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Posted by Tristan on Monday 7th of February 2011 01:11:23 PM
There are several options for automating the installation and configuration of SharePoint 2010. In this article I'll give an overview of the basic options available.
Standard approach
The standard, non-automated approach is to install SharePoint as follows (assuming the rest of the environment, including Active Directory and SQL Server, is ready):
1. Install the SharePoint prerequisites
2. Run the SharePoint setup program, which installs application binaries and other files
3. Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard (psconfig), which configures various SharePoint logical architecture elements, and creates content databases.
The SharePoint prerequisites tool can be run silently from the commandline. This tool basically runs the setup for a number of libraries on which SP2010 is dependent, and also ensures that the server is configured as an application server with IIS.
The setup program can be configured to take an xml configuration file as input. The configuration file specifies:
- the packages to install, namely Sharepoint Foundation (called sts) and SharePoint (called spswfe)
- whether to perform a clean install or an upgrade
- the folders to be used for different purposes
- the activation key (product key, PIDKEY)
- the server role, whether a single server instance or a multiserver environment
- whether to display the user interface
- whether to reboot
Microsoft provide a number of example config.xml files on the SharePoint 2010 DVD in the Files folder.
Once the files are deployed, the next step is to run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. This too can be automated. The wizard can be run in GUI mode (psconfigui.exe), or through a command line interface (psconfig.exe).
psconfig.exe provides the means to run specific commands. For example, it includes a command to create the configuration database, configdb -create]. Automating psconfig.exe is typically achieved through use of a batch file.
Microsoft have made the same commands available in PowerShell, and automating the install with PowerShell is considered best practice. The standard approach here is to create an xml file with configuration settings, and to write a Powershell script which reads the appropriate settings, and executes the various PowerShell commandlets necessary to get SP2010 configured. Microsoft provides guidance for installing SharePoint using powershell. They include a set of files for use as a starting point (SPModule.zip, available on the previously linked page.).
AutoSPInstaller Codeplex solution
The AutoSPInstaller project, available at http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com, provides a set of scripts for both installing the binary files (by calling setup.exe) and configuring SharePoint 2010. It is implemented as a set of powershell scripts and some xml configuration files.
The AutoSPInstaller solution is quite comprehensive and allows you to create the farm including config and central admin sites, create additional web applications and site collections, configure and start the various SharePoint Service applications, create and configure the my sites web app.
Slipstreaming
Slipstreaming is the practice of copying updated files into the installation source so that they are included as part of the installation. The SharePoint 2010 installation media supports slipstreaming; this is achieved by copying updates into the Updates folder.
Other approaches
Various members of the SharePoint community have produced their own powershell scripts. Other options include use of virtual machine images, and even use of backup and restore tools.
Posted by Tristan on Tuesday 21st of December 2010 01:33:37 PM
I'm doing some research on strategic decision-making. I took the following notes from a brief (30 minute) video of Peter Cohan on strategic decision-making. He has a web site at http://petercohan.com/ .
He starts by recalling working with an MIT professor who invented the idea of decision support systems. "The idea that decision support systems were a fantastic concept for certain kinds of decisions, for example portfolio management.. this notion of being able to have all the information you need to make a decision and then making the best possible decision.. "
He provides examples of a few kinds of strategic decisions: "how can we increase our market share and do it in a way that is profitable? How can we motivate our organisation to create value for its constituents? How can we distinguish between competitor strategies that we should really be focussing on?"
He notes that uncertainty is a key factor in real-world decision making. Changes in customer needs, technology, market conditions, new competitors.. all these things are somewhat unpredictable.
In looking at how decisions are made, he describes the impact of confirmation bias, the tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions. To address this it is important to objectively assess your organization's capability before entering a new market.
Another point is that shareholder value and financial performance do not necessarily move together. He provides examples of Microsoft, Martha Stewart's company, and Wal-Mart. In assessing a company's performance is not sufficient only to look at financial performance. Consumer sentiment and other factors are also relevant.
He points out the importance of expecting the unexpected. There will be new scenarios and uncertainty. He later ties this to the notion that success breeds failure, so paranoia and scepticism must be maintained. "In order to keep your organization from becoming unable to adapt, it is extremely important that you recognize the risks of complacency."
He stresses the fact that competitors have their own strategies. He argues that customers are the real force behind strategy and that customer need has to be the main focus, not copying the strategy of other organizations. He provides the example of Wal-Mart, which he argues "does a tremendous job of knowing what's selling and what's not selling, and can create an environment where it will always be meeting the demand and will always be cutting back on what's not selling."
He then discusses incentives. "When you are trying to implement a strategy if you do not understand the incentives of the people who will be implementing the strategy and make sure therei s a match between those incentives and the strategy that you are trying to implement then you are going to fail." He recommends analysing the incentives of employees and customers and check that incentives are consistent with the considered strategy.
On the whole I found the presentation interesting. The emotional / psychological aspects of markets are an important consideration in making strategic decisions.
Posted by Tristan on Friday 19th of November 2010 11:22:36 AM
Migrating content with SharePoint is a well-known pain point. All too often, SharePoint just isn't up to the job of migrating everything you need, potentially leaving you with a broken and incomplete system. A common complaint from clients dealing with SharePoint is that out of the box, workflows are not usually migrated - the workflow definitions, workflow states, and workflow tasks are all missing.. Or that business critical content is suddenly missing... or functionality is broken..
Joel Olson has posted a blog entry where he's started collecting all the nasty details. What Doesn’t Migrate with SharePoint Built in Import/Export and other known issues. For example, "Object GUIDS are not preserved (This causes all sorts of weird things and can cause issues down the road. Empty folders may not migrate)."
Third party tools exist to assist with migration, but even they are limited in terms of completeness, and realistically it is often necessary to replicate SharePoint at the infrastructure level. Virtualisation makes this easier, as do various SAN options such as NetApp filers. For disaster recovery purposes a lot of work is usually required to identify everything that needs to be copied and their dependencies, and this needs to be considered for every patch or change made to the system. SharePoint out of the box is just not very resilient at facing different patch levels, database schemas, filesystem changes, or other configuration changes.
Part of the product we're working on will help address this at the content layer, by letting you define business-critical information and ensure that it is replicated to an appropriate place automatically, and by providing a tool to ensure that your configuration meets your compliance and security baseline.
Good tools will help organizations save a lot of time and money in their SharePoint migrations, but proper procedures and testing will remain critical. If you are planning a SharePoint migration (whether 2010 or 2007), or if you have needs around disaster recovery or high available that require replication or migration of environments, you'll need to make sure that you think about how you handle SharePoint's limitations and issues, both up front and in an ongoing manner. Microsoft really need to do a better job addressing these issues, because the fears and problems that can arise will inhibit customers from adopting Microsoft's "latest and greatest" releases. Until this occurs - over the 5 year strategic timeframe - I don't think there is any real alternative for customers but to buy additional tools and ensure they have people experienced in SharePoint migrations.
Posted by Tristan on Thursday 11th of November 2010 07:11:20 PM
Disaster Recovery (DR) and High Availability (HA) have been pain points for many SharePoint customers. Microsoft's Bill Baer, SharePoint Technical Product Manager, gave a presentation at Teched 2010 on the topic, and it is now available online, at http://northamerica.msteched.com/?fbid=qhPGAfbdVsq .
It's clear to me that he has a strong technical background and knows his stuff, although was a little light in identifying limitations with the out-of-the-box capabilities. (Microsoft field services engineers have been more frank in face-to-face discussions with me!). The general conclusion is that for a full-scale SharePoint 2010 DR solution, one of the things you need is a full-scale recovery farm, and you also need to really think hard about which content and processes are most critical to different business units.
He covers the improvements in SharePoint 2010, and DR/HA with the Microsoft stack. What he doesn't cover are 3rd party solutions, or design and implementation details. Being a technical talk he also does not cover the people/process side of things. Watch his presentation for a good summary of SharePoint 2010 capabilities to a technical audience, not to understand business continuity plans, risk identification, or the non-technical aspects of disaster recovery .
I'll provide a summary of his talk below.
Improvements in SharePoint 2010
So, what are the improvements in SharePoint 2010?
- Improved site deletion logic
- Configuration-only backup
- Script dependent operations have UI entry points
- Browse content through Central Administration
- Unattached content database data recovery
- Snapshot support
- Read-only support
- Database mirroring support
- New Service Application architecture.
Planning
He describes some planning activities, including the basic step of determining what needs to be protected. (e.g. Content vs application functionality) Other considerations include: What SLAs exist? How much data can you afford to lose (RPO), How quickly do you need it back online (RTO)? What agreements exist with dependent services such as Active Directory? OLAs (Operation level agreements) are also important.
Planning also needs to be informed by out-of-the-box capabilities, and also by realisation that achieving business continuity is an ongoing process.
He then breaks down some technology options based on RPO and RTO. Failover clustering, P2P Replication (not supported by SharePoint) , Log Shopping, and Backup/Restore.
He makes a number of points that are critical in SharePoint planning:
- Content is usually the most important asset to the business. Therefore, it is the first thing that needs to be protected. I have read far too many architecture documents that are based on the view that restoring technology is the goal of Business continuity.
- Configuration is the key to replication. It's not possible to replicate a site without completely understanding the configuration of the primary site.
- As RPO/RTO decrease, costs increase substantially. This is well understood by experienced architects, but needs to be communicated to business decision-makers so that an appropriate tradeoff can be made.
Next he talks about the functionality provided out of the box with SharePoint 2010.
- The Recycle Bin which has a two-stage implementation. In the first instance self-service can be used to retrieve a document. In the second stage a site collection administrator can restore the document.
- Versioning , which provides multiple copies of the same document. When using Office 2010 a more efficient file transfer based on differential changes is used.
- Unattached Content Database Data Recovery, which enables recovery of Site collections, sites, lists, and document libraries. You can use this to restore SQL Server snapshots without needing the snapshot to be restored onto the SharePoint system. This also allows for browsing content within a snapshot.
- Snapshots, which are a point-in-time view of data. They can be created programmatically with code and also powershell scripts.
He then provides a demonstration of the Central Administration UI for some of the above.
Backup and Restore including Data Protection Manager
Next up is a discussion of Data Protection Manager 2010. DPM enables recovery of Site collections, sites, lists, Document libraries, and list items (including blobs) , and it's not limited to content database subordinate objects. It doesn't require a recovery farm with SP2010. It now supports one-way NT4 Forest Trusts. The one limitation mentioned is that it doesn't protect Search Service applications. He goes through how DPM supports various aspects of SharePoint; DPM can protect individual service applicaitons except search.
For Service Applications backup and restore the components he lists are DPM, SP2010 itself, VSS Writer (used as a platform by ISVs), and SQL Server. He says that SharePoint backups are supported up to 1.0 to 1.5 TB. ("That's where we feel comfortable".) SharePoint out of the box does not appear to provide incremental backup and restore. SQL Server alone is not sufficient as it will not restore configuration and other resources.
SharePoint 2010 now enables configuration-only backup, which he mentions can be used for replicating one environment's configuration to another "just beneath the farm", that is, at the web application level. However this requires detaching the associated content databases. He points out that this can be scripted.
DPM 2007 does not support configuration-only backup.
What about customisations? He recommends deploying all customizations as solutions (WSPs). SP Backup and restore can now include these. However the solutions need to be redeployed on recovery.
Another new capability is gradual site delete. This addresses some performance issues with SP2007 that resulted from over-zealous SQL Server locking.
For developers looking at extending SharePoint's capability in this area, he points out that the API and VSS Writer options exist, and also that the Site Recycle Bin includes SiteDeleted events. The PRIME (content deployment) API is also available.
Now into Backup Recovery Scenarios. Backup can be performed in a number of recovery scenarios. This includes:
- recreating a farm on new hardware or in a different location assuming that no parts of the original farm are available. (He describes this as DR) .
- Creating a new farm based on an existing farm's configuration and backups.
- Creating backups to support HA farms.
- Archiving versions of a site. Using unattached databases to recover site collections, sites or lists (documents possible with the Object Model as it exposes properties for doing this)
Partners that provide backup and restore solutions include Quest, AvePoint and Metalogix.
Service Applications
Next he talks about how Service Applications have replaced the Shared Services Provider. Search for example is now provided as a Service application which is scalable for availability and performance across multiple servers.
Read-Only Content Database
He gives a demonstration of putting SharePoint into Read-only mode by setting a database into read-only mode in SQL Server Management Console. SharePoint then realises that the database is now read-only and hides all the edit options from the user interface. For example, "edit document" options are no longer listed in drop down boxes.
He points out that you can use this functionality for implementing DR.
Database Mirroring
Database Mirroring didn't work in SharePoint 2007 due to connection strings, both in the .NET code and in the unmanaged code at the heart of SharePoint. SharePoint 2007 had to point to a particular SQL Server alias.
SharePoint 2010 is mirroring-aware. Microsoft have fixed all the connection strings, so that it a failover server can be specified in addition to the primary database. On failure of the primary database SharePoint can switch over to the failover server. He mentions that the best way to do this is SQL Server high availability mirroring. (He notes that you can also use SQL Server safety mirroring)
Failover Clustering
He points out the improvements in failover clustering with Windows Server 2008. A big improvement is support for geographically dispersed clusters (since the product now supports clustering across different subnets). He considers this to enable both high availability and geographically disperse disaster recovery.
Log Shipping
Log shipping can give around 5 minutes RPO. He feels that log shipping provides a cost effective solution available to 99% of deployments.
SQL Server 2008
SQL Server 2008 provides functionality for Backup Compression, Transparent Data encryption, torn page repair, and log stream compression.
DR Partners
He lists Hewlett-Packard (HP), and EMC. "There are a lot of partners in the space depending on what you're trying to do".
Summary of slides
- * SharePoint 2010 has a lot more options for DR / HA.
- * Business Continuity Management is an ongoing process
- * Planning is critical and tested when you need it most
Posted by Tristan on Monday 8th of November 2010 01:19:49 PM
The introduction of the FAST search engine in SharePoint 2010 has made SharePoint a serious contender in the search space, but has also increased the complexity of a SharePoint deployment.
So if you want to become a FAST expert, or diagnose an existing installation, where should you start?
Firstly, the content on MSDN is invaluable in understanding FAST. It's especially important to understand how the search service applications (SSAa) work, what options they provide, and what services are provided by fast itself, not the SSAs.
There is a good suite of developer training videos available for free.
To understand the internals of how FAST works, I suggest reading Microsoft's protocols specification for the product [MS-FSO].
In my experience a common problem is related to service accounts and permissions. Make sure you get these right! If FAST services just won't start up - as reported by the nctrl command - this is usually the cause.
It is critically important that you verify your deployment, follow the instructions here: Verify successful installation (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint).
You can test various parts of the FAST engine using powershell scripts. The docpush tool, for example, can be used to test FAST's ability to index an item. There is a powershell script at the bottom of this page which tests FAST's search query refinment functionality. It provides a good starting point for writing other testing scripts to interact with the query side of FAST Search.
A SCOM management pack is available for FAST; naturally Microsoft recommends using this to monitor your FAST deployment. (More about SCOM design in a coming blog post..)
For more information about FAST, WROX press has published "Professional Microsoft Search: FAST Search, SharePoint Search, and Search Server
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