IPv6 is becoming an issue and I hear more techs talking about it now than 5 or 10 years ago. I first learned about IPv6 and the IPv4 depletion issues about 10 years ago when I used to play with my own Cisco lab at home and aspire to be a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert – CCIE .

Now, as I have been working full time with SharePoint for years, I thought its a good time to pull out a little bit about SharePoint with IPv6 from the net…

Some things I picked up from reading on the net which may be important to you are:

• Windows Server 2003: By default, the IPv6 protocol is not installed. However, it can be added.
• Windows Server 2008: By default, the IPv6 protocol and the IPv4 protocol are both installed and enabled. When both IPv4 and IPv6 are enabled, IPv6 is given preference over IPv4.
• Microsoft provides supported IPv6 implementations for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP with SP1 or later, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 or later.
• When Windows is configured with IPv6, SQL 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2 Server components automatically recognize the existence of IPv6. No special SQL Server configuration is necessary.
• The SQL Server Database Engine and the other server components can listen on both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses at the same time. When both IPv4 and IPv6 are present, you can use SQL Server Configuration Manager to configure the Database Engine to listen only on IPv4 addresses or only on IPv6 addresses.
• When the SQL Server Browser service running on a machine that supports both IPv4 and IPv6 is queried on an IPv4 address, it responds with an IPv4 address and the first IPv4 TCP port in its list. When queried on an IPv6 address, it responds with an IPv6 address and the first IPv6 TCP port in its list. To avoid inconsistency, Microsoft recommends that the IPv4 and IPv6 listeners be configured to listen to the same port.
• Tools such as SQL Server Management Studio and SQL Server Configuration Manager accept both IPv4 and IPv6 formats for IP addresses. In most cases, the connection string does not need to be modified if the <computer_name>\<instance_name> is specified using server hostname or fully qualified domain name (FQDN).
• In SQL Server R2, Native Client attempts to establish connections using these IP addresses in the order received from TCP/IP and uses the first connection that succeeds. Because the order cannot be predicted by SQL Server Native Client, this should be regarded as random order. IPv4 addresses are attempted first if both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are present. This logic is transparent to the users of ODBC, OLE DB, or ADO.NET.
• All versions of Microsoft SQL Server supported for SharePoint 2010 Products also support IPv6.
• In SharePoint 2010, when using IPv6 protocol, all end-user Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) must be based on DNS names with AAAA records.
• Browsing to SharePoint URLs that use IPv6 literal addresses is not supported.
• SharePoint 2010 Products support entering IPv6 literal addresses for certain farm administration functionality, such as entering the server name when creating or attaching databases. For server names that use a literal address format, you must enclose the literal address within square brackets. An example of a literal address URL is http://[2002:db8:85a2:8d4:1219:8b2e:370:7424]

Introduction to IPv6
Microsoft Technology Position Paper
Microsoft's Objectives for IP Version 6
Migrating IPv6.exe Commands to Netsh Command
IPv6 Transition Technologies
IPv6 Security Considerations and Recommendations
Using Windows Tools to Obtain IPv6 Configuration Information

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

Ok, lets take a closer look:
Deploying a solution
Initially, the package manifest.xml is checked for its content & destination locations. The files specified in the manifest.xml are copied to the locations. After solution files are copied to the target servers, a configuration reset is scheduled for all front-end Web servers; the reset then deploys the files and restarts Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). Farm administrators can specify when this occurs (a timer job).
Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa544500.aspx

Retracting a solution

On each front-end Web server, the following occurs:

- Internet Information Services (IIS) is disabled.
- Files are removed from the system.
- IIS is re-enabled and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation is reloaded when a user browses to a page.

- Farm administrators can specify the time when the retraction takes place.

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543958.aspx

Upgrading a solution

There are two ways to do an upgrade of a solution. i.e. Replacement and Update. Both inolve a an IISRESET.

Replacements are essentially a retract and optionally removal of a WSP. Then the new version is added and deployed. Causing an IISRESET (twice!).
Updates are essentially a deployment with the same file name but different GUID. SharePoint detects this and retracts the old solution and deploys the new one..causing an IISRESET.

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543659.aspx

Please note that there is a -local option when deploying a solution, but according to MSDN, this is to be used for troubleshooting purposes.
Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.administration.spsolution.deploylocal.aspx

When using SharePoint 2010, you will notice ULS logging.  This tool greatly helps when troubleshooting ULS log files. Its from Microsoft but its unsupported.

Summary

ULSViewer allows users to open a ULS log file and display its contents in a user friendly format. Users can then perform advanced functions such as filtering, sorting, highlighting, loading logs, appending logs, etc in order to single out the data that is important to the user. This information can be used to diagnose problems with machines running ULS services, or to monitor machines and the events they create in realtime.

Introduction

This article discusses the ULS Viewer tool.

Warning: The ULSViewer tool is an unsupported application that can be used to analyze ULS log files. Microsoft does not provide support for this tool. Use this tool at your own risk. Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) cannot answer questions about the ULSViewer tool.

ULSViewer allows users with access to ULS log files to view their logs in a more user friendly interface instead of using standard log file viewers. Logs opened can be filtered, sorted, highlighted, appended, etc in order to single out the data that is important to the user. This information can be used to diagnose problems with machines running ULS services, or to monitor machines and the events they create.
The ULSViewer tool runs on either 32 or 64 bit architectures of Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server, Windows 2008 Server R2, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.
Features      
The ULSViewer tool performs various actions against the data from ULS log files in order to better analyze it.  ULSViewer allows the user to:

• Highlight data of importance to the user on the fly
• Bookmark log entries
• Append logs to other logs in order to track trends
• Hide unimportant data
• Only view critical log entries by sorting data by severity
• Write rules to prompt the user when certain events occur
• View your data in a spreadsheet instead of the text file ULS generates
• Monitor remote machines logs that are running ULS services
• Open multiple logs at the same time in order to compare log files.
• Open logs files from multiple machines at the same time.

Installation

To obtain the ULSViewer tool, follow these steps:

1. The following file is available for download from the MSDN Code Gallery ULSViewer site at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer

Download the ULSViewer tool now.http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=ULSViewer&DownloadId=7482)

1. In the File Download dialog box, click Save, and then save the file to your machine.
2. When the download is completed, click Close.
3. In the folder you saved the file, double-click ULSViewer.exe.

Usage Syntax

UI Detail

Glossary

Microsoft will ship the new SharePoint 2010 along with Office 2010 in the first half of next year (Beta – late 2009).
There has been a few questions about the name of SharePoint 2010.
Basically, we presently have three SharePoint server versions:
1. Windows SharePoint Services
2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard
3. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

From now onwards it will be just Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (without the “office”).

There has been a few name changes to SharePoint in previous years, but I wont go into that now.

Some of the main systems requirements are:
1. Requires 64bit Microsoft Windows 2008 or 64bit Microsoft Windows 2008 R2

2. This implies it requires 64 bit hardware on its environment
3. No support for Internet Explorer 6 anymore – only IE 7 and above (XHTML 1.0 compliant)
4. SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 on 64 bit

Some of the features are:

Better support for Internet facing sites
More security features & flexibility in managing permissions
Email management for users
Faster search
More storage options such as SAN, NAS, RAID etc. (currently only SQL)
Improved taxonomy management

Better Dashboards and reports
Records and archiving policies
Easy to use templates
More commands
Microsoft Groove is renamed as ‘SharePoint Workspace Manager’
Integration with other CMS products
Improved infopath form capabilities
More workflow types
Native support for Mozilla Firefox 3.0 and Opera
Better support for Mobile devices
Easy migration from SPS2003 and MOSS 2007
Snapshot backup and recovery
Granular recovery at item level

In time, I will discuss migration strategies and planning your new SharePoint 2010 upgrade.
Keep updated and bookmark my site!