Sep03

SharePoint 2010 migration on SBS 2008 released from Microsoft

Microsoft has just released a technical document on installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008. You will find it here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff959273(WS.10).aspx

It great to finally have a guidance document from Microsoft on this process but there are a few issues from what I see.

The major one is around section 10 whose heading is - Step 10: Connect the ShareWebDb database to SQL Server 2008 you’ll find that the contents are actually identical (word for word) with Step 12: Connect the ShareWebDb content database which appears to be a simple editing over sight.

Step 10 should in fact detail how to attach ShareWebDb to SQL 2008 which isn’t that hard but unless that is done first you are not going to be able to complete step 12 of actually connecting the database to SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Apart from that major issue I also believe the document could contain some additional items of information, such as:

1. The document speaks of using SQL Express 2008 but doesn’t appear to mention the fact that this version of SQL although free is limited to databases of 4GB in size. So if your existing companyweb on SBS 2008 is greater than 4GB the detailed process won’t work.

If you however install SQL Express 2008 R2 you can then have a maximum database size of 10GB and if you then use remote blob storage like I explained in a previous blog post, you can have a database up to 16GB. You can always use a full blown version of SQL 2008 which overcomes the database limit but if you want a free version make sure you go SQL Express 2008 R2.

2. After the migration process is complete and you bring up the new SharePoint site it will look almost identical to WSS v3. That’s because SharePoint Foundation 2010 has a visual upgrade feature that you have to select to upgrade the look and feel of the site. I believe that a major reason why people would want to go to all the trouble of installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008 is so they can benefit from the new interface.

So after you do the upgrade go into the site settings for the site and select the visual upgrade option to change the look and feel of your site to new SharePoint interface.

3. If you have configured PDF icons and indexing on your existing version of WSS v3 on SBS 2008 you’ll have to reconfigure it on SharePoint Foundation 2010. Getting the PDF icon is pretty simple, here’s my video tutorial on the process:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay6Xvb2oIUU

but getting PDFs to index now that is something much more tricky under SharePoint Foundation 2010. The solution is in my SharePoint Guide (which is yet another great reason to purchase it!).

3. If you try and install SQL 2008 Express on the SBS 2008 server you won;t be able to until you uninstall the existing SQL 2005 Express Management Studio. Not a major issue but handy to know when you are doing the prep work.

So there’s a few things I’ve noticed about the document upon first glance. The big issue is the fact that Step 10 needs to be correct to show the process of attaching the old WSS v3 database to SQL Express 2008.

I’ll let you know what more info I find as I dig deeper.

Published: Sep-03-10 | 0 Comments | Link to this post

Aug30

Tech Ed 2010 Australia wrap up

Now that Microsoft Tech Ed 2010 Australia is a done deal I’ve been lucky enough to be joined on another Need to Know podcast by Wayne Small to give us a round up of everything at the event.

The details of the podcast are:

http://www.ciaops.com/n2k - 25MB (40mins)

or via direct download:

http://bit.ly/cia-n2k2

So let me know what you think and if you are interested on being on the show please also contact me (director@ciaops.com) as I am always looking for people to talk about business and technology.

Stay tuned for more episodes coming soon.

Published: Aug-30-10 | 0 Comments | Link to this post

Aug25

Need to know podcast

I’ve just created my first podcast which I have christened as the ‘Need to know’ podcast series. It will focus on technology and business for the IT Professional, especially those in Small to Medium Business.

In the first episode I have been lucky enough to be joined by Susan Bradley (SBS –MVP) (http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/) who discussed some of the following topics with me:

- Slow down issues with XP and Microsoft updates

- A new DLL vulnerability

- Microsoft Security essentials in SMB

- the new versions of SBS, Aurora and 7

A big thanks to Susan for giving me some of her time to chat, it is most appreciated.

You can download the podcast from:

http://www.ciaops.com/n2k - 42MB (60 mins)

and I’d love to hear what you think about it, what’s good, what’s bad and how it can be improved. Feel free to send it to me via director@ciaops.com or www.ciaops.com/contact.

I’ve got a few people lined up in the next few weeks to discuss further topics of interest so please stay tune to this blog for when these will be available.

Published: Aug-25-10 | 1 Comment | Link to this post

Aug20

SharePoint on Aurora

Given that SBS Aurora doesn’t include Exchange or SharePoint the first question I had was, could you actually install SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS Aurora? The reason for my questions is that, at this point, SharePoint 2010 is not available in BPOS (it will be soon). So what if you were busting for SharePoint 2010 on SBS Aurora?

The good news is that in my testing you can install SharePoint Foundation 2010 just like normal. You firstly need to make sure a version of SQL is installed on the server. I used SQL Express 2008 R2 (which has a 10GB limit). I then installed SharePoint Foundation 2010.

The files copied across as expected.

You have to create a new farm and connect to the SQL database you have already installed but that is straight forward.

Next the SharePoint Configuration wizard runs.

You then run the setup wizard and bingo you have SharePoint Foundation 2010 running on SBS Aurora.

Published: Aug-20-10 | 0 Comments | Link to this post

Aug17

SBS Aurora beta install

Now that SBS Aurora beta is out thought I’d take you through an install.

Yep, new install please.

Yep use the only disk in the system and blow it away.

Hmmm..looks a lot like stuff I’ve seen before, i.e. copying, expanding, installing etc.

Would be nice if the completing installation gave you a percentage complete like the previous components did. My initially install got hung up and I reset here and it didn’t like that at all. Maybe it was because my SBS 2008 machine was also running. So I shut down the SBS 2008 box and started again.

I live on this big island the South Pacific called Australia where we speak the English (Australian) dialect but we still use US keyboards. I don’t understand but it does work (generally).

Sure I read it all before I accepted it (honest, cross my heart).

How do they come up with these keys? Surely they must have run out by now?

Not very original here but make sure you don’t duplicate something that already existing on your network!

Need a complex password as usual. I’m getting good at these now.

Hmmm…I think pressing the BIG green icon at the top is best.

More waiting. I wonder what it is doing? I wish I knew.

Needed a reboot, so it did it all by itself. How grown up!

Still preparing my server. Maybe I should have called the machine MasterChef?

More ‘Please wait’ screens. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Please tell what you are doing, I’m a big boy. I can handle it.

Ahhhhhh…green tick, must be all good now.

And here’s the desktop, not surprisingly it looks like Windows 7.

Here’s the dashboard. Plenty to click to keep me busy for the next few days.

Not much in the start menu anymore.

But still plenty in the Administrative tools. Still opportunity for mischief. Yeah!

Initial Observations (that I can see anyway):

- No networking options during installation

- No disk partitioning options

- 64 bit OS (course de jour these days)

- Some interesting partition and disk mappings that need further investigation

Now how do I connect this sucker to the cloud? More updates soon.

Published: Aug-17-10 | 0 Comments | Link to this post

Aug16

Not in my experience

In my travels around the ‘Interweb’ I came across the following post:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlsetupandupgrade/thread/e737bd65-a14d-4f47-9260-df3b7842831a

asking about running SQL Server 2008 R2 (Full edition) on SBS 2008. The response was:

Basically saying that Microsoft said it wouldn’t.

Hmmm…I thought, I wonder if that is in fact the case. I don’t see why it wouldn’t install. So I set about downloading the trial version and installing it. The result was:

that is certainly seems to install without an issue. You do initially have to make sure that you remove the SQL 2005 Express Management Studio but after that everything works exactly as expected.

Now I can say, at this stage, whether there are any actual issues with SQL Server 2008 R2 running on SBS 2008 because I haven’t been running it for that long but I am yet to see any.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

Published: Aug-16-10 | 0 Comments | Link to this post

Aug16

SharePoint Foundation 2010 pre-migration

I’ve just upload another segment from a recent full SharePoint Foundation 2010 migration video that I have created for subscribers of my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide. This one looks at some suggested steps that you should take prior to any migration to SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Preparing for migration to SharePoint Foundation 2010

YouTube now allows video of up to 15 minutes so this one is the longest one I have posted on YouTube. Those extra 5 minutes should allow me to get more content into these video in future.

Apart from running the SharePoint Foundation 2010 pre-upgrade check the most important thing is to take a number of backups. What this video does not cover is how to recover to these backups in the event of a problem. That is something that you be familiar with before you get too far down the track.

When was the last time you ran a full SharePoint disaster recovery? If you haven’t then you really should spend some time learning how to do because it isn’t a matter of if, it is a matter of when.

Published: Aug-16-10 | 0 Comments | Link to this post

Aug06

SharePoint Foundation 2010 storage

On of the major issues I see arising around any migration to SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the size of the content databases. The reason is that out of the box SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed with SQL Server 2008 Express which has a 4GB database size limit. This is a pain because Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSS v3) came with SQL Server 2005 Embedded Edition (#SSEE) which had an unlimited database size (even though it had other limitations).

Many of the WSS v3 implementations on SBS I have seen have now grown beyond 4GB, so what’s your options if you want to upgrade to SharePoint Foundation 2010? The first was to use SQL Server 2008 Express R2 which has a database size limit of 10GB and is a free download from Microsoft. This does require manually installation prior to the installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010 as well as manual set of SharePoint 2010. However, even 10GB I can see potentially being restrictive for some of the larger Companyweb deployments.

Beyond 10GB the only option that I thought was to upgrade to a full version of SQL (i.e. Workgroup, Standard, etc) but that means shelling out money. I have however now found an option that will support databases up to 16GB for free. That method is using Remote BLOB storage.

Basically, you can install SQL Express 2008 R2, then install Remote BLOB storage and then upgrade the databases. The process is detailed in this TechNet article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ff628258.aspx - Upgrade a stand-alone installation on a domain controller by using Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) (database attach)

I haven’t tried it but it doesn’t seem much more difficult that installing an extra piece of software on the server and running an upgrade command. So where did I get the 16GB limit that Remote Blob Storage will support? Here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ff628569.aspx - Plan for remote BLOB storage (RBS) (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

where it says:

If the content databases are larger than 16 GB, you must purchase Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Cumulative Update 2, or SQL Server 2005 with SP3 and Cumulative Update 3 to support the databases instead of remaining on a free version of SQL Server.

I don’t quite see why you ‘must’ purchase an upgraded versions of SQL Server but I’ll take Microsoft at their word until I can test this further.

So there you have it. From what I can determine the largest content database you can run with on SharePoint Foundation 2010 is 16GB after which you’ll need to pay for a full version of SQL server.

Picture: Waleed Alzuhair

Published: Aug-06-10 | 0 Comments | Link to this post

Aug04

PDF icons in SharePoint Foundation 2010

After creating a complete video for Windows SharePoint Operation Guide subscribers on how to not only index PDF documents but also add a PDF icon in SharePoint Foundation 2010 I thought that what I’d do was take the part about creating PDF icons and make it public. So that’s what I’ve just gone and done and posted on YouTube.

Installing Acrobat PDF icon into SharePoint Foundation 2010

The process is pretty similar to what it was in WSS v3 except you need to use \14.0\ instead of \12.0\ in the registry and directory hives. However, this video should at least show you how to make the chance so the PDF icons will now appear next to Acrobat documents in SharePoint 2010 like so:

Published: Aug-04-10 | 0 Comments | Link to this post

Jul22

The PDF Project

Now that I have SharePoint Foundation 2010 running on SBS 2008 my next project is to get it to index Adobe PDF’s because guess what? It doesn’t by default!

Windows SharePoint Services v3, WSS v3, (i.e. the old Companyweb on SBS 2008) wouldn’t either but you could install an Adobe PDF iFilter, make a few registry changes and get it working (all the details are in my Guide). Interestingly, my hosted SharePoint site also doesn’t index PDFs. When I asked the hosting company about this they said they were looking in to it. I suppose that allowing SharePoint to index PDF’s is not ‘standard’ but without it is a significant drop in functionality I believe.

After doing a bit of reading on the Internet I couldn’t really find anyone that has definitively been able to get PDF’s indexed on SharePoint Foundation 2010. Once again this means that I’ll have to nut it out myself.

The first step in the process would be to install the 64 bit PDF iFilter from Adobe because no PDF’s will be indexed with out this. Again, make sure you install the 64bit version and to my knowledge there is no 64 bit version of Acrobat reader so if you simply install Acrobat reader on your SBS 2008 server you’ll only get the 32 not 64 bit version. Thus the specific need for the 64 bit iFilter.

The next step was to make similar registry changes that are made when you get PDF indexing going on WSS v3. The only thing to be aware is that the hive is now \14\ not \12\ but the rest of the registry path is the same. So I made these changes, stopped and started SharePoint Search Server v14 service, did a full manual crawl and did a search for terms that only appeared in PDF documents on my SharePoint Foundation 2010 site. No luck.

When I returned to examine one of the registry entries I found that it was missing. Hmmm..I re-did the entry and went through the search restart and crawl process. Still no good but again the registry entry was missing! Now that is interesting. It appears that when you restart the SharePoint Foundation Search V4 service it rewrites this registry entry. Ok, now where is it getting that from?

After some more digging it turns out that the entries in the registry actually come from a database in the SharePoint Foundation 2010 search database. So what I did was create an additional entry in this database for the registry entry that I wanted and again restarted all the services. Still no luck but at least the required registry entry for PDF’s was there.

My next guess on what was wrong was the specific GUID for the PDF iFilter which I guessed was now different from what it was in WSS v3. So I took a working WSS v3 installation and searched for all registry entries that matched the WSS v3 PDF GUID. From these I found a common string being ‘PDF iFilter’. I then searched the registry on the machine with SharePoint Foundation 2010 for the string ‘PDF iFilter’.

I turned up quite a few GUID’s but after comparing these to articles I found on the Internet I determined that the correct GUID is in fact

{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}. I inserted that into the registry in the appropriate place, restarted all the search services again and ran a search.

Joy of joy’s, it works! Now I gotta say that most people probably don’t want to hacking the SharePoint search database just to get PDF’s to index on SharePoint 2010 but as far as I can see this is really the only option they have. I’m going to keep looking for a better solution but with the registry keys getting overwritten on each Search service restart it isn’t going to be simple.

So there you have it. You can index PDF’s with SharePoint Foundation 2010 but the process is not straight forward at all and is not a supported option at all. However, for those that really need to work it can be done. Full details and a step by step guide of how to do this will be added to my Guide for subscribers.

Published: Jul-22-10 | 2 Comments | Link to this post

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