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Operating Systems for MOSS 2010

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:08:30 GMT

Microsoft have confirmed some interesting snippets about server support for 2010. You should refer to the following for installation guidance: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx Its interesting to note that sharePoint is not supported on 'Server Core' installations of Windows Server 2008 and R2. The Server Core installations of Windows server do not contain some of the components required for SharePoint to be configured or run, so forget thinking about "light" footprints.

Windows version/edition (64 bit only)	SharePoint 2010 support
Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation	No
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard	Yes
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise	Yes
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter	Yes
Windows Web Server 2008 R2	No
Windows HPC Server 2008	No
Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based systems	No
Windows Server 2008 Standard	Yes
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise	Yes
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter	Yes
Windows Web Server 2008	No
Windows Storage Server 2008	No
Windows Small Business Server 2008	Yes*
Windows Essential Business Server 2008	Yes*
Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based systems	No
Windows Server 2008 Foundation	No
Windows Vista	Developer-only**
Windows 7	Developer-only**

* Small and Essential Business Server editions of Windows install SharePoint as an optional component.

** Support for specific editions of Windows 7/Vista are yet to be finalized, but are likely to be 'Business'/'Professional' editions and above.

This is a quick reference list lifted from the Sharepoint teams MSDN Blog, but you can look it up yourself here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx

Minimum RAM required for MOSS 2010

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:52:05 GMT

The minimum requirement for a MOSS 2010 installation are a little off at Microsoft, where it suggests you need at least 4 gig RAM

It will install with 2 gig allocated (at least in a VM anyway), but it will fail on stage 9 if you have less than 2 gig and you'll need to up the RAM and run a repair - which works fine.

I would suggest you allocate at least 2 core to any VM, it will not run fast with so little RAM and 8 Gig is a safe minimum for any live system, but as a test VM a dual core 2 gig machine will operate fine.

MOSS 2010 Information

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:02:01 GMT

So it seems that following the 2009 MOSS conference in Las Vegas that the documentation is starting to creep out publicly at last. There's some good posters at Microsoft, and some useful upgrade information. Go see:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=sharepoint%202010&DisplayLang=en

Domain Controller Complex Password Policy

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:03:41 GMT

Trying to setup a DC for a new MOSS test farm I happened to use a password I wasn't happy with for the admin account on the DC, and of course didn't wan't complex passwords. It seems on a DC its not as easy to change this as on a non- DC server, and the MS literature and website is so poor its not worth using, so if like me your not a Domain Admin heres where you turn off complex passwords.

1. gpmc.msc (or administrative tools and choose Group Policy Management)

2. In the GPMC, expand out the domain and then go to Group Policy Objects

3. Right Click the Default Domain Policy and select Edit.

4. Go to Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Account Policies\Password Policy and modify the Setting: Password must meet complexity requirements

5. On the server, from the command line, run gpudate /force

You may need to restart the server to have the policy take affect but I didn't.

Sharepoint 2010 Preview

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:27:35 GMT

If you happen to be interested in 2010 (and come on - we know you are!), then you should get along to the sneak preview of it at Microsoft. Released on 13th July its a wealth of advanced information for those of you who didn;t manage to get on the TAP and are wondering what its all about.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx

Spread the word!

Sharepoint 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:49:02 GMT

The Sharepoint team have released some interesting public information about the pending 2010 release, specifically relating to system requirements.

So a confirmation, its 64bit only across the board. So throw away your old kit and embrace the new world.

SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only.
SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2.
SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005.

They are aiming for xhtml compliance - that will be something to see.

Service pack 2 on MOSS 2007 comes with an upgrade checker to prepare you for a move to 2010. In a nutshell, if you have customised the life out of your 2007 instance then you may want to prepare for some pain if it tells you your not in a good state.

The intial blog posting can be found here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx

SharePoint Roles and Skills

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:53:08 GMT

I came across another blog posting recently that I just had to point you at by a very credible chap called Ian McNeice, written around the issue of recruitiers not understandign the demanding range of roles a MOSS project might require.

The author had clearly thought very well about the roles a company might need when tackling a MOSS instance, and its amazing how varied they are!

The job boards will list a SharePoint technical architect or a SharePoint developer and occasionally a SharePoint administrator but you will rarely see anyhting else listed as demanded and essential skills.

This kind of problem was very apparent at the recent European MOSS Best Practices Conference where a lack of knowledge around the complexity of Sharepoint was discussed many times over. There are occasional roles for SharePoint project managers and SharePoint business analysts advertised, but very rarely are roles advertised for SharePoint information architects, and almost never for SharePoint strategists and SharePoint programme managers or SharePoint integration specialists. These are very in demand skills and also very hard to find and without the correct skill mix, many MOSS projects go off the rails.

Its an excellent write up and I would suggest you go and read it. The site also has some other excellent postings on it.

http://www.sharepointblog.mclin.co.uk/blog/_archives/2009/3/25/4132262.html

Slow or stalled Index Server

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:04:56 GMT

You might be suffering from something called a Security only Crawl.

http://blogs.msdn.com/russmax/archive/2009/02/09/troubleshooting-security-only-crawl.aspx> One possible fix for this is to install the Feb 2009 MOSS Hotfix cummulative package.> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967209/> Although, I've not suffered from this specific problem it can be a bit difficult to identify a root cause. Generally, security only crawls impact MOSS farms that make heavy reliance on Sharepoint groups and don't use AD groups, causing a ripple of unapplied ACL changes that Index has to force apply as it indexes.> As with any hotfix, especailly a cummulative one - test, test and then test again before you install this to live!

Windows 2008 Sharepoint upload size limits

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:54:02 GMT

If you are running MOSS on Windows 2008 you can get an error whenever any file over 28MB is uploaded. This happens regardless of what the max upload size is set to for the web application and the usual error is a 404 File Not Found, somewhat confusing really!

When you make a change to the web app settings from Central Admin they do not get transfered to the web.config. So you must manully update the web.config for all web apps and all Web Front End servers needing this change.

You need to add add the following settings under the section of the Web.config file found in Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\VirtualDirectoryFolder: > > This solved the issue for me.

Wndows 2008 MOSS timeout on Search

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:47:35 GMT

Ok, this is a beauty! Deep searches, like advanced search queries or adding codeplex components like faceted search that make use of ordered search results between web front end servers and offset query servers appear to grind to a halt, deadlock the web app and force a recycle. The recycle may be an automatic one, or may have to be forced to get IIS to recover. However, this wasn't easily seen as the system was live and the users were just using the soltuion, when it would suddenly grind to halt. It was not something you could predict and we first thought it might be down to excessive load although the system was configured far in excess of the NFR requirements for transaction per second.

It took an age to track this one down and we were simply lucky that one of the chaps in the team spotted a slow down when another team member did something related to faceted searching, and data sorting. This only actually led us to realise it was connected to search somehow, but it at least allowed us to reproduce the problem and we could now regularly bring the platform to its knees. So, it was likely to be Query server related.

Taking a look at the even logs on the query servers, it was apparent one of them had dropped out of the MOSS farm. The error was "Source: Office Server Search EventID: 10038 Level: Error Query machine 'machinename' has been taken out of rotation due to this error. We had three of them and one missing from the rotation cycle was a clear indicator it was strugglng with something, although as the error was only on 1 server, it was not symptomatic of the problems we were having as it was the only one of the three query servers to be showing any event log errors. It merited further investigation however now we had some correlating evidence of root cause. > The rotation cycle error led me to a recently released KB description which had something in it that was very interesting: "the client computer stops responding for about two minutes". Our very symptom, as the WFE servers are clients to the offset role Query Servers! Even though it doesn't mention it could occur in this type of transaction scenario between a WFE server and a Query server. > Applying the hotfix solved this issue, and we suddenly stopped having server restarts due to deep search queries. > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946487

Microsoft Dreamspark

myemail@myemail.com (Your DisplayName here!) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:53:42 GMT

Do you have children who want to learn how to write applications, or use Microsoft developer tools? If you do then Microsoft Dreamspark is something you should take a look at.

Microsoft DreamSpark enables students to download Microsoft developer and design tools at no charge. What a fantastic offer from Microsoft.

Link to Dreamspark