / IISRESET?: Yes

Upgrading a solution

Do you need to prepare for an outage / IISRESET?: Yes

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