SharePoint supported systems

I pulled the following table from a post in the SharePoint Team blog.

Looking at the table I note the following:

– SharePoint 2010 is apparently not supported on Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation, Windows Server 2008 Foundation, Windows Web Server 2008 R2 and Windows Web Server 2008!

I’ve always touted Foundation or Web Server as a great option for a stand alone version of Windows SharePoint in a small business network. That way you can have something that is isolated and more easily upgraded. That concept now appears to be blown out of the window. It means that if you want a stand alone version of SharePoint 2010 Foundation on a network you need to install a full Windows Standard 2008 server or better.

I wonder why that is? Will Windows SharePoint Foundation actually not run on these servers or is it just not licensed to run on these servers? I can certainly test it with Windows Server 2008 Web Edition but given that Windows Foundation Server 2008 is an OEM product it is going to make it difficult.

Whatever the reason according to this you can’t use the low end version of Windows Server to run SharePoint 2010 Foundation in a network. That is a real bummer to say the least.

– SharePoint 2010 is supported on Window Small Business Server 2008. I have tried an upgrade from SharePoint v3 to SharePoint 2010 on Small Business Server 2008 and am yet to have any luck. It maybe supported on the platform (which is just Windows Server Standard 2008 anyway) but will it actually install? Seemingly another good question.

– What about Windows Home Server? I reckon I can guess the answer to this one, again unsupported. Interesting that it doesn’t rate a mention even though the next version of Windows Home Server will be 64 bit and based on Windows Server 2008 Standard (from my understanding).

Based on my previous experience with SharePoint on Windows Home Server, I’ll almost bet that SharePoint 2010 will install but as Microsoft says, it will be unsupported.

I have to admit I am pretty disappointed that SharePoint 2010 Foundation will not be supported on Windows Server Foundation 2008 flavour because my checking found that SharePoint v3 was supported on Windows Server Foundation 2003. What’s changed here so dramatically that SharePoint 2010 Foundation can’t run on Foundation 2008 server? Microsoft have already knobbled SharePoint 2010 Foundation by changing the database from SQL Embedded Edition to SQL Express Edition (which means a 4GB database limit). This is yet another hurdle they are forcing the product to overcome.

This illustrates how much value the current free version of Windows SharePoint v3 is. By default, it doesn’t have a database size limit and will run on Foundation 2003 server. However, what’s going to happen if you eventually can upgrade the Windows SharePoint v3 that is currently on SBS 2008 to Windows SharePoint 2010 Foundation that has a database >4GB? Oh fun and games.

Webinar preview available

You will find the first 8 minutes of today’s CIAOPS SharePoint and Office webinar posted up on YouTube.

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http://www.youtube.com/v/B3DcWaH9M_c?hl=en&hd=1“;” alt=””>

SharePoint and Office webinar (preview)

If you missed out on the webinar and would like to view a copy the full download is available upon request. For those who aren’t subscribers to the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide there is a small fee ($10) which can be paid via http://donation.ciaops.com. Once we have confirmation of payment we will make the video available. All subscribers to the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide receive this and all our webinars free for the duration of their subscription.

We also have a number of free webinars you can download if you want to get a feel for the style and content of our presentations:

Introduction to SharePoint – http://rapidshare.com/files/312292856/091112.avi

Basics of using SharePoint – http://rapidshare.com/files/312282952/091126.avi

there are also others available for download including:

Basics of SharePoint Administration

SharePoint Questions and Answers 1

which are available upon payment ($10) again through http://donation.ciaops.com.

If you wish to be informed of when new webinars will be available please sign up to the CIAOPS webinar email subscription list.

If you have any feedback on the webinars, suggestions, or topic suggestions please don’t hesitate to email director@ciaops.com.

Just checking

After finally working out how to install SQL Server 2008 onto Windows Server 2008 R2 I thought I’d try and take the SQL Server 2008 disk from SBS 2008 Premium and see if I could install that version of SQL Server onto a Windows Server 2008 R2. Of course this is not at all supported by the licensing but I just wanted to see whether it was possible.

Well, the short answer is that it isn’t, as you can see from the above screen shot. During the installation the SQL Server setup detects that the SBS 2008 SQL Server version should only be installed on Windows Server 2008 not Windows Server 2008 R2.

Just in case you ever wanted to know.

Installing SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2

I was recently installing SharePoint v3 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine using SQL Server 2008 for database storage when I came up with a problem.

Now that’s interesting, I thought, SQL Server 2008 has issues running on Windows Server 2008 R2. The latest version of SQL has problems on the latest version of Windows Server. Go figure. No major issue, I mistakenly thought, I’ll just follow what it says to do on the Compatibility Assistant and I should be right. Famous last words.

Turns out that even when you install SQL Server Service Pack 1 directly after installing SQL Server 2008 you can’t get access to the SQL instance on the machine. I did some Googling and came up with the following article which provided the resolution:

http://wadingthrough.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/problem-installing-sql-server-2008-on-windows-2008-r2/

So what I’ll do here is go into the resolution in a little more depth for people.

Before installing SQL Server 2008 RTM on Windows Server 2008 R2 you need to install SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 as this will install updated SQL Setup Files which “know” about Windows Server 2008 R2. So download the service pack and double click on the download to start the install.

Follow the installation through and allow the Setup Support files to install after which the Service Pack installation will exit and you will be returned to the desktop. Now commence the SQL Server 2008 RTM install.

You will receive the same compatibility warning you always receive.

Simply click on Run program to proceed. You can now install SQL Server 2008 RTM as you normally would from the menu.

During the install you may again be prompted about compatibility issues but just continue through until the installation of SQL Server 2008 is complete.

Once the installation of SQL Server 2008 is complete you need to install the SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 to update all the SQL files (you only did the setup files before).

With SQL Server 2008 RTM and SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 now installed, your installation on Windows Server 2008 R2 should be good to go.

Just an observation

A while back I tried to do an in place upgrade of my http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au SharePoint site to SharePoint Foundation server beta. It didn’t go very well as I noted in this blog.

An in place upgrade is not the only migration option you have in SharePoint, you can do a database migration, which I have found to be generally the best way to go from SharePoint v2 to SharePoint v3. I thought that I’d be able to the same thing from v3 to SharePoint Foundation, however as you can see from the above screen shot the upgrade failed again.

It is interesting to note that my http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au isn’t a very complicate SharePoint site. It has a few standard Microsoft templates but nothing else really. Given that I haven’t been able to easily upgrade it worries me a bit that upgrading existing SharePoint v3 sites to SharePoint foundation is going to be more difficult that has been made out.

Back to the drawing board.

Shared OneNote notebooks

For those who have not as yet experienced the joy of OneNote I’d suggest you give it a try. You can download a 60 day free trial from:

http://us20.trymicrosoftoffice.com/default.aspx?culture=en-US

Basically, OneNote is a digital notebook that allows you to save just about any form of digital information. You can use it to save text, images, web sites, files and more.

You can even print to OneNote from any application and send information directly from Internet Explorer and Outlook. Best of all, any information in OneNote is not only backed up but it is also indexed, which means you can search through all your notes quickly and easily.

Now this isn’t a blog post on the benefits of OneNote it is about how you can connect OneNote to SharePoint to provide shared notebook access. This enables a single notebook to be shared between multiple people. If you have a SharePoint site that is hosted on the Internet you can share this information between people just about anywhere.

So how do you go about doing that? First you’ll need to have a SharePoint site with a document library people can get access to. I normally like to create a separate OneNote document library to keep all the OneNote files together but there is no need to do that. You’ll also need to have OneNote installed on every machine that you wish to access the notebooks with.

Once you have all that in place and have launch OneNote complete the following to create a new notebook.

Select File | New | Notebook from the menu.

Give the new notebook a name and select a OneNote template.

To allow a shared notebook select the Multiple people will share the notebook option and then On a server.

In the path field enter the URL of your SharePoint document library.

If SharePoint is hosted on the Internet you will need to logon to the site.

The new notebook should appear. Now all any other user needs to do to connect and share the notebook is launch OneNote on their local machine and open the notebook from the URL you used to create the notebook.

Next time you open OneNote you will see some text at the top of the notebook indicating that you need to login to get the latest updates to the file. Simply click on this link and enter your login details. Any changes will then be automatically sync’ed.

If you don’t have a hosted SharePoint site you can still achieve the same result using Office Live. Information about how to configure that can be found in a free document I created a while back which can be found at – http://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/onenote-and-office-live.

The good thing about sync’ing OneNote is that not only do you retain a local copy but there is always an offsite backup. So you can keep using OneNote on the road and when you connect back to the Internet all changes in all notebooks are synchronized. It makes it a very easy process for any team collaboration.

So there you are. If you haven’t looked at OneNote I’d recommend you do and if you can link it to SharePoint to provided shared notebook access I’m confident that it’ll prove a winner with most teams.

CIAOPS email lists

The facts are that most people still prefer email to other forms of information delivery, be they Twitter, Facebook, blogs and so on. In recognition of that fact I’ve create two mailing lists that people can use to keep up to date with what’s on offer from the CIAOPS.

1. CIAOPS Webinars

Subscribing to this list will keep you up to date on when we run our regular webinars. Emails will be sent prior to each webinar so you have plenty of time to indicate your interest. You can also visit the archive of these webinar announcements at any stage also. If you haven’t seen any of our webinars head over to the CIAOPS You Tube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/directorciaops) for some examples.

2. CIAOPS Newsletter

We announced this a while back but it seems appropriate to once again provide people with the details of how to obtain our regular newsletter. The newsletter is aiming to come out each month with technology information and productivity tips aimed at helping you get things done. You can also view the archive of these emails as well at any time.

Information about the webinars and the newsletter will still be published here, so if you are a regular reader of the blog then there is probably no need to sign up for either. However, if you know of anyone else who may benefit from what we offer via these emails lists then I’d ask you to send the link and get them to sign up.