SharePoint 2010 Network Load Balancing

In an effort to make my web front end severs a little more redundant, I introduced Windows Server 2008 R2 Network Load Balancing to my environment. After configuring the environment as per Microsoft documentation, I was not able to connect to the virtual IP I'd setup for my test site collection. After banging my head against the wall and rebuilding the servers a couple of times, I opened a ticket with Microsoft.


It turns out that you can't use NLB in the recommended unicast configuration if your cluster nodes are on two separate VMWare ESX hosts as per this article: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1556&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=26310418&stateId=0 0 26304946


To learn more about the potential problems you might encouter if you use Cisco switches, have a look at the following:


http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/products_configuration_example09186a0080a07203.shtml


And from Microsoft:


http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781305(WS.10).aspx

In the end, I reconfigured the NLB nodes to use Multicast mode and then utilized the Cisco documentation to create a static entry for the MAC of the NLB cluster virtual IP at the local gateway.

DocAve Version 5 for SharePoint 2010

Up until recently I've been running my backups using the built in backup and recover tool and Powershell (see http://imperfectit.blogspot.com/2010/03/automate-sharepoint-2010-farm-backups.html), but my environment has started to grow and become more complex. That, and it's larger than the recommended 150 GB limit "suggested" by Microsoft. As a result I had to find a more robust data protection solution. After much testing I went with AvePoint's DocAve v5.

DocAve Backup and Recovery for SharePoint 2010 offers two types of backup and recovery: Granular and Platform


Granular Content and Data Protection

• Supports SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environments (via DocAve v5), and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (via DocAve 4.5). Support for SharePoint 2001 is available – please contact an AvePoint representative).

• Full fidelity backup and restore of all lists, libraries and items (including Events, Links, Tasks, Contacts, Announcements, Discussion Boards, Surveys, Issues, Custom Lists, Areas, Sub Areas, Portal Links, Workflow Definitions, Layout Templates, and Site Definitions, along with access permissions, metadata and version histories)

• Backs up and restores SharePoint workflow definitions

• Full fidelity item-level restore from DocAve, SQL native backups created by T-SQL script or a maintenance plan, DPM, IBM-TSM, HP Data Protector, as well as third-party embedded SQL backup engines, including HyperBac and LiteSpeed Engine

• Granular, item-level restore with sliding timeline view, along with full text keyword search and identification criteria mask search

• Restore content to different SharePoint instances or locations, including file systems and networked file shares with DocAve's "out-of-place restore" functionality

• Manual and Automated Data Pruning feature helps manage historic SharePoint backup data and improve access speed to more recent backups

• Data Coalescing feature allows collapsing incremental backups into one backup data set for easy retrieval.

• Item-level "out-of-place restore" for complete hardware failure

• Fast granular backup speeds, up to 60GB/hour

Comprehensive Platform Protection

• Backup and recover entire SharePoint farms or selective components including all servers and back-end SQL databases with all configurations, Index/Job servers, as well as front-end IIS settings and file system resources

• Quickly and selectively restore individual or a combination of farm components (content databases, web applications, SSP, etc.)

• Safeguard front-end web server resources (IIS settings, Template files, user selected resources, local file systems, etc.)

• Backup InfoPath form templates, Project Server content and Site Definitions

• Support for SharePoint Features

• Up-to-the-minute restore using SQL logs restoration

• Leverages Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure consistent point-in-time backups

• Fast platform backup speeds, up to 100 GB/hour

• Efficient data streaming via open standards, including VDI and VSS without staging location requirements

If you've worked with this product or others, I'd be interested to hear your opinions.

Thanks!

SharePoint 2010 Anitvirus Exclusions

I recently updated the local antivirus on my SharePoint 2010 server and noticed users were getting "access denied" errors when trying to upload documents. Turns out I had forgotten to update the folders my antivirus solution should ignore.

A quick search turned up this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952167

Basically go to the drive you installed SharePoint 2010 on (D: drive in my case) and exclude the following:

Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Data
Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Logs
Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Bin

The above folders handle indexing for your farm.

SharePoint 2010 Granular Backup and Restore - Recovering Data from an Unattached Content Database

he built-in backup tool in SharePoint 2010 accommodates backing up the following:

• Back up a farm
• Back up a farm configuration
• Copy configuration settings from one farm to another
• Back up a Web application
• Back up a service application
• Back up search
• Back up the Secure Store service
• Back up a content database
• Back up databases to snapshots
• Back up customizations
• Back up a site collection
• Export a site, list, or document library
• Back up or archive logs

See here for more detail: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee428315.aspx

Sounds pretty good right? What if you have a user who deleted a list, library or even an individual document? If it's not sitting in the recycle bin for the site collection, then what?

The answer is a new feature called granular restore which gives you one more option to use before you have to go to an expensive third party backup and restore solution. The only catch is that you have to have a SQL backup of the content database in question that you can mount in SQL using SQL Management Studio. To be safe, I use the built-in SharePoint 2010 backup tool to run farm backups (How to Automate SharePoint 2010 Farm Backups), but I also do regular SQL backups. In the event of some type of disaster, I've given myself a few options for doing a restore.

Step 1

In SQL highlight the content database you want to restore, right-click it and select Tasks - Restore -Database. In the "To Database" field, type a name for the new database (ex: DatabaseName_restore). Specify the point in time you want to do the restore from.

Step 2

Go into Central Admin on the SharePoint server and select Backup and Restore - Recover data from an unattached content database. Specify the SQL server and database name you created above during the restore. Select Browse Content and hit next.

Step 3

Select the site collection, site, and list or library you want to restore. Specify that you want to export the selected content, and specify a location for the file. I find the best way to locate the library, list, etc that I want to restore is to use the Search field that's presented to you.

When you hit Next, you'll be prompted for the location you want to export the site to. I just use a local folder. Next, hit Start Export.

Step 4

Now that you exported the data from the restored database, you can import the data into the production site to restore the missing list, library, document, etc.

Open SharePoint PowerShell while logged in as Farm Admin and run the Import-SPWeb command to specify the identity of the web you're working with, and the path to the restore file you created above:

Note that you specify the root web, and it will restore the data you specified when you browsed the restored database to its original location. To learn more about what options are available when importing data visit http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607613.aspx.

New Look for Imperfect IT!!!

I recently changed the template used for my blog. Let me know what you think of the look and the layout. I found the old layout was a little cramped.

Regards

SharePoint Manager 2010

Although SharePoint 2010 offers the Central Administration Site and PowerShell as methods to expose current settings in your SharePoint environment, they can often be a little clunky to work with.

If you've never seen it, you're going to love SharePoint Manager 2010. It's a free download from codeplex. As the description for the tool states, "SharePoint Manager 2010 is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property. It also enables you to change the properties".

To get your very own copy for free, simply visit http://spm.codeplex.com/.

I first stumbled on this tool when I was going through application event logs on my SharePoint 2010 server and couldn't figure out what site certain errors were referring to. As many of you know event logs simply use the ID of a site (ex: 0a90494e-c226-4067-9762-7d75f952c803). A simple Google search for linking ID's to names turned up SPM 2010. Now I can simply drill down to my Site Collections with the tool and it's easy to see:

The tool is also very handy for finding all your application pool and IIS settings, not to mention having a look at what's in a sites recycle bin. You can also look at quota settings, as well as what features or services are deployed. Curious to know who has permissions on a site or what lists are in a site? Just drill down and the information is there!

Some additional points:

• The application has to be installed on the SharePoint Server you want to work with.
• You have to be logged in as a SharePoint administrator.
• The tool has multilingual support. 
• It uses the SharePoint object model and doesn't access SQL directly.
• It was architected and designed by Carsten Keutman - http://www.keutmann.dk/. Thanks Carsten!

Download it today and let me know what you think. If you know of any other tools other admins might be interested in, pleas let me know.

SharePoint 2010 Farm Backup Fails

I was successfully running backups of my SharePoint 2010 server for a few weeks, then all of a sudden I noticed they weren't finishing properly. They'd run through most of the backup process, then stall trying to backup the Search Service Application. When I looked at the backup log file it showed the following:

I also noticed the following event log error (Event ID: 67, Source: SharePoint Server Search) :

After some investigation, I realized I had deleted my original Search Application and created a new one, but for some reason the old object still existed in SQL.

I tried a few methods to delete the old object, but nothing was working. When I manually tried to delete it through Central Admin it would pop up a screen saying it was processing, but it never did anything. A Google search turned up the following article: http://prequest01.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/unable-to-delete-shared-services/

I used the following stsadm command:

Stsadm -o deleteconfigurationobject -id “object GUID”

To find the object GUID, simply go into Central Admin - Manage Service Applications and highlight the offending legacy service application (Search Service Application in my case). You should now be able to see the GUID in the IE address bar. Run the command above, and try your backups again and all should be well.

You can also run the following command from the SharePoint PowerShell: Get-SPServiceApplication

If your backups are still failing, you can always increase the logging level to get more details about the Backup and Restore Process in the Diagnostics Logging Settings, from Errors only to Verbose. This will help troubleshooting. Once you find out the exact issue, you can bring logging back to default levels to reduce I/O and storage required for this extra activity.

List All SharePoint 2010 Databases

If you're like me you've setup numerous SharePoint 2010 test boxes in order to get comfortable with all the great new features. Because I'm running in a test environment I hadn't been paying too much attention to the SQL server I was using. Yesterday I logged in and found a staggering number of similarly named databases which were no longer being used because the test boxes were done.

So how do you figure out which databases are which? There's a great SharePoint Powershell cmdlet you can run on your SharePoint server that will give you a list of all the databases your server is using:

Get-SPDatabase | Sort-Object disksizerequired -desc | Format-Table Name

When you run the command, you'll get a list of all the databases similar to the following:

Now that you have your list, log into SQL Server Management Studio and delete the corresponding databases:

Get-SPDatabase | Sort-Object disksizerequired -desc | Format-Table Name | out-file c:\databases.txt

You can also see how big the databases are by running the following:

Get-SPDatabase | Sort-Object disksizerequired -desc Format-Table Name, @{Label ="Size in MB"; Expression = {$_.disksizerequired/1024/1024}}

Installing the RTM Version of Microsoft Office Web Apps 2010 (OWA)

I recently had a request from my users to test Office Web Apps in our new SharePoint 2010 RTM environment. This feature comes in very handy if you have a number of users who don’t have Microsoft Office 2010 installed on their client computers yet. Most of my users are running legacy versions of Office.

For my test environment, we set apps to open in the client by default (not the browser) so we don't break existing document links in the site collections. You can achieve this by following this procedure.

1. Go to Central Administration and select Site Actions - Site Settings – Site Collection Administration and click on Site Collection Features.

2. Activate the Open Documents in Client Applications by Default feature.

Run the OWA setup

1. Run setup.exe from the root of the OWA installation source, and input your product key.

2. Accept the license agreement and specify an install path and hit Install Now.

When the install finishes, you’ll be prompted to open the Configuration Wizard. Click Next when the Wizard opens and answer yes to the service re-start warning. Let the configuration finish and perform the following steps:

Start the service instances

A service instance provides the physical location for a service application. For each server that you want to run the Office Web Apps service applications; you must start the service instances. You can start the service instances by using SharePoint Central Administration or by using Windows PowerShell.

Procedures in this task will start the service instances on those servers specified. This task must be completed after you have run WCSetup and PSConfig on each server in the farm.

To start the service instances by using Central Administration

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products, and then SharePoint 2010 Central Administration.

2. On the SharePoint Central Administration home page, in System Settings, click Manage services on this server.

3. On the Services on server:page, in Server, select a server, and then start Excel Calculation Services, Word Viewing Service, and PowerPoint Service. Repeat this step for each server in the farm you want to run Office Web Apps services. The OneNote Web App does not use a SharePoint service.

Now to test.

Upload an Office document into a document library and select the drop down menu:

When you select "Edit in Browser", the web app version of Word will open and you're free to edit your document.

Try it out for yourself and let me know how it works for you!

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Event ID Errors 6396 and 6482

I recently had a Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 server start to generate the following event log errors:

I didn't really notice any issues with the SharePoint site itself, but when I tried to run a backup it would error out. Upon closer examination, I noticed that one of our admins had changed the account Office SharePoint Server Search service was using to run. Although the service was started, it wasn't using the account I'd specified when setting up the Office SharePoint Server Search service through Central Administration.

After setting the service to use the orriginal account through Central Administration - Operations - Services on Server and doing a re-boot the event log errors disappeared and my backups worked again. While looking for the cause of the error on Google, I noticed several other people had a similar issue caused by the search service account not having log on locally rights on the server.