Tag: SharePoint

SharePoint Foundation 2010 storage


On of the major issues I see arising around any migration to SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the size of the content databases. The reason is that out of the box SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed with SQL Server 2008 Express which has a 4GB database size limit. This is a pain because Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSS v3) came with SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition (#SSEE) which had an unlimited database size (even though it had other limitations).

Many of the WSS v3 implementations on SBS I have seen have now grown beyond 4GB, so what’s your options if you want to upgrade to SharePoint Foundation 2010? The first was to use SQL Server 2008 Express R2 which has a database size limit of 10GB and is a free download from Microsoft. This does require manually installation prior to the installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010 as well as manual set of SharePoint 2010. However, even 10GB I can see potentially being restrictive for some of the larger Companyweb deployments.

Beyond 10GB the only option that I thought was to upgrade to a full version of SQL (i.e. Workgroup, Standard, etc) but that means shelling out money. I have however now found an option that will support databases up to 16GB for free. That method is using Remote BLOB storage.

Basically, you can install SQL Express 2008 R2, then install Remote BLOB storage and then upgrade the databases. The process is detailed in this TechNet article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ff628258.aspx – Upgrade a stand-alone installation on a domain controller by using Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) (database attach)

I haven’t tried it but it doesn’t seem much more difficult that installing an extra piece of software on the server and running an upgrade command. So where did I get the 16GB limit that Remote Blob Storage will support? Here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ff628569.aspx – Plan for remote BLOB storage (RBS) (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

where it says:

If the content databases are larger than 16 GB, you must purchase Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Cumulative Update 2, or SQL Server 2005 with SP3 and Cumulative Update 3 to support the databases instead of remaining on a free version of SQL Server.

I don’t quite see why you ‘must’ purchase an upgraded versions of SQL Server but I’ll take Microsoft at their word until I can test this further.

So there you have it. From what I can determine the largest content database you can run with on SharePoint Foundation 2010 is 16GB after which you’ll need to pay for a full version of SQL server.

PDF icons in SharePoint Foundation 2010

After creating a complete video for Windows SharePoint Operation Guide subscribers on how to not only index PDF documents but also add a PDF icon in SharePoint Foundation 2010 I thought that what I’d do was take the part about creating PDF icons and make it public. So that’s what I’ve just gone and done and posted on YouTube.

Installing Acrobat PDF icon into SharePoint Foundation 2010

 

The process is pretty similar to what it was in WSS v3 except you need to use \14.0\ instead of \12.0\ in the registry and directory hives. However, this video should at least show you how to make the chance so the PDF icons will now appear next to Acrobat documents in SharePoint 2010 like so:

 

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SharePoint Foundation and PDFs video

For subscribers to my Guide I have created a 30 minute video that shows you step by step how to index PDFs with SharePoint Foundation 2010. The video also shows you how to display a PDF icon in SharePoint Foundation 2010 rather than just the generic one.

 

This video is the companion to the recently added chapters to the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide. What I am trying to do now is to create a video for every major component of the Guide because most people haven’t got the time to dedicate to learning the details. So providing a video is a quick way to get a good overview of the topic and then there is always the normal Guide to fall back on to get the exact details and screenshots of what needs to be done.

 

I have uploaded the video to humyo.com but for what I can work out I need to individually share it, which is a bit of a pain. So for the time bring if any subscriber wants access just email email me (director@ciaops.com) and I’ll make it available. Going forward I’m still looking for a good way to store and share video (and large files) via an individual login. If you have a suggestion I’d love to hear about it.

 

The next video I’ll be working on will take you through the process of migrating WSS v3 databases to SharePoint Foundation 2010. I’ll be doing this on SBS 2008 so that base also gets covered as well. Look out for that video soon.

 

Remember that I have now included videos like those mentioned above in both the Migration and SBS packs (if relevant). Thus, if you don’t believe the complete Guide is a worthwhile investment for your SBS world then the SBS Pack now includes not only SharePoint Foundation 2010 information and video tutorials.

 

More information about the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide can be found at www.wssops.com.

Update of WSSOPS SBS Pack

A while back I created two additional products that were a subset of my full Windows SharePoint Operations Guide (www.wssops.com). These were the Migration Pack (Chapter 7) and the SBS Pack (Chapters 4,7,11). My thinking was that they would prove popular because they were much cheaper but still had the same information as that found in the full Guide.

 

Alas, these ‘Packs’ have never proved popular at all for some strange reason. In all honesty I was simply going to pull them and focus on the full product but I have a change of heart and will give them a temporary reprieve. What I will do is include the SharePoint Foundation 2010 chapters of the Guide as well with these ‘Packs’. Thus, if you buy the Migration Pack you’ll not only receive Chapter 7 from the Windows SharePoint v3 Guide but also from the SharePoint Foundation 2010 Guide. Likewise with the SBS Pack. I will also include any of the relevant videos for these chapters, thus for the SBS Pack purchasers will get access to my 3 part series showing you how to install SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008.

 

Given the focus that SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008 is generating I’m hoping that there will be demand for these products. So for less than $90 you can not only get documentation on Windows SharePoint v3 on SBS but also SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS including video tutorials.

 

For further information on all the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide products and versions, including plenty of free stuff as well and how to purchase the products, visit www.wssops.com.

August Guide Update

I’ve just completed the update of my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide (www.wssops.com) for subscribers to download. This month has a number of updates that I think will be valuable to people looking at SharePoint 2010.

 

Firstly, there is information about migrating your Windows SharePoint v3 (WSS v3) data into SharePoint 2010. This comes on the back of last month’s addition of how to get SharePoint Foundation 2010 running on SBS 2008. If you have large content databases (around the 10GB or more mark) then you may have some real decisions to make as SQL 2008 Express R2 (which is free) only supports databases up to 10GB. It is a real pity that SharePoint 2010 can no longer, by default, take advantage of the SQL Server Embedded Edition which had no database size.

 

Secondly, there is information about getting Acrobat PDF indexing working with SharePoint Foundation 2010. Another disappointment that this is not supported out of the box and an even bigger disappointment that it is more work to get it running now. Hopefully a better solution will present itself in the future but for now at least subscribers can get it working if they want.

 

So what’s on the cards for next month with the Guide? At this stage I think I’ll turn my attention to documenting how to get Search Server Express 2010 and Office Web Apps running with SharePoint Foundation 2010. I’ll also be doing some videos on the migration and PDF indexing process as well. Going forward, I’ll be attempting to do videos for all the topics that I cover which will hopefully add more value for subscribers. This way they can watch the video and use the documentation for further reference.

 

I’m always interested to hear what people would like to see included in my guide so if you have a suggestion, I’m all ears.

The PDF Project

Now that I have SharePoint Foundation 2010 running on SBS 2008 my next project is to get it to index Adobe PDF’s because guess what? It doesn’t by default!

Windows SharePoint Services v3, WSS v3, (i.e. the old Companyweb on SBS 2008) wouldn’t either but you could install an Adobe PDF iFilter, make a few registry changes and get it working (all the details are in my Guide). Interestingly, my hosted SharePoint site also doesn’t index PDFs. When I asked the hosting company about this they said they were looking in to it. I suppose that allowing SharePoint to index PDF’s is not ‘standard’ but without it is a significant drop in functionality I believe.

After doing a bit of reading on the Internet I couldn’t really find anyone that has definitively been able to get PDF’s indexed on SharePoint Foundation 2010. Once again this means that I’ll have to nut it out myself.

The first step in the process would be to install the 64 bit PDF iFilter from Adobe because no PDF’s will be indexed with out this. Again, make sure you install the 64bit version and to my knowledge there is no 64 bit version of Acrobat reader so if you simply install Acrobat reader on your SBS 2008 server you’ll only get the 32 not 64 bit version. Thus the specific need for the 64 bit iFilter.

The next step was to make similar registry changes that are made when you get PDF indexing going on WSS v3. The only thing to be aware is that the hive is now \14\ not \12\ but the rest of the registry path is the same. So I made these changes, stopped and started SharePoint Search Server v14 service, did a full manual crawl and did a search for terms that only appeared in PDF documents on my SharePoint Foundation 2010 site. No luck.

When I returned to examine one of the registry entries I found that it was missing. Hmmm..I re-did the entry and went through the search restart and crawl process. Still no good but again the registry entry was missing! Now that is interesting. It appears that when you restart the SharePoint Foundation Search V4 service it rewrites this registry entry. Ok, now where is it getting that from?

After some more digging it turns out that the entries in the registry actually come from a database in the SharePoint Foundation 2010 search database. So what I did was create an additional entry in this database for the registry entry that I wanted and again restarted all the services. Still no luck but at least the required registry entry for PDF’s was there.

My next guess on what was wrong was the specific GUID for the PDF iFilter which I guessed was now different from what it was in WSS v3. So I took a working WSS v3 installation and searched for all registry entries that matched the WSS v3 PDF GUID. From these I found a common string being ‘PDF iFilter’. I then searched the registry on the machine with SharePoint Foundation 2010 for the string ‘PDF iFilter’.

I turned up quite a few GUID’s but after comparing these to articles I found on the Internet I determined that the correct GUID is in fact
{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}. I inserted that into the registry in the appropriate place, restarted all the search services again and ran a search.

Joy of joy’s, it works! Now I gotta say that most people probably don’t want to hacking the SharePoint search database just to get PDF’s to index on SharePoint 2010 but as far as I can see this is really the only option they have. I’m going to keep looking for a better solution but with the registry keys getting overwritten on each Search service restart it isn’t going to be simple.

So there you have it. You can index PDF’s with SharePoint Foundation 2010 but the process is not straight forward at all and is not a supported option at all. However, for those that really need to work it can be done. Full details and a step by step guide of how to do this will be added to my Guide for subscribers.

SharePoint site migrated

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As you can see from the above screen shot I have managed to migrate my public facing SharePoint site (http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au) into SharePoint 2010. I tried this a number of ways (in place migration, database swing, etc) all with abject failure. The most likely reason was a number of additional features and templates that I’ve added over time.

 

This time I used stsadm –o backup to save a complete copy of the site and then used ststadm –o restore to recover the site to a new clean SharePoint v3 installation. From there I did a database swing migration across to SharePoint 2010 which finally resulted in success.

 

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That migration also migrated the blog that you are now viewing but as the screen shot above shows I don’t think it is as nice as what I have in SharePoint v3. So at this stage I think I’ll leave the existing site as it is until I can ‘tart’ SharePoint 2010 up a little. However, what this experience has shown me is that the quickest way to do a migration (and strip away the incompatibilities) seems to be to use stsadm to do a back and restore of the site to a new clean SharePoint v3 installation and from there to do a database swing migration.

 

Perhaps what it has also taught me is that the less modifications you make to SharePoint the easier it is to migrate, but that is pretty much the same with any other application then isn’t it?

KB983444 killed my SharePoint server

After learning the hard way a few years ago that Microsoft updates sometimes do bad things to nice servers I have always been extremely careful in how I update my internal SharePoint server. Now the box is nothing special, simply a stand alone server running nothing but SharePoint v3. The major difference is that it is a virtual machine running on Microsoft Hyper-V.

 

The advantage that a virtual machine gives me when doing updates is that I can shut it down, take a snap shot, power it back up and install the updates. If they go bad (which they did in this case) I can simply roll back to that snap shot quickly and easily. This ability allowed me to isolate KB983444 as the cause of the my issues (although I thought it was the Dot Net updates initially).

 

A further advantage of the virtual machine is I can take a copy of the machine and run it up elsewhere and test the exact system without interfering with the production system. When I locate the problem on the copied system I can apply it to the production system. Simple as.

 

The small amount of servers that I do maintain for testing purposes are all virtualized and having been that way for a few years now I’d never consider anything else. If you are an IT Pro and you haven’t looked at virtualization, especially Microsoft Hyper V for Microsoft server then I’d recommend you do if for nothing else than testing purposes. I can’t tell you the number of major update dramas I have been able to avoid by having the luxury of rolling back to a previous snap shot.