Office Web Apps and SBS 7

It seems that there are issues when you try and install Office Web Apps onto SBS 7. In many cases it breaks the remote functionality in SBS. Damm. The solution is an apparent upcoming white paper from Microsoft that explains what you need to do.

Now I haven’t seen the white paper and have no idea when we are likely to see it but I am disappointed that this is happening. I know it is beta code and early in the product cycle but surely on of the major reasons to want SharePoint 2010 in the SMB space is to have the ability to install Office Web Apps.

As I said in a previous post I was seeing issues around Search Server Express 2010 and Office Web Apps on SBS 7 and that wasn’t good. In my opinion both of these products should seamlessly install on SBS 7 and I would even suggest that Search Server Express 2010 should be included on SBS 7 by default.

Alas, not the case. I’ll keep you updated with what I find now I am getting back into the swing of things but at this stage WAIT for the white paper from Microsoft on how to successfully install Office Web Apps on SBS 7.

SMBNation 2010 Fall round up

I would have liked to do a day by day blow of the conference but alas, my blog server was down so this summary will have to do.

I think that this year’s event was certainly a step up from last year’s event. Firstly, the Flamingo Hotel was a far better location. Being in the centre of the strip near all the major hotel is much better. The second major improvement was the WiFi. This year it actually worked and I never had any problems connecting to it while I was at the conference. This is really something when you think of all the people there and all the devices they were connecting to the Internet. I also think that the vendor hall was much better this year. Last year it look pretty bare given the size of the room but this year it seemed much busier.

I was a little surprised that the vendor hall was over at the end of day 2. I understand why but I think many others like me expected it to be open till the end of the conference.

As for the sessions the stand out was Dana Epp’s on hacking WiFi. I think that everyone in the room can now really appreciate how easy it is to hack even secure WiFi. It was something Dana says that he’ll never present again so it was special to actually see him take over people’s Hotmail and Gmail accounts live.

The sessions on the upcoming versions of SBS were well attended as was the MVP panel. There was plenty of stuff on the Cloud with Dave Sobel’s interactive session a very interesting argument for how Cloud solutions can really replace on-site implementations.

I didn’t get to many business session this year but heard that it was a bit of a hit and miss affair. Some were very good others left something to be desired.

As for my session (Why SharePoint is Critical to SMB), well I am happy to report that it was well attended (as much as I tried to discouraged people from attending they still did). If you want the slides from the presentation they are available at www.ciaops.com/downloads or directly from this link.

However, by far the greatest gain you can obtain from being at SMBNation is the ‘hallway networking’. There are just so many smart people here with all different business models and ways of getting results that you’d be mad if you didn’t take advantage of that. Even after the conference day, being here is an opportunity to have dinner with these people and pick their brains.

I certainly hope that I get the opportunity to return and thank Harry Brelsford and his dedicated staff for putting on such a great event.

Did ya miss me?

A few weeks ago I took some time off (as I am now committed to doing every year as part of a better work life balance) and typically the technology let me down. A few days out the power supply on my local Hyper-V machine blew and not only brought the machine down but also the UPS it was connected to. Impressive eh? Not much I could do until I returned.

Firstly, the reason that I have a local SharePoint server is that I typically need to test things at the command prompt level and most SharePoint hosting companies don’t allow this. I could host a complete server in a data centre but then it is isn’t quite the same as running a Hyper V server with different operating systems now is it? Bottom line, I maintain a single server mostly for testing purposes but it does provide content live to the web. Thus, no power supply, no blog.

Now that I have returned from my trip and SMB Nation Fall 2010 I can catch up on all those posts I didn’t do when I was away.

Stand by – normal transmission will resume shortly.

Need to Know Podcast – Episode 6

I have just released the next CIAOPS Need to Know podcast (Episode 6) with Radek Tkaczyk from VM Vault.

The details of the podcast are:

http://www.ciaops.com/n2k – Episode 6 = 47MB (50 mins)

or via direct download:

http://bit.ly/cia-n2k6

Radek and I chat about the Virtualization, what’s new with VM Ware and more.

So let me know what you think and if you are interested on being on the show please also contact me (director@ciaops.com) as I am always looking for people to talk about business and technology.

Stay tuned as there plenty of great episodes coming real soon.

Not again

I’ve been doing some testing with SharePoint Foundation 2010 on the SBS 7 preview and found that Office Web Apps installed and worked fine. However, I found that I couldn’t install Office Web Apps AND Search Server Express 2010 together on SBS 7.

The above screen shot is where I have tried to install Search Server Express 2010 with Office Web Apps already installed on SBS 7. No go. Remove Office Web Apps and Search Server Express 2010 goes on fine. Try Office Web Apps after Search Server Express 2010 no go again!

Now I have successfully installed Office Web Apps and Search Server Express 2010 on a stand alone version of SharePoint 2010 Foundation so the issue has to be something to do with the way that SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed on SBS 7.

This reminds me of the drama I had a while back getting Search Server 2008 to run on SBS 2008. It took a looooooong time to work that one out and I certainly hope this won’t be the case here. I have submitted the suggestion to have Search Server 2010 added to the default install of SBS 7 (as it is free anyway). Hopefully that will bring this issue to notice of the SBS team and at the very worst allow Search Server 2010 and Office Web Apps to work in tandem on SBS 7.

It is still early days for SBS 7 but I hope it gets resolved before the release of SBS 7 because it would be a major disappointment to see another SBS version that doesn’t easily allow the installation of Search Server Express 2010 with all the features SharePoint 2010 (read Office Web Apps) offers.

Back to the lab.

Migration by the numbers – Step 6

Step 6 in a series of posts documenting the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 upgrade process on SBS 2008. This is based on the document:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2dc66a0f-f840-4b29-93d3-13db70c85cba&;;displayLang=en

Previous steps:

Step 6 – Install Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 in Farm mode

This step commences by instructing you to download SQL Express 2008 SP1 from:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186795

so here’s where my opinion differs from what is the document (even though these posts are following the Microsoft document, you’ll get the added “bonus” of my opinion along the way). I reckon your be better off downloading and installing SQL Express 2008 R2 with the Management Studio from:

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9729747

Why?

1. SQL Express 2008 R2 has a 10GB database size limit rather than a 4GB limit with SQL Express 2008.

2. You are going to need the SQL Management Studio installed on there anyway so do it all in one hit which is what the Microsoft document recommends). If you do this you’ll need to remove the SQL Express 2005 Management studio first.

We now return you to the program already in progress ….

After download SQL Express 2008 run the file as an administrator. The installation files will be expanded to your hard disk.

When the SQL installation splash screen appears select the Installation option from the left hand menu (under Planning). Then select New SQL standalone installation or add features to an existing installation on the right (top option).

The installation will commence and some prerequisite files will be installed.

Next you move through the licensing screen. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Next, you’ll need to accept the EULA.

Now some support files will be installed. This is basically the SP1 files that allow SQL 2008 to run on Windows Server 2008.

You should then see a summary like so,

Yup, you shouldn’t run SQL server on a domain controller but this is SBS so we don’t have a choice. You should only have warning messages here so continue along.

Select Database Engine at a minimum. If you are installing a package that includes the Management Studio there will be option here that you should check to install that. You’ll be doing it later so that’s why I reckon its better to do it now but ….

Now you need to name your SQL instance. Another interesting point here. The Microsoft document says that you should call it Express, even though it is normally set to SQLEXPRESS by default. So strictly speaking you need to go in there and change it. Microsoft’s thinking was probably to try and avoid clashing with another potential SQL instance called SQLEXPRESS already on the box.

Anyway, whatever you call your SQL instance make sure you remember what it is called.

If there is enough disk space for the install you should see a green tick and be able to continue.

Here is where you set the service account for your instance. The Microsoft document warns you that it needs to be running as a domain account. There are all sorts of security and least privilege arguments that can be made here but we are focusing on the process here so press the button Use the same account for all SQL Server services and enter a ‘suitable’ account.

You should see the top row completed with account you just entered. Continue on.

Leave the Authentication mode set to Windows authentication but press the button at Add Current User (normally a domain admin account) as an SQL Server administrator.

Leave both of these option unchecked and move along.

The process runs a few more checks and let’s you know if there are any problems. If not time to install.

One last summary screen. Looks good to me, go for it – press Install.

Files get copied to your system and the configured using the options you just selected. This installation process may take a while ( several minutes ) depending on the speed of your machine.

Green is good. Installation success! Yeah.

One last window of notes but everything is still green. SQL Express 2008 is now on our SBS 2008 system. Now for SharePoint Foundation Server 2010.

Fire up the SharePoint Foundation 2010 installation program again (you downloaded this in a previous step) and select option to Install software prerequisites.

Even though this has been run before we run it again to ensure everything required for SharePoint Foundation 2010 is on your system.

Accept the terms of the license and continue.

If everything is on the system as it should be you should get the all clear very quickly.

After returning to the splash screen select Install SharePoint Foundation and awwwwaaaayyyy we go.

Accept another license agreement and Continue.

Determine where the installation will go. By default this will be C: drive.

Now you should see the bar move across the screen as SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed. It never moves fast enough it? if I had a dollar for every one of these I’ve watched over the years ….

Leave the Run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard now checked and continue.

You are now cordially invited to the installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010 on your SBS 2008 server. Do you wish to continue? I’ve come this far haven’t I? So yes, Continue.

Warning Will Robinson, warning your IIS and SharePoint services will be shut down during this wizard. Don’t forget that IIS is used for a number of other things that may interrupt users. If you have sent all your users home or just don’t care about users (I like your style), then Continue.

Select Create a new server farm as there is not yet any SharePoint on this server.

Now here’s where you need to connect to the SQL instance you created earlier. In the case of this Microsoft document the instance is will be EXPRESS or more correctly \EXPRESS.

Complete all the details including the user name with the domain prefix (i.e. \) and Continue. Typically you use the same account which you are installing the product with and made an SQL administrator earlier.

Enter a complex password for securing SharePoint configuration. You’d need this if you ever expanded beyond a single SharePoint server (which you can do).

You can specify the port at on which the SharePoint Central Administration web site appears if you want (say port 5555) but generally you leave this blank. Also leave the authentication set to NTLM and continue.

A final summary screen. Looks good, let’s Continue.

Off the wizard goes to complete its 10 steps.

At the end you will hopefully get a successful configuration. After you press Finish a browser will now open.

Select whether you wish to participate in the Customer Experience and press OK.

What more wizards? This is worse than Oz!

Now here’s where I diverge from the Microsoft document again. I can’t see why you need to use the wizard to create a new default SharePoint site when you are only going to delete it in an upcoming step. If it was me I’d Cancel the wizard, but that’s not what the Microsoft says and that’s not what we are going to do here, so click your heels together and the Start the Wizard button Dorothy and let’s Continue.

Select a service account for SharePoint. Again, don’t forget to consider security here. Leave the bottom two services checked and Continue.

Some thinking time….

Give the new SharePoint site a name. It doesn’t really matter as you are going to delete it soon.

What the heck, make it a Team Site.

After some more processing finally all done. Phew.

Upon clicking finish you’ll be taken to the SharePoint Central Administration web site. It should look all new and flashy like shown above.

If you type the name of the server into the URL of your browser you should see a SharePoint Foundation 2010 web site. Note this is not yet Companyweb but at least you know SharePoint 2010 is now working on your SBS 2008 server!