Hello everybody,

Hopefully soon I will be able to post again some info that everyone will find interesting and helpful. Some post will be about other things like basic installations training that I have promised and others will be more recent cool things like Claims based authentication, ADFS 2.0 Integration with SP2010, Records Center 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 Tips and Tricks and more! Once I get some time from my current projects I will ensure to keep everyone up to speed. Peace, happy SharePointing!


05 December 2010 | Edward Nelms | SharePoint 2010 | No Comment | Read More

I do apologize to any of those who are waiting for the video training for SharePoint 2010, I was tied up finishing up work for a client. Anyway I will still keep my promise and post videos soon after the holiday. See ya.


03 September 2010 | Edward Nelms | Training | Comments Off | Read More

I know alot of you have been wondering how you can prepare for upgrading your company or clients site from the old SharePoint 2007  to 2010. Fret not SharePoint Insider is here. First let me provide a quick start introduction to allow you to get comfortable with your options. It’s actually pretty decent what Microsoft has provided for completing this task successfully.

The first thing to do is an pre-upgrade check. SP2 included a new STSADM operation, preupgradecheck. This command allowed you to look at SharePoint 2007 databases and what provide insight on any possible problems for the upgrade to SharePoint 2010. The reports on the following key aspects of your farm:

  • Servers and amount of content

  • Search configuration

  • Features

  • Solutions

  • Site definitions

  • Alternate access mappings

  • Language packs

It will also alert you to the following possible issues:

  • Large lists

  • Orphaned data

  • Views and content types that use CAML

  • Databases with modified schemas

The results of the upgrade check are saved to an XML file and an easy to read .HTM file. The check is read-only, and it can be run multiple times as you clean up issues it discovers.

SharePoint 2010 offers the same at the content database level via PowerShell.  (yes get used to using PS with SP2010, it looks like it is here to stay with over 500 SharePoint specific cmdlets dedicated to it!)The PowerShell cmdlet Test-SPContentDatabase will look at both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 content databases and determine if they can be upgraded and added to a SharePoint 2010 farm. Keep in mind that preupgradecheck, Test-SPContentDatabase does not make any changes to your databases, so you can run it without messing up your production environments.

Upgrade Methods

There are two ways you can upgrade SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. You can do an in-place or database attach. The in-place upgrade actually does the upgrade from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 on your existing infrastructure. The second way allows you to attach SharePoint 2007 backups to a SharePoint 2010 Web Application and the databases will be upgraded automatically. (Nice :))

You have the ability to allow users to use read only databases for SharePoint 2007 while upgrading to SharePoint 2010 also. SharePoint will recognize that the database is read-only and will remove all UI elements that allow users to add or edit content. SharePoint 2010 will let you upgrade multiple databases at the same time also. So as long as your backend servers can handle the I/O load you can minimize downtime by doing more than 1 DB at a time. (Wait it gets even cooler than that….)

If that isn’t enough to keep the users happy, there is a second option. SharePoint 2010 supports redirecting traffic to an existing SharePoint 2007 farm during upgrade. This enables users to continue to use the same URL, but they are given a client-side 302 redirect until the content is available on SharePoint 2010.

Don’t forget about Visual Upgrade. Visual upgrade allows you to have your users using pages they are use to, while testing out (if they choose to) the SharePoint 2010 look. If there site administrator decides to finally commit to the SP2010 look, they can at anytime once there users have become familiar with the new look. This also allows designers the ability to fix or tweak anything they may not have converted as they hoped.

Well enough about that for now, just wanted all you administrators out there to know that there are some really good options to make your migration easier for your IT team and your users. Happy SharePointing. :)


23 August 2010 | Edward Nelms | SharePoint 2010 | No Comment | Read More

I am writing this to let you guys know that I have not forgotten about providing free SharePoint 2010 training, and throughout this week you will see various post show up on the site.


23 August 2010 | Edward Nelms | Training | No Comment | Read More

OK, here is the run down. Below you will find the actual skills measured on this exam, so if you are going to take this one atleast you will know what to expect. This is not the configuring exam that is more concentration on configuration and implementation, it is a little more involved. If you are looking to Microsoft to provide you with any resources for training as of this post that don’t exist other than an in person actual 5 day course. So look to the SharePoint Insider to Deep Dive into the details of certain tasks. I will be posting more and more as this blog grows, and if you have an RSS feed and would like to see “live” videos showing and helping you perform what you need to do in SharePoint 2010 then let me hear the comments and post, pingback, twitter, or whatever to this blog. It takes time to make video cast with audio, but somebody’s got to do it. Happy SharePointing!

Microsoft Exam Post Below (Source: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-668&Locale=en-us#tab2)

Audience Profile  

Skills Being Measured This exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below.The percentages indicate the relative weight of each major topic area on the exam.

 

Designing a SharePoint 2010 Farm Topology (27 percent)

·         Design physical architecture.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: translating information architecture to physical architecture, determining capacity for a SharePoint farm (storage, number of users, bandwidth utilization, intranet/extranet, hardware), and scaling Web farm and services infrastructure

·         Design SharePoint integration with network infrastructure.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: planning for internal and external farm communications, establishing network perimeter configuration, networking, Active Directory, DNS, SQL storage, IIS, and analyzing infrastructure services

·         Design logical taxonomy.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: planning sites and site collections, planning for collaboration sites, planning My Site sites, planning for zones, planning for Service Applications, Web applications, content databases, sites and sub-sites vs. libraries, libraries vs. folders vs. document sets, security boundaries, site hierarchy, and content deployment path methodology

·         Plan for sandbox solutions.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: content isolation, feature deployments, and trusted solutions

·         Plan for farm deployment.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: sequential deployment, planning standalone deployment (Microsoft SQL Server Express), planning single-server farm (SQL Server), planning multi-server deployment in an N-Tier Farm, and designing a SharePoint virtual environment

·         Plan for availability.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: designing SQL Server failover clustering strategy, types of availability (high-performance, acceptable downtime, Recovery Point Objective, Recovery Time Objective), types of mirroring, high availability, high protection, whole farm as a failover cluster, and designing the Web Front-End NLB strategy

Planning SharePoint 2010 Deployment (26 percent)

·         Plan service applications.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: formulating a Business Connectivity Services (BCS) strategy, planning a Microsoft Excel Services strategy, implementing a BI solution, planning service application server roles, and planning a Web server forms strategy (Plan InfoPath Forms Services)

·         Plan a SharePoint component strategy.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: Web parts, Web applications, Microsoft .NET, Microsoft Silverlight, SharePoint features and solutions, workflow, site templates, site definitions, multilingual deployment, master pages and layout files, and e-mail integration

·         Plan an upgrade strategy.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: supporting hardware upgrades (for example, 32 to 64 bit), Operating System upgrade, in-place upgrade, MOSS upgrade, and SQL Server upgrade

·         Design a migration strategy.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: database migration, custom features, read-only and detached databases, designing a test and QA implementation plan (for example, development to production), migrating content databases, moving content between farms, moving content to and from the farm, moving content within the farm, and rollback

·         Design security architecture.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: planning security for WebApp site collection, designing SharePoint users and groups administration, taxonomy of SharePoint security groups, managed accounts, site security (permission levels, list permissions, site permissions, personal permissions, default and custom security groups), and planning for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

·         Plan and deploy authentication methods.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: planning for integration of multiple authentication sources/types, planning for NTLM authentication, planning for Kerberos authentication, planning for Forms-Based Authentication (FBA), planning for Claims Authentication (Identity and Access Management), planning for Secure Store Service

Defining a SharePoint 2010 Operations Strategy and Business Continuity (25 percent)

·         Design a maintenance strategy.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: preparing test plans for patching and maintenance, SharePoint Maintenance Manager, rebuilding SQL indexes, search maintenance

·         Recommend provisioning strategies.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: managing self-service components (My Sites, service architecture administration), delegating site administration, limiting site templates and page layouts, assigning quotas, defining policy for Web application

·         Establish an enterprise monitoring plan.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: developing monitoring points for performance and availability, utilizing performance monitoring, analyzing search reports, Web analytics, diagnostic logging, usage logging, analyzing health and usage data (SharePoint Health Analyzer), and validating farm topology against performance requirements

·         Plan SharePoint backup and restore.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: developing and testing recovery strategy and implementation plan, server recovery, site recovery, granular backup and recovery strategy, exporting a site or list, recovering data from an unattached content database, and backup and restore of the following: farm, farm configuration, site collection, Web applications, Secure Store Service, snapshots, content database, configuration database, custom features, solutions, code, service, site, list, document library, performance site collection, and recycle bin

Planning for Search and Business Solutions (22 percent)

·         Define search requirements.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: types of data, types of distribution (Internet, extranet), segregation of data, index file location, index size, federation requirements, content sources, search scopes, search taxonomy, server name mappings, promoting or demoting exclusions, synonyms and compound search processing, and defining facets for search

·         Plan search topology.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: indexing strategy, index partition, query component, property database, crawler component, separate crawler servers, and administration component

·         Plan an enterprise search strategy.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: designing information access and enterprise search strategy, planning for metadata and search, people search, search reporting, and planning enterprise search technology

·         Plan enterprise content management.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: records management, BPM (record deployment), document management, metadata planning, information management policies, implement data taxonomy structure, Web Content Management (WCM), and Information Rights Management (IRM)

·         Plan for social computing and collaboration.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: user profile service, user profiles, organization profiles, audiences, My Sites, social tags, and planning enterprise wikis, blogs, and personalization sites

·         Plan for a business intelligence strategy.

o    This objective may include but is not limited to: PerformancePoint service (dashboards and scorecards), Excel Services Service, Visio Graphics Service, SQL Reporting Services, chart Web parts, and report center

 

Candidates for this exam design and deploy Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 infrastructures. These candidates might be senior administrators who act as the technical lead over a team of administrators. These candidates are responsible for the planning and deployment of SharePoint 2010 environments.  Candidates should have a minimum of two years of experience administering, deploying, managing, monitoring, upgrading, migrating, and designing SharePoint servers.
The candidate typically plans, designs, and maintains:
  • Physical topologies and services architecture
  • Disaster recovery (backup, restore) and availability
  • Infrastructure capacity (users, topology)
  • Farm performance and availability
  • Migration and upgrade   
  • Security and compliance requirements
  • Information architecture (interprets taxonomy)
  • Information search strategy integration with other data sources (LOB, third-party products)
  • Client application services deployment
This audience also has a thorough understanding of the following:
  • Windows PowerShell scripting
  • Server availability and performance concepts (SQL mirroring, load balancing)
  • Security concepts and authentication methods
  • Windows Server 2008 and Active Directory administration
  • Networking infrastructure services including DNS and IIS

19 August 2010 | Edward Nelms | SharePoint 2010 | No Comment | Read More

Here is the link to the SharePoint 2010 SDK, I thought I would put it out there for easy access for those who who are connected via RSS feed. As I comb through the SDK, I will post some info on what it contains. Cheers, happy SharePointing.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557253.aspx


18 August 2010 | Edward Nelms | SharePoint 2010 | No Comment | Read More

I will be posting some short video training and evaluation clips soon. This will be a way to get quick looks at certain features and new enhancements in SharePoint 2010. Feel free to send me an email about stuff you would like to know more about. I will be performing these videos in a real SharePoint Dev Setup, so you will actually see how to perform tasks live.


12 August 2010 | Edward Nelms | Training | No Comment | Read More
Another Quick note: You need atleast Windows 7 64bit Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate in order to install IIS features. You cannot install IIS on Home Basic or Starter. This means if you have Home Basic or Starter Windows 7 64bit, no SharePoint Foundation for you. Sorry :(
Note: This is a precursor to a more formal post that will be coming soon. (Also you can install SP2010 on Windows 7 64bit. As Mike Hacker tells about with nifty script, you can do it, but it is not officially supported by Microsoft at this time.  Ofcourse that’s not a big deal for personal testing purposes and such. See his blog post here:
http://blog.mikehacker.net/2010/08/09/automating-sharepoint-2010-install-on-windows-7/
.
This tutorial is specific to SharePoint Foundation 2010.
How to Install SharePoint  Foundation 2010 on Windows 7 Machine

OK, so here it is. How to get it installed and working with some pitfalls to watch out for. This is not the authority on setting up a Dev environment on Win7, but rather a compilation from various source. Keep in mind this is for a standalone installation for a Dev environment.

Requirements For Foundation

Basic Requirements:

Hardware Specs:

- 64bit capable proc

- 1Gb of Ram.

 

These are below the suggested Microsoft hardware requirements, but these are specs from the field. The bare minimums I have seen work with reliable basic evaluation of the product. The following are from MSDN which outlines your install options:

In any development environment, you should use a computer with an x64-capable CPU, and at least 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM to install and run SharePoint Foundation; 4 GB of RAM is preferable. You should use a computer with 6 GB to 8 GB of RAM to install and run SharePoint Server.

Following are the options:

  • Install SharePoint on Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 x64 (or Windows Server 2008 R2 x64).
  • Use Microsoft Hyper-V and install SharePoint on a virtual machine running a Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 x64 (or Windows Server 2008 R2 x64) guest operating system.
  • Install SharePoint on Windows 7 x64, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 x64, or Windows Vista Service Pack 2 x64.
  • Use Microsoft Hyper-V and install SharePoint on a virtual machine running a Windows 7 x64, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 x64, or Windows Vista Service Pack 2 x64 guest operating system.

 

Software Requirements:

- Windows 7 - 64bit

- SharePoint Foundation 2010

 

To prepare for installation, you must first extract and edit the config file for installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010.

 

1. Copy the SharePointFoundation.exe (or setup.exe) installation file to a folder on the computer where you are installing SharePoint and doing your development, such as in the following path:

 

c:\SharePointFiles

 

2. Extract the installation files by opening a Command Prompt window, and then typing the following command at the directory location of the folder where you copied the installation files in the previous step.

 

For SharePoint Foundation 2010:

 

c:\SharePointFiles\SharePoint /extract:c:\SharePointFiles

 

3. Using a text editor such as Notepad, open the installation configuration file, config.xml, located in the following path: c:\SharePointFiles\files\Setup\config.xml

 

Add this line inside the <configuration> tag:

Copy

 

<Setting Id=”AllowWindowsClientInstall” Value=”True”/>

 

Save the configuration file.

 

4. Review the complete configuration file. It now looks similar to the following for SharePoint Foundation 2010. The complete configuration file will be longer for SharePoint Server 2010 (and therefore the text below cannot replace the contents of that file), but should use the same setting for the AllowWindowsClientInstall attribute.

 

 

<Configuration>

<Package Id=”sts”>

<Setting Id=”SETUPTYPE” Value=”CLEAN_INSTALL” />

</Package>

<DATADIR Value=”%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server

Extensions\14\Data” />

<Logging Type=”verbose” Path=”%temp%” Template=”Microsoft Windows

SharePoint Services 4.0 Setup *.log” />

<PIDKEY Value=”RBWQH-7PFXQ-D6RX2-HVK8Y-HP7F7″ />

<Setting Id=”UsingUIInstallMode” Value=”1″ />

<Setting Id=”SETUP_REBOOT” Value=”Never” />

<Setting Id=”AllowWindowsClientInstall” Value=”True”/>

</Configuration>

 

All of the text in this configuration file is case-sensitive. If you do not edit the configuration file as described in the previous step or if you do not save the configuration file, when you try to run the installation you see the error message, Setup is unable to proceed error message.

 

Before installation, make sure you prepare your machine with all the prerequisites. Below are the list of install files, and then the features you need to deploy on your machine. I will provide the list, and download links as of this post. You can throw it in Google to find download links. I have done this because things get moved around often and I don’t want to give you dead links. Also depending on how up to date your system is you may or may not need these, at any rate if you reinstall them you will still be covered. :)

 

Prereqs: (Install all these Prereqs first, then proceed to feature setup)

 

- .NET 4.0 (MS Updated may have installed this for you already, if not install it)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569263.aspx

 

- Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)

http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/9/F/C9F6B386-824B-4F9E-BD5D-F95BB254EC61/Redist/amd64/Microsoft%20Sync%20Framework/Synchronization.msi

 

- MicrosoftGenevaFramework.amd64 (Geneva Framework)

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/3/D/F3D66A7E-C974-4A60-B7A5-382A61EB7BC6/MicrosoftGenevaFramework.amd64.msi

 

- Windows6.1-KB974405-x64 (Windows Identity Foundation)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eb9c345f-e830-40b8-a5fe-ae7a864c4d76&displaylang=en

 

- Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64 (WCF Fix)

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231

 

- sqlncli.msi 64bit - (SQL Server 2008 Native Client)

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/5/5/35522a0d-9743-4b8c-a5b3-f10529178b8a/sqlncli.msi

 

 

Next install the features: Go to Start Menu > Control Panel> Programs> Select Turn Windows Features On or Off at the top. Once in the features pane, ensure that the following are checked. After selecting them make sure you restart your computer at least twice to make sure the features are actually installed.

 

 

 

 

 

After you have satisfied all the requirements, unlike other website telling you to install SQL SERVER 2008 sp1 or hotfix. DONT DO IT.

 

Now you can navigate to the directory where you extract SharePoint Foundation 2010, and double click on the Setup file. Once it loads select standalone installation. Let the binary install complete and then click close. The configuration should start and once you finish, you should be taken to your default Team Site.

 

 

Happy SharePointing! Any comments please leave, any questions let me know by shooting me an email.

 


10 August 2010 | Edward Nelms | SharePoint 2010 | 6 Comments | Read More