Tag: SharePoint

Things should be back to normal now

Phew. Finally, our SharePoint sites should now be back to “normal”. Because we basically re-installed SharePoint on both servers we needs to add back the ability to index and search Adobe documents ( ie PDF’s).
 
By default SharePoint will do Microsoft files like Word and Excel but to index PDF’s then you have to install some software from Adobe, then make some configuration changes (read registry hacks) and finally do a full re-index of the site to incorporate all the existing PDF information in SharePoint.
 
We have now completed all those steps so this SharePoint ( http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au ) and our internal SharePoint site should now be back to exactly the point before the application of the recent patch.
 
In thanks I’d like to offer a quick prayer : Our Father who aren’t in heaven, please don’t let this happen again. PLEASE.

Lessons learnt from recent SharePoint crash

Here’s a bit of retrospective of what we learn’t after teh recent Sharepoint issues:
 
1. Don’t be adventurous with patches, let some other poor smuck find the problem first. Wait at least 7 days before applying any patch to a system and make sure that you keep across other keep people in the industry like Wayne, Vlad and Susan (to name but a few). THese people are likley to find the problem first or have others come to them.
 
2. Make sure that you have a backup and the backup works. We have 2 backups, one is a full server backup using NT backup and the second is a Sharepoint data backup using STSADM. The full backup failed to restore TWICE so we had to revert to the Sharepoint backup. Problem with this is that it takes time to build up a suitable machine onto which you can recover Sharepoint ( Service Packs, Templates and the like). Since most of our Sharepoint stuff is virtualized we will ensure that we have a more up to date backup machine ready in the future. It is also probably a good idea to take an image of the server regularly using something like ShadowProtect. This means in the event of a disaster you can at least roll back to a previous point pretty quickly.
 
3. Realise the point at which you need to call Microsoft Product Support is probably much earlier than you think. If you don’t work with thi stuff day and day out then a call to PSS could have you potentially hours and hours of wasted time. If you don’t have access to PSS then again consult others in the community since they are all usually most willing to help. Also, keep in mind that it may take a while for any support to actually get hands onto the problem. In our case it took 24 hours, which was frustrating but in th end we were more than happy with the result.
 
4. All our Sharepoint sites (both internally and externally) DON’T run on SBS. Why? Well, we reckon SBS is the heart of our network and doesn’t need to be strained with additional load when we can achieve the same result using other means (read – user Virtual PC). If Sharepoint had been on our SBS it would have caused an even more major distruption. Since it wasn’t we could focus on other things while working independently on the Sharepoint issue. We acknowledge that in some places this is not possible but if you can, generally host Sharepoint somewhere else on the network.
 
5 Understand the fact that if Sharepoint or IIS is down you can’t access ANY of your data! Let me repeat that ANY OF YOUR DATA. This is a single point of failure and admittedly fairly unique but if your business DEPENDS on Sharepoint day in and day out then you need to take steps to reduce the downtime or otherwise you’ll have plenty of staff twiddling their thumbs.
 
If we think of more we’ll post but hopefully everything is now looking ok.

The day you don’t read other people’s blogs

This week was Microsoft’s usual patch Tuesday. In the swag of updates was one for Sharepoint KB934525. Foolishly we installed that on both our internal and external Sharepoint site and broke both of them.
 
If we had read Wayne’s blog entry or Vlad’s then at least we would have been aware of the potential problem and chosen not to install the patch. Typically, we applied the patch before check our RSS reader and got burned.
 
After some initial too and frowing we tried Vlad’s suggested fix but that didn’t solve the issue. Seems that the reason for this was because we had installed the Sharepoint Groupboard that also caused problems.
 
Ok now things are getting serious with our two production Sharepoint sites down, time to call Microsoft Product Support. Now as a certified partner we were disappointed with the slow response to the issue. It took a whole day before we got anyone from Microsoft to get ‘hands-on’ with our problems.
 
In the meantime we attempted to do complete server restore of our internal Sharepoint site (since we have backups) and that failed (twice). The server restored but we got all sorts fo wierd errors. So not wanting to waste more time on that we built a new server and did a Sharepoint data restore (since we backup Sharepoint data as well seperately). A day later we had our internal Sharepoint working again just a Microsoft started working on our external Sharepoint site.
 
While Microsoft continued to work on the server in background we started the process of building yet another server in case we needed to do another Sharepoint restore for our extenal site. Watching the process that the Microsoft Tech had to go through there was NO WAY we would have ever been able to recover from the problems ourselves.
 
Anyway, after a full two days we finally had both Sharepoint sites working. After an initial frustration at waiting for service we have nothing but praise for our Microsoft Tech who stayed on the job and keep us up to date and then hung around after we left for the day to make sure it was all working after hours.
 
There are still a few bugs to iron out in the recovered site but as you can see (if you are reading this) then the site is operational. We’ll post again shortly with some lesson learned about this experience but all we can say about KB934525 is DON’T DO IT unless you know that it may TOTALLY BREAK Sharepoint V3.0!

SharePoint video series

We’ve just created the first in a series of new videos that will focus on SharePoint 2003. The first series of videos will focus on Document Libraries in SharePoint.
 
To view the video click here, otherwise go to our general YouTube homepage at http://www.youtube.com/saturnalliance.
 
Each video in the series will delve deeper and deeper into the workings of SharePoint 2003. It is a constraint that YouTube only currently allows a maximum upload of only 10 minutes. We do appreciate that there are other options like Google Video but for the time being we’ll stick with YouTube simply because of its popularity.

Test drive SharePoint

One of the best ways to learn SharePoint (WSS) is to take a test drive. Office Online has provided a test environment to use online. All you have to do is click a few buttons and you can play around with a practice site in your browser.

To get to the test environment:

  1. It says test drive the 2007 Microsoft Office release, but SharePoint is included in the test drive.

  2. Click on the big orange button.

The Test Drive environment will open in a new browser window after you click the Launch Test Drive button. You’ll see a few screens, you might be asked to click to connect to the server. There may be some lag time, so wait until you see the Setting up evaluation environment dialog box. It takes a while to get to the test environment.

Once it opens, you’ll see the following screen:

Start with the first selection on the right-hand side of the screen, ‘Overview of Windows SharePoint Services.’

SharePoint course starts this week

Well we have just completed another Introduction to Small Business Server course and now it’s time to run one on SharePoint. Here are the details :
 
Thursday 30th of August 2007
Time : 7 – 9pm
Duration : 2 weeks
 
For a link to the College’s details about the course see :
 
 
The course will focus on SharePoint V 3.0 and designed for people who are new to SharePoint or want to better understand the technology. The course will involve seminar style presentation and practical hands on work.
 
For enrolments please contact the college directly.

Installing SharePoint 3.0 on SBS 2003

Our latest video will show the steps you need to follow to install SharePoint V 3.0 on Small Business Server 2003. You’ll find the video by clicking here or by visiting the Video – Links part of our Supportweb site.
 
If you find any of this video beneficial we would appreciate a donation at http://donation.saturnalliance.com.au. All donations go directly towards improving the content that we currently provide for free.