SharePoint Stuff

Installing SQL Server 2008 SP1 CU3 on Failover Cluster

2009-08-27T16:00:00Z

So last week I was installing a brand new SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition 2-node cluster. This of course on a Windows Server 2008 operating system.

Nowadays when applying updates to SQL Server 2008 clusters, you're not updating the entire cluster at once, but you can do it a node at a time. So basically you first update your passive node (or at least a node that doesn't contain any instances), then do a failover to that updated node. That way you can check if everything works fine. If so, you can update your other node.

Well, that's the theory...

I've done it already several times when I was applying Service Pack 1 of SQL Server 2008 and it worked fine every time. Last week it was the first time I was applying CU 3 of Service Pack 1 on a failover cluster.

After I updated the passive node and I did a failover of my SQL Server instance, the SQL Server Agent service continued to fail. If I failed it over to my unpatched node, it worked fine. Since this being a brand new clean install, I just went ahead and installed the CU 3 on the first node aswell. From then on SQL Server Agent service worked perfectly on both nodes.

So the question is:

Can I conclude that when applying SP1 CU3 of SQL Server 2008 on a failover cluster, the SQL Server Agent Service will only start if all nodes are updated.
Or was this just a glitch during my install...

If it's the first case:
If you're installing CU3, don't panic when the Agent service doesn't start.

But it's unfortunate, since you lose the advantage of updating one node at a time...

Keep on trucking
Tom

[non-technical post] Giving SharePoint courses

2009-08-13T16:00:00Z

So, I was thinking about writing some general posts concerning daily life in IT. Not about the technical aspect (you know: this problem, that solution), but more about the other stuff. Things that happen at customers, the way I see IT or at least the way I look at the things I do. And especially, the way I do them.

From now on, these posts will be labeled as [non-technical post].

To kick things off, my first in these series:

Giving SharePoint courses

I've been giving MOSS 2007 administrator courses for over 2,5 years now. This primarily for the education center of RealDolmen. Nowadays I teach the Microsoft Official Courses 5060 and 5061 (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007). I give those courses to customers at the Realdolmen (open courses) or at the customers offices (private courses).

So for myself, I've created some guidelines how to give a good course to customers. This is actually the first time I'll be writing them down, so maybe I'll forget some, but I'll add them later as I think of them.

Make them feel comfortable. This can sound lame, but it's very important. Make sure they can easily get drinks when they like to, that they get enough coffee (important for IT people ;-)). But even more important, make sure they always know they can ask questions at any time, about anything and that's it's OK to ask stupid questions. (Yes, stupid questions do exist :-p)
Be sure that they know what you are doing. In my case: my primary job is not teaching. My primary job is being a System Engineer for Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. I don't just read books about these products. I use them, install them, troubleshoot them, ... daily. I hate just theoretical stuff.
Give your audience a proper introduction about what they are going to see in this course. You have that timeline "to be followed" in courses, well, I always exceed my time for the introduction. Let people know what they can expect. (NO, I'm not giving asp.net programming ;-))
Give real-life examples. If you talk about a functionality in MOSS, point out what it's used for in real life. Don't leave it being an abstract term. With real-life examples, people will remember better what it is and what you can do with it. (The best example: Alternate Access Mappings. Nobody understands them immediately. I always point out their necessity when publishing an intranet to the internet through a firewall (like ISA Server)).
Let people talk about their situation. Most students in my courses are System Administrators at their company. They are not nitwits. Most of them already have a MOSS environment (or planning to have one very soon) and are not only interested in the theoretical course, but more in how they should implement it at their company. Of course, try and give the best answer you can give.
Be honest. Let's face it (sorry Microsoft), there is no such thing as a perfect product. Although I really like MOSS, not everything works as smoothly as it's sometimes should work. Don't let people believe they have the perfect product that will solve all of their problems.
Give Best Practices and point them to resources with best practices. It's not only important to teach people how to "technically" use the product, but also how to use it in general. Best Practices on security, on site organisation (like multiple content databases on 1 web application), on backup, ...
At lunch break, try talking about something different than MOSS. This comes back to point 1. Make them feel comfortable. It's a lunch BREAK. Their heads will be filled up with MOSS enough after some hours of listening to my babbling.
Give them time to make their exercices properly. The best way to learn MOSS is by using is.
Try to give them extras that are not in the course. (For example: in the MOC 5061, there isn't much text about backup/restore. I always talk about all the build-in stuff, but also about Third-Party tools that are available)
Plan your course so you can end early on the last day. Plan that at least the theoretical stuff ends early. That leaves you more room for questions. Questions not just about the last module, but about the entire course. Your students now have seen the big picture, but sometimes have difficulties connecting them all together. At that time, you should help them tying all loose ends to one coherent substance.
Also: If you end with exercises, people have the choice of making their exercises or just going home early. That last option it especially popular on a Friday afternoon.

So, these are kinda my best practices. Until know, I only had positive feedback, so I'll just keep doing what I've been doing the last 2,5 years. Feel free to comment on this list. Maybe I'll do some changes if some things popup in my head.

Keep on producing
Tom

Search your internet MOSS without a root Site Collection

2009-08-10T16:00:00Z

Since Service Pack 2, it's not possible anymore to crawl a MOSS 2007 Web Application, without the presence of a root Site Collection. And if you use IIS 7.0 HTTP Redirection to redirect the root to a different URL, MOSS 2007 can't see there is actually a root Site Collection.

If that sentence didn't make any sense at all (which it probably didn't), following is the scenario that will make it all clear.

Owkai, here is the situation:

So a customer of mine has set up a brand new MOSS 2007 (or at least: I did the setup), that will be used as a public internet site. Basically it is setup with an authoring farm and publishing farm (separated with a firewall). Content deployment is used to send the changed information from the authoring to the publishing farm. But that's not the issue here.

The URL's will be like this:

A Publishing Portal on http://www.trycatch.be/trycatch
A Publishing Portal on http://www.trycatch.be/catchthis

If you surf to http://www.trycatch.be, you should be redirected to http://www.trycatch.be/trycactch.

So the root http://www.trycatch.be will not be used.

So this is the problem:

If you use IIS 7.0 to redirect http://www.trycatch.be to http://www.trycatch.be/trycatch, MOSS 2007 will not notice the root Site Collection.
So, even if you have a root Site Collection (let's say a "Blank Site"), because it's necessary for crawling, crawling will still not work...

It's the IIS 7.0 HTTP Redirection that fucks things up.

So, here is your solution:

1. Enable HTTP Redirection on your MOSS 2007 Web Application
2. Extend your Web Application to a second Web Application (so you can access the same site through a different URL)
3. Change the Content Source in your Shared Services Provider to point to the extended Web Application (in stead of the original one)
4. Crawl your MOSS 2007

This time crawling will work (there is no HTTP Redirection on your extended Web Application).
Thanks to Alternate Access Mappings, when you search in your original (published) website, you will get the correct URL's back in your search results.

But keep in mind: to keep things simple, try to use a root Site Collection

Party On
Tom

I really like Search Server 2008 Express

2009-05-07T18:00:00Z

And now for something completely different, me for once not talking about problems or screwed up stuff in Sharepoint, BUT about something I actually like. Well, I really like Search Server 2008 Express. When customers nowadays want to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 I always recommend SS 2008 Express.

Because this is basically in one FREE product:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Enterprise Search coming from Office SharePoint Server 2007

The only disavantage of the product is than you can't make it High Available. At least not the Search end of the product. It's still possible to install the Web Frontend part on multiple servers (and configuring it with Network Load Balancing) to provide High Availability. Just your search won't be High Available.

Owkai, since it's in my blood to be annoying, there is a small thing I don't like about the SS 2008.
When you finished your initial configuration (through the Configuration Wizard), then Central Administration opens with the Search Server configuration page instead of the normal Central Administration. I like to configure everything like I'm used to do. Also because through that wizard page, it's not possible to choose the names of your Web Applications.

So basically I skip the Search Server wizard pages by going directly to Central Administation > http://trycatch:10000/default.aspx. From there I start all the services, create the Web Applications and create the Shared Services Provider (aka Search Administration). After you did all the required configuration, next time you go to your Central Administration, you won't be redirected anymore to that darn wizard.
Call me old fashioned, but I like this approach better (MORE control) then following the wizard.

Old School Taking You Back Again (Quote by the genius named The Proxy)
Tom

MOSS 2007 Service Pack 2 released.

2009-04-28T21:30:00Z

So, it's here, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 2.

For all information, downloads, instructions, check THIS LINK.

Have fun
Tom

Never turn off "Auto create & Auto Update Statistics"

2009-04-22T15:00:00Z

As you all know, in SQL Server (any version actually) you have the options "Auto Create Statistics" and "Auto Update Statistics". By default this is enabled (these parameters are set to true on the model database and thus to all newly create databases).

So, what happened?

At a customer they reinstalled their farm with the purpose of starting on a clean server environment when upgrading to SP1 and the Infrastructure Update. So basically they had setup a new farm (with all the necessary updates) and they moved all the databases to that farm, "migrating" them to the latest build versions. They did it like this, so the old farm was never to be touched, providing a perfect fall-back scenario.

We (the customer and myself) did this in staging environment some time ago, and thus making the correct procedures. The customer would do this in production themselves (so without my assistance). In staging environment (of course) everything worked perfectly.

And then, they did it in the production environment.

Everything worked well, all the sites were up and running, ...
... but then they started a full crawl of the content.

A full crawl of a small database of about 3 GB, took 5 hours!!!
A full crawl of a large database of about 60 GB was running for 25 hours and then freezed!!!

In the meanwhile, crawling the same content on the staging environment did not have any problems at all...

So, what was the problem?

As it turned out, the model database of the SQL Server where the databases were moved at, had "Auto Create Statistics" and "Auto Update Statistics" turned off. Since the farm was reinstalled, only restoring the content databases and the SSP database, a new SSP Search database was created. Thus taking over the settings of the model database.

Hence, the "Auto Create Statistics" and "Auto Update Statistics" parameters of the SSP Search database were turned off. This causing performance problems on that database (SQL Server CPU went 100 % when crawling), and eventually freezing... (Actually, the crawl started good, went slower, slower, slower, dead...)

When we turned these properties back to "true", indexing worked again.

The 5 hour crawl of the small database only took 12 minutes.
The 25 hour crawl (+ freeze) took only 4 (and a bit) hours.

So, conclusion:

For performance for filling up the Search database (what happens when crawling), SQL Server really relies on the database statistics. Of course, when no statistics are being created or updated, then you're in a whole lot of trouble.

And now for some shouting the lesson of today:

NEVER EVER TURN AUTO CREATE AND AUTO UPDATE STATISTICS OFF!
At least not for your SharePoint databases and especially not for your Shared Services Search database.

btw: this is a default setting, so normally you shouldn't have a problem with this. You never know of course

Keep on partying
Tom

MOSS 2007 and the Local Intranet Zone

2009-04-16T19:00:00Z

Aren't logon popup boxes annoying? Especially when you're browsing on your intranet MOSS 2007 sites? Oh common, I'm connected to the corporate network, I'm logged in to the corporate Active Directory and still I'm getting logon boxes...

Basically, this is Internet Explorer security fucking with you.
More specific: if you use a nice URL (e.g. http://portal.trycatch.be), that doesn't match your domain name (e.g. catchthis.local), then it's possible that your Internet Explorer recognizes your MOSS portal as an "Internet Site".

If you go check out your Security Settings for the Internet zone in the Internet Options (Security tab) of IE, you'll see at the bottom:
Authentication -> Automatic logon only in Intranet zone.

So, how do we do this? Two options:

You add manually your site to the Local Intranet zone, and thus providing automatic logon (with the credentials of your Windows session)
You add a group policy in Active Directory so that your MOSS site is added to everyone's Intranet zone

Of course, the second option is the way to go.

At our company, they added in the Local Intranet zone the following entry (by group policy): *.company.com
This way, all subdomains from company.com is recognized as a Local Intranet site.

BE GONE logon boxes

Grtz
Tom

What about Site Collections, webrootid and id?

2009-04-16T18:30:00Z

So, what about it?

First the basics:

For each Web Application in MOSS 2007 you have at least 1 database.
In that database you can put your Site Collections. (How to dedicate databases for Site Collections, that you can read here.)

And now in Fight Club style:

The first rule of MOSS 2007 is: you do not attach the same content database twice to the same farm
The second rule of MOSS 2007 is: you DO not attach the same content database twice to the same farm

So, why is that?

Well, every Site Collection has an ID (an ugly GUID of course). That GUID is registered in the farm's Config database. So this would mean when you attach the same database twice (after restoring it under a different name in SQL Server), you would have duplicate GUID's. And you don't want to have this. Because this will take your original site down as well.

So, what to do?

Well, when you want a Site Collection twice in MOSS 2007 (let's say a copy for testing or training purposes), you should take a backup with the stsadm commandline tool (stsadm -o backup -url http://sharepoint/sites/trycatch -filename D:\backup.bak) and then restore it to a different name (stsadm -o restore -url http://sharepoint/sites/trycatch2 -filename D:\backup.bak).

When restoring, a new ID (your ugly GUID) will be created, and so no conflict will arise in the Config database.

One problem though: It's not possible within the same database of the originating Site Collection...

So, why is that?

Every Site Collection has a SECOND ID. Known as the Webrootid. This is basically again a GUID, but this one doesn't have to be unique within the farm, but within a database. When doing the commandline restore action, NO new Webrootid will be created.

So, what to do?

When restoring a Site Collection on MOSS 2007 with a different name, be sure an extra (read > new) content database is ready for receiving Site Collections.

Conclusion

Every Site Collection has 2 GUID's. The First (the ID) has to be unique within a farm. The Second (the Webrootid) has to be unique within a database.

Cheers
Tom

ps: And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

Windows 2008 IIS 7 Kernel Mode causes bluescreens...

2009-04-16T18:15:00Z

Nowadays, for all new installations, we use Windows Server 2008. Of course this is the new OS server platform you really want to use. (I won't get started on the benefits of Windows Server 2008, I bet you can find that on the Microsoft site).

There was only one problem though. When installing MOSS 2007, sometimes *** happened. Bluescreens of death to be more specific.
It turned out to be a problem with the IIS 7.0 Kernel Mode in combination with Kerberos authentication. Of course, Kerberos is the recommended authentication method, so we use it all the time when installing MOSS 2007.

The workaround we had (the first time we encountered the problem was in October 2008) was disabling the Kernel Mode of IIS 7.0. I know, it's not a best practice, but at least the bluescreens stopped...
And to be honest, that was the primary concern of our customers. We had this one customer, were the bluescreens started a couple of days before the big launch of their public internet facing MOSS website. Even the Belgian media (newspapers, radio and television) was present for that launch. Wouldn't a bluescreen have been a big bummer...

But since the beginning of March, all these problems are solved. Microsoft provided a hotfix for Windows Server 2008 you can download here.

So, download and install the hotfix (of course, only when you're affected by the problem) and put that Kernel Mode back on.

Keep on spinning
Tom

Let's blog again...

2009-04-16T18:00:00Z

It has been extremely busy for me the last few months (due to Music, Basketball and other personal stuff) and thus I really hadn't the time to blog a lot.
So now, I'll be picking it up again.

Have fun
Tom

What about PDF iFilters for MOSS 2007? (32 and 64 bit)

2009-01-05T20:05:00Z

Huh? Aren't there already enough blogposts about PDF iFilters? Apparently not, since I receive on a regular basis lots of questions about this aspect of SharePointing. So I deceided to dedicate a small post about PDF iFilters and especially how to install them.

Free or Not?

The first topic of today is: are you willing to pay for a PDF iFilter?
Basically both options are available, on both 32bit and 64bit:

- Free: Adobe PDF iFilter 9
- Paying: Foxit PDF iFilter

So, the question is, why would you pay for something that can provided to you for free? Well, performance...
Performance tests have shown that the Foxit PDF iFilter is 4 to 5 times faster than the Adobe iFilter.
Read the test results here for 32bit and here for 64bit.

So if PDF searching one of your major issues in your environment, don't be cheap .

Installing the damn things...

Well, installing PDF iFilters are actually a piece of cake.
Foxit had provided a good (installation) manual, that you download here.

Adobe has for it's 64bit also provided a installation manual, which you can download here.

So, where's the catch?
Well, the catch is just the fact that you can't download the 32bit Adobe PDF iFilter standalone anymore. It's embedded in Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.

So, how do I do it?

Install Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 on your MOSS 2007 Index server and then catch up with the installation manual for the 64bit version.(You know, the registry changes and stuff). This will make it work perfectly.

I've tested the Adobe PDF iFilter 9 on Windows Server 2008 (both 32 and 64 bit), and I'm happy to say it works just fine. It works only slower than the paying Foxit PDF iFilter.

Have Fun
Tom

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 released :-)

2009-01-05T20:00:00Z

Old news already (but since everyone was on holiday during most of December):

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 was released on December 15.
You can download it here.

Since you're downloading anyway, don't forget to download the update version of the SQL Server 2005 Books Online. You can download this here.

I've installed SP3 already on some test environments and it seems that it's not causing any problems.
(Mmm, what was the tagline of Trycatch.be again? But it worked in the staging environment...)

Keep on trucking
Tom

I don't like the Definition Extraction feature

2008-10-03T14:05:00Z

I don't know if any of you have already met the Definition Extraction feature in MOSS 2007? This feature, described in this blogpost by my collegue Joris Poelmans, has some disadvantages.... concerning security...

As we all know (or should know), the MOSS 2007 Enterprise Search is security trimmed. Meaning a user can only see items in the search if he has read permissions on that particular content. Well, the Definition Extraction feature is NOT security trimmed... and does not take count of scope exclusion rules...

How did we found out? Well, by applying this setup:

We have a MOSS 2007 farm configured to crawl a file share. An exclusion rule was added that this content source (the fileshare) was to be excluded from the All Sites search scope.

After that we did a search using the All Sites scope:

>> No documents from the fileshare popped up, except that the Definition Extraction feature got some info out of a document like: "Trycatch is a site..."
>> When we did the same search query with a user that had no permissions whatsoever on the document containing the definition, again, the Definition Extraction feature gave the same results...

Conclusion:

The Definition Extraction:
>> ignores security
>> ignores search scopes exclusions

and thus, I don't like it at all...

Keep on spinning
Tom

ps: One personal note to finish this post. My domainname http://www.electrosucks.be is finally being used, this for my new DJ profile. Check it out if you like Electro tunes. (One mixtape online, a second one will be coming very soon)

FBA authorization fails when permission inheritance is cut

2008-10-03T14:01:00Z

I experienced the strangest thing (read: annoying) with Forms Based Authentication.

This is the scenario:

We have a SharePoint Web Application with some Site Collections on it, using Windows Authentication (for internal employees). That Web Application is extended to a second Web Application, that one using Forms Based Authentication, with the accounts residing in a SQL Server database.

This is the problem:

When we add FBA accounts to subsites that have unique permissions (so inheritance is cut from the above site or site collection), it's not possible to log in. Basically, these FBA accounts are not known on the top level Site Collection. Authentication works (you can actually see: Access Denied, logged in as user ...), but authorization doesn't...

This is the solution:

We made an extra FBA Role, containing all the FBA accounts. Then we added that role to the top level Site Collection. Of course, we didn't want users to log in to our top level site. So we created a new Permission Level, having so little permissions, that logging in wasn't possible.

From then on, everything worked like a charm.

Keep on trucking
Tom

Multilingual Mysites

2008-10-03T14:00:00Z

As I live in Belgium, coping with multilingual scenarios is pretty much a daily routine. Here we have 2 languages that are widely spoken, being Dutch and French. The consequence is that a lot of companies employ people that speak different languages.In most of those companies, English is the language for IT systems, so that's pretty easy to handle with. Others want to provide the user all the functionality of a MOSS 2007 environment in the user's own language.

This post is about the combination of languages and mysites, which provides two possibilities:

All the mysites are in the same language
The mysite is in the language of the user

Let's go over both options:

1. All the mysites are in the same language

This one is easy. When configuring the Shared Services Provider, a Mysite Provisioning Site will be created. This will be done in the installation language of you server install. Meaning, if your Central Administration is in English, the Mysite Provisioning Site will be in English. Hence, all your mysites will be in English.

If you want to change this to another language, just perform following steps:

Install the Server Language Pack of the language you require...
Go to Central Administration >> Application Management >> Delete Site Collection
Delete the Mysite Provisioning Site Collection
Go to Central Administration >> Application Management >> Create Site Collection
Create a new Mysite Provisioning Site Collection selecting the wanted language (with the same name and managed path as the deleted one)

That's it, from now on, all your mysites will be in the language you desire...

2. The mysite is in the language of the user

Perform following steps:

Install all the Server Language Packs required (here in Belgium, this would be: Dutch, French and German)
Go to the Shared Services Administration site, to MySite Settings
Check the box for "Allow user to choose the language of their personal site" and click OK

When a user creates is mysite, he will be presented a dropdown box, with all the possible languages.
Watch out though, once created, a site cannot switch languages anymore...

Keep on DJ-ing

Tom