My biggest mistake with SharePoint

A long, long time ago when I first started getting into SharePoint I installed just about every addon I could find (yes, I was an out of control addict I admit it). One these was the Groupboard Workspace 2007.

Since then it has been the bane of my existence. It has caused no end of problems with the SharePoint box I installed it on. It has cause numerous patches to crash. It has prevent the box being migrated to SharePoint 2010 and worst of all even when I uninstalled it, it remains as the screen below shows.

At the end of the day I’m going to have to probably migrate the data manually using templates and Office applications. After that I’m going to incinerate the box it is installed on and throw the ashes to the wind.

In short? Don’t install it on Windows SharePoint.

Too much SQL

On my SBS 7 (a.k.a. Windows 2011 Standard), I’ve been testing some SharePoint functionality of late as you can see from recent posts. I do so on a virtualized server to allow me to easily and quickly roll backwards and forwards. As such I try and run these machines a lean as possible because there is only limited RAM.

One of the most common memory hogs is SQL which, by default, has no memory cap. This means that it consumes as much as it can. Using the SQL Management Studio you can go in and set a limit to keep it under control. On SBS 7 (a.k.a. SBS 2011 Standard) I did this for the sharepoint and sbsmonitoring instances which both run on SQL Server 2008 Express R2 (settings it to 256MB). Problem was, when I started getting sluggish performance I found that I had 3 SQL instances running and one was exceeding the memory limit I had set. What the hell?

As you can see from the following screen shot, on the right is task manager displaying the three sqlservr.exe instances (sqlservr.exe), with two at the top of my memory consumption values. Now I know one is sharepoint and the other is sbsmonitoring but what is the third one? And why is running at a value above what I limited it to (at 341,828K)?

To find out what’s going on I add the PID column to task manager so I can see the culprit is process 3188. Then at the command prompt I run tasklist /svc (which is displayed on the left) and discover that task 3188 belongs to mssql$microsoft##ssee! This is the embedded edition of SQL Server 2005. What ….would….that…be…running…. Of course, WSUS!

Much to my amazement Windows Server Update Services on SBS 7 (a.k.a. Windows 2011 Standard) is still using SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition. That means another version of SQL installed on the server. That means another program that needs to be updated in the future. That means, as you can see, another SQL application which you’ll have to limit memory on.

I can understand perhaps why SQL 2005 Embedded Edition remains, it has unlimited database sizes unlike the SQL 2008 Express R2 version which is also on the machine and limited to 10GB databases. However, even though WSUS in theory could get >10GB does that really warrant not running WSUS on SQL Express R2 and doing away with the Embedded Edition? Surely some sort of warning mechanism could be created is the WSUS databases approach 10GB in some rare circumstance.

This indicates to me that SBS 7 (a.k.a. SBS 2011 Standard) is simply a progressive upgrade to SBS 2008 (i.e. more like SBS 2008 R2). Out of the box it is going to try and consume as much memory as it can for the three SQL instances installed by default (sharepoint, sbsmonitoring and WSUS). Unless these are trimmed they are going to affect performance. Again, after all this time I still can’t understand why there is no wizard to allow you to limited the memory of the SQL instances (maybe I just haven’t found it?).

To me this adds more complexity to the next release of on site SBS. It increases its maintenance due to the different versions of SQL installed (i.e. more patches). It increases its complexity and makes it harder for the average person to optimize. It also means that out of the box it is potentially going to be a memory hog and therefore have its performance degraded and potentially turn people away from it as solution. This has always been one of the downsides of SBS, running so much on one box. In this case, I honestly believe that one application (SQL 2005 Embedded Edition) could have been removed.

Search Server Story Sequel

In a recent post I detailed how on SBS 7 I needed to know the SharePoint farm passphrase to allow the completion of the SharePoint Configuration Wizard that the following dialog warns you about just prior to uninstalling Search Server Express:

A few people let me know that there is in fact a way to set the password using PowerShell. One such example is:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/raresm/archive/2010/05/26/easy-farm-passphrase-recovery.aspx

which says all you need to do at the powershell script console is run:

$passphrase = ConvertTo-SecureString -asPlainText -Force
Set-SPPassPhrase -PassPhrase $passphrase –Confirm

Yep, great but in this case, after Search Server Express has been removed you get:

Thus, the ability to set the SharePoint passphrase only works if SharePoint is properly configured, which after the removal of Search Server Express it isn’t!

So the advice seems to be, at least with what I’ve seen on SBS 7, is that once you have SBS 7 all running go in and use the above powershell script and set the SharePoint passphrase to something you know to avoid the situation I detailed in the previous blog where you need configure SharePoint Foundation 2010. Because unless you know the passphrase you won’t be able to re-configure the farm, all you can do is rebuild it and migrate the data and that is messy by any standards.

I have successfully confirmed that by setting the SharePoint passphrase prior to removing Search Server Express and running the SharePoint Configuration Wizard does allow you to complete the wizard and get companyweb back. You still need to do a little more configuration on SharePoint Search after that, but in my testing you can get SharePoint fully operational again, that is PROVIDED you know the passphrase ahead of time!

Search Server Story

So I’ve been playing with the beta of SBS 7 specifically looking at SharePoint 2010 Foundation. At the moment I’m concentrating on search and I have an interesting story to tell you.

Out of the box SBS 7 (Beta) comes with SharePoint Foundation 2010. If you upload a document to a document library (in this case a Word document) and wait for it to be indexed you can search on information inside that document.

Ss you can from the above I’ve uploaded my Word document to SharePoint, if I now use the default SharePoint Foundation 2010 search (after waiting enough time for the document to be indexed) and search for something I know appears in the document like the word ‘understand’ say, this is what I expect to see.

Ok, all fine and dandy. As expected my document appears. Take special note of what the search results screen looks like because things are about to change.

One of the unsung products from Microsoft is Search Server Express 2010 which is a free download and allows you to index not only SharePoint but also Exchange Public Folders, network shares and other web sites. I honestly can’t understand why it hasn’t been already added to SBS but alas it hasn’t. However, if I do download and install it on my SBS 7 server, configure it appropriately and run exactly the same search I see:

Same result but differ display. This is the result of Search Server Express being installed. Now some people claim that to allow indexing of PDF you MUST install Search Server Express 2010. As I demonstrated in a previous post, with out further configuration this just isn’t true.

Let’s now say that you installed Search Server Express 2010 in this mistaken belief it will index PDFs. You find that it doesn’t so you decided to uninstall it. You go into Control Panel, Add/Remove programs, Search Server Express 2010, click, click, click… until it is all gone. You now try and view your companyweb site and you see:

Oh dear. Not good. Now no SharePoint! You however remember as you were madly clicking to uninstall Search Server Express 2010 that a message popped up saying that you might have to run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard after Search Server had been removed. You run the wizard and you reach a point where it asks you:

You know that your SharePoint data is already there (somewhere) so it is probably not a good idea to create a new server farm so you go with the first option to Connect to an existing server farm.

You now see:

You know that the SQL instance that runs SharePoint on SBS 7 is called server_name\sharepoint (well now you do!). You enter that in for your server and press the button to Retrieve Database Names and amazingly the SharePoint config database automatically appears. Feeling good you continue and are greeted with:

As the window says – ‘This passphrase is used to secure farm configuration data and REQUIRED for each server that joins the farm.’

So what’s the passphrase? You’d know that if YOU installed SharePoint wouldn’t you but you didn’t install it did you? It was already preinstalled on SBS 7. So who did that? Microsoft. So does Microsoft know the password? Good question. Is it documented somewhere? Even better question. Not that I can find.

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t seem to have a happy ending now does it?

December update of SharePoint Guide

Subscribers to my Windows SharePoint Guide can now access the latest updates from the subscription site (now running under SharePoint 2010). This month some of the additions include:

– Follow through of Microsoft install method on SBS 2008
– Installation and configuration of Microsoft Online SharePoint (BPOS)
– SBS 2008 SharePoint Exchange server configuration

Also, all subscribers get automatic free access to my recently released eBook:

Windows SharePoint Masterclass: Optimizing Search

I am now working on the next title in the Windows SharePoint Masterclass series which will focus on databases operations. That is, it will provide you with a wealth of information about installing, maintaining, configuring and troubleshooting the Microsoft SQL Server versions used by Windows SharePoint. I expect to have it out very early in the New Year, so stay tuned.

The poor step child

Unfortunately, in the world of SharePoint Foundation 2010 not all file types are created equal. Here is an example.

I have saved two identical documents to my SharePoint Foundation 2010 site. One is a Word 2007 document (i.e. docx format) the other is an Adobe Acrobat document (i.e. PDF). Both are pretty standard right? Well, one is certainly a second class citizen as far as SharePoint is concerned. Can you guess which one?

Here are the two documents in my document library. You can clearly see which one is the Word document because of the little file icon but alas, note that the Acrobat document has no file icon so you really aren’t sure what type of file it is. This can be rectified with some configuration but is not so out of the box.

If I click on the Word document (and I have Word on my system) the document opens. If I click on the Acrobat document (and I have Acrobat on my system) I see.

Ahhh..where’s the option to open the file? Guess what? That’s also not enabled by default.

To enable this you need to go into the SharePoint Central Administration, under Manage Web Applications you select the Web Application and then General Settings (easy eh?).

Half way down the list change the Browser File Handling from Strict to Permissive.

Now when you click on a PDF in SharePoint 2010 Foundation it will open in a browser window so you can view it.

Note that in this document (and the identical Word one) is the term ‘collaboration’. How about we perform a search for this in SharePoint?

After ensuring that indexing is running and that we have indexed all the SharePoint content we run a search for the term ‘collaboration’, which we know appears in both the Word and Acrobat document.

We only get one returned result as shown above, that being the Word document, even though we know it also appears in the Acrobat document.

Apparently, the ‘solution’ to PDF indexing on SharePoint Foundation 2010 is to install Search Server Express 2010. As you can see from the above I get exactly the same result. Only one document match and again it is the Word document not the PDF.

Ah ha, you say, but Search Server Express 2010 doesn’t come configured by default to index PDF documents and you are right as you can see from the list of files Search Server Express 2010 above does index be default.

Luckily, I can configure Search Server Express 2010 to index any file type. So I add PDF as shown above, initiate a full crawl of the data and try to search again.

Again, same result no PDF matches are returned.

Ah ha, you say again. You need to install the 64 bit iFilter for Acrobat to allow indexing for SharePoint Foundation 2010. Spot on once again Holmes. So I download and install that.

With that done and another full manual crawl run the result is once again.

Do an IISRESET followed by a full manual crawl – same result.

Reboot server followed by a full manual crawl – same result.

Etc, etc.

But with the wave of my magic wand, hey presto

I now have a ‘duplicates’ hyperlink which when I open I see

It now works! I end up with duplicates since it is effectively the same file and when I expand these duplicates (since I am using Search Server Express 2010 here after going to all the hassle of installing it) I see not one but TWO matches finally Amazing what you can achieve if you have my SharePoint Operation Guide eh? How much more valuable does this make SharePoint Foundation 2010 now?

The real question for me is why it is not enabled by default out of the box? Isn’t PDF a common enough format? Doesn’t having the ability to index PDF documents greatly add to the value of SharePoint? How many people are going to know to go in and ‘tweak’ SharePoint Foundation 2010 (and WSS v3 for that matter) to all PDF indexing? Most are going to call the product ‘crap’ and move on to something else because it lack what should be common functionality (at least in my opinion).

Worst of all? The configuration to do PDF indexing really isn’t that difficult to enable.

Migration by the numbers – Step 15

Step 15 (and final) 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 15 – Edit the site bindings for the companyweb site

Click Start | Administrative Tools | Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

Accept the UAC that appears.

Expand the tree under the Connections section on the left of the IIS Manager until you see SBS SharePoint under Sites and click on it.

Locate the Bindings hyperlink on the top right hand side of the screen in the Actions column. Click on Bindings.

Select the existing http item and then press Edit.

In the hostname field enter companyweb.

Press the OK button.

Click the Add button.

Change the type to https.

For the SSL certificate select remote. where is the name of your internet domain. (*Authors note – not shown here as I have not configured this on my test box).

Set the Port = 987.

Press OK to save settings.

(*Authors note – you should see something like shown above).

The installation process is now complete. You can use SharePoint 2010 Foundation on your SBS 2008 server.

Migration by the numbers – Step 14

Step 14 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 14 – Install Windows Small Business Server 2008 Update Rollup 4

In a browser visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=199703

In the search box enter 979454 and press Search.

For the item Update Rollup 4 for Windows Small Business Server 2008 (KB979454) select Add.

Click View basket.

Click Download.

Browse to a folder where you want to save the file and click Continue.

Open the location where you saved the download and open the folder called Update Rollup 4 for Windows Small Business Server 2008 (KB979454).

Double click the CAB file located there. Double click the MSP file this displays and enter a location on your disk to extract the file.

Right mouse click on this extracted file and select Apply from the menu that appears.

Note that after the process is complete you may need to complete a manual crawl of your data to update the search indexes.