Certifications
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Vertical Bar Graph with XSLT in Data View Web Part (DVWP)
As part of a recent project, I needed to create a dashboard page for the requests for executive management. However, since the data was in a list and not a database this was easier said than done. So I started off by researching my options and I found this post on MSDN. This post explains very well how to modify the XSL of a DVWP to create a bar graph. I used this post and the code below to do as such. You will noticed that I overwrote the .ms-selected CSS class so that I could control the image as well as the colors of the chart.
Example Bar Graphs:
My second issue was that I wanted a vertical bar graph too. I was unable to find an example anywhere on the web, so I sat down and started playing with the code.
I used the code from the MSDN article, but overwrite the CSS class in order to control the color of the chart:
.ms-selected {
background-image:url("/administration/BTG/images/chartrow.gif");
background-color: #6a9a21;
border-bottom: 1px solid #6a9a21;
border-top: 1px solid #FFFFFF;
}
Now to change the above chart into a vertical bar chart we have to replace three sections of code.
The first is the CSS:
I created a new class called .ms-selectedc and the c stands for column.
.ms-selectedc {
background-image:url("/administration/BTG/images/chartcolumn.gif");
background-color: #6a9a21;
border-left: 0px solid #6a9a21;
border-right: 0px solid #FFFFFF;
}
We have to replace the main table with the following code:
Replace -
With -
Finally we have to change the XSL that creates each bar.
Replace -
With -
Depending on the length of the column titles, you may have to play with the height and width of the table where the title and percentage is created.
If anyone has any suggestions for more efficient code, please let me know. I also suggest filtering out unneeded data in the CAML so as reduce load on the client.
Vertical Graph:
And my dashboard:
Example Bar Graphs:
My second issue was that I wanted a vertical bar graph too. I was unable to find an example anywhere on the web, so I sat down and started playing with the code.
I used the code from the MSDN article, but overwrite the CSS class in order to control the color of the chart:
.ms-selected {
background-image:url("/administration/BTG/images/chartrow.gif");
background-color: #6a9a21;
border-bottom: 1px solid #6a9a21;
border-top: 1px solid #FFFFFF;
}
Now to change the above chart into a vertical bar chart we have to replace three sections of code.
The first is the CSS:
I created a new class called .ms-selectedc and the c stands for column.
.ms-selectedc {
background-image:url("/administration/BTG/images/chartcolumn.gif");
background-color: #6a9a21;
border-left: 0px solid #6a9a21;
border-right: 0px solid #FFFFFF;
}
We have to replace the main table with the following code:
Replace -
With -
Finally we have to change the XSL that creates each bar.
Replace -
With -
Depending on the length of the column titles, you may have to play with the height and width of the table where the title and percentage is created.
If anyone has any suggestions for more efficient code, please let me know. I also suggest filtering out unneeded data in the CAML so as reduce load on the client.
Vertical Graph:
And my dashboard:
Friday, June 24, 2011
Powershell Delete Files After X Days and Keep Log
I have been managing a project to develop a simple app to upload files to a web server. In order to do this with the way we were managing state, we had to temporarily store the file on the server until submit. This posed a problem with files that were put in temp, but then the browser closed. Since the browser closed didn't cleanup the file I had to write a script to do that. I thought I'd share it.
This script has the -whatif flag in it. That means you can run it and it will simulate what it would do and will tell what would have happened. When you get it set for your environment just take -whatif out, but be careful in doing so.
One nice feature of this script is that it will self clean the log files based on the number of days you tell it to delete. In my case I clean it out every day, so I only keep one log file.
#####################################################
#Checks to see if $files contains information, if it does not, then the script is finished
#$files stores all items in the directory and subdirectories where the last modified date is less than x days and is not a #folder
#if $files contains info then the script starts a log and removes all files that are stored in $files
#the logs are self cleaning because they are stored in the directory being checked and will be deleted as any other file
#add –whatif after –verbose in the foreach statement to test with no destructive action
#Andrew Alaniz - 6/8/2011
#####################################################
if($files = get-childitem D:\Location\ -recurse | where {$_.lastwritetime -lt (get-dateM).adddays(-1) -and -not $_.psiscontainer}){
start-transcript D:\Location\$(get-date -format MMddyyHH).txt
foreach ($file in $files){%{remove-item $file.fullname -force -verbose -whatif}}
stop-transcript}
To execute this script just setup a scheduled tasks. This batch file will execute the powershell script. You just use the scheduled task to execute the batch file.
powershell -command "& 'D:\Scripts\DeleteOldFiles.ps1' "
This script has the -whatif flag in it. That means you can run it and it will simulate what it would do and will tell what would have happened. When you get it set for your environment just take -whatif out, but be careful in doing so.
One nice feature of this script is that it will self clean the log files based on the number of days you tell it to delete. In my case I clean it out every day, so I only keep one log file.
#####################################################
#Checks to see if $files contains information, if it does not, then the script is finished
#$files stores all items in the directory and subdirectories where the last modified date is less than x days and is not a #folder
#if $files contains info then the script starts a log and removes all files that are stored in $files
#the logs are self cleaning because they are stored in the directory being checked and will be deleted as any other file
#add –whatif after –verbose in the foreach statement to test with no destructive action
#Andrew Alaniz - 6/8/2011
#####################################################
if($files = get-childitem D:\Location\ -recurse | where {$_.lastwritetime -lt (get-dateM).adddays(-1) -and -not $_.psiscontainer}){
start-transcript D:\Location\$(get-date -format MMddyyHH).txt
foreach ($file in $files){%{remove-item $file.fullname -force -verbose -whatif}}
stop-transcript}
To execute this script just setup a scheduled tasks. This batch file will execute the powershell script. You just use the scheduled task to execute the batch file.
powershell -command "& 'D:\Scripts\DeleteOldFiles.ps1' "
Example CAML queries for SharePoint Designer
I have recently been working on a project the deals heavily with XSLT and DVWPs. One thing to keep in mind is that data manipulation done in XSLT is done client side and thus slows load times. This is especially the case if you are just the equivalent of a SELECT * in your CAML query as the entire dataset is returned and then it is up to the client to filter, group, order and display the data.
Spare your audience some load time and filter as much as you can from the dataset via your CAML query. There are number of useful sites out there that explain CAML in detail so I will give a quick and dirty on the queries I am sharing and then provide the queries. Reference
A basic SELECT * CAML query looks like this: <View></View> and for those of you who had to learn LISP in school, these queries will bring back those fond memories. While they are not exactly the same, the recursive nature is apparent.
If you want to filter out what is returned you have to add, similar to T-SQL, a WHERE clause. This looks something like this:
<View>
<Query>
<Where>
Your clause
</Where>
</Query>
</View>
And when saying WHERE something AND something else you just add an AND in there:
<View>
<Query>
<And>
<Where>
Your clause
</Where>
<Where>
Your clause
</Where>
</And>
</Query>
</View>
A few key elements to note are:
<Eq></Eq> - Equal To
<Neq></Neq> - Not Equal To
<Gt></Gt> - Greater Than
<Geq></Geq> - Greater Than Or Equal To
<Lt></Lt> - Less Than
<Leq></Leq> - Less Than Or Equal To
<IsNull></IsNull>
<BeginsWith></BeginsWith>
<Contains></Contains>
Each of these conditionals follows this format:
<Eq>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="Closed"/>
<Value Type="Integer">
1
</Value>
</Eq>
</Eq>
Finally some useful CAML Queries for SharePoint:
Select all records created by the current user (change Eq to Neq to select all records not created by the current user):
<View>
<Query>
<Where>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="Author"/>
<Value Type="Integer">
<UserID/>
</Value>
</Eq>
</Where>
</Query>
</View>
All records created by current user and matching some criteria:
<View>
<Query>
<Where>
<And>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="Author"/>
<Value Type="Integer">
<UserID/>
</Value>
</Eq>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="Some Column"/>
<Value Type="Text">
Matching Text Here
</Value>
</Eq>
</And>
</Where>
</Query>
</View>
Finally, be sure to enter the queries into Designer using the HTML form of the >, <, and " signs. I recommend this site here, just copy your CAML query into and it will transform it: http://www.devtrends.com/custom/camlencode/
Also very handy there is an XML Tools plugin to Notepad++ that will do the conversions in Notepad++ for you.
Enjoy.
Spare your audience some load time and filter as much as you can from the dataset via your CAML query. There are number of useful sites out there that explain CAML in detail so I will give a quick and dirty on the queries I am sharing and then provide the queries. Reference
A basic SELECT * CAML query looks like this: <View></View> and for those of you who had to learn LISP in school, these queries will bring back those fond memories. While they are not exactly the same, the recursive nature is apparent.
If you want to filter out what is returned you have to add, similar to T-SQL, a WHERE clause. This looks something like this:
<View>
<Query>
<Where>
Your clause
</Where>
</Query>
</View>
And when saying WHERE something AND something else you just add an AND in there:
<View>
<Query>
<And>
<Where>
Your clause
</Where>
<Where>
Your clause
</Where>
</And>
</Query>
</View>
A few key elements to note are:
<Eq></Eq> - Equal To
<Neq></Neq> - Not Equal To
<Gt></Gt> - Greater Than
<Geq></Geq> - Greater Than Or Equal To
<Lt></Lt> - Less Than
<Leq></Leq> - Less Than Or Equal To
<IsNull></IsNull>
<BeginsWith></BeginsWith>
<Contains></Contains>
Each of these conditionals follows this format:
<Eq>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="Closed"/>
<Value Type="Integer">
1
</Value>
</Eq>
</Eq>
Finally some useful CAML Queries for SharePoint:
Select all records created by the current user (change Eq to Neq to select all records not created by the current user):
<View>
<Query>
<Where>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="Author"/>
<Value Type="Integer">
<UserID/>
</Value>
</Eq>
</Where>
</Query>
</View>
All records created by current user and matching some criteria:
<View>
<Query>
<Where>
<And>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="Author"/>
<Value Type="Integer">
<UserID/>
</Value>
</Eq>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="Some Column"/>
<Value Type="Text">
Matching Text Here
</Value>
</Eq>
</And>
</Where>
</Query>
</View>
Finally, be sure to enter the queries into Designer using the HTML form of the >, <, and " signs. I recommend this site here, just copy your CAML query into and it will transform it: http://www.devtrends.com/custom/camlencode/
Also very handy there is an XML Tools plugin to Notepad++ that will do the conversions in Notepad++ for you.
Enjoy.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
New Gig
This marks my third day at a new job. I have left the world of consulting and I am now focusing on one client from the inside. I am now working in the financial services industry, however due to that fact, very little external communication takes place from inside the network. This means that blogging, linkedin and twitter are going to take a hit. I am still very much focused on SharePoint, and in fact, I will hopefully soon be knee deep in a MOSS -> 2010 migration. I hope this means I will have some interesting things to blog about. Anyway, that is why my social presence is going to be taking a hit and my blog posts are going to be a bit further in between.
Friday, April 1, 2011
SharePoint 2010 Licensing Quick Reference
--Updated 2/2/2011 Added a few additional reference links at the end.
--Updated 1/18/2011 Added Windows Server 2008 External Connector to licensing lists for public facing sites.
I have tried to compile a list of sources to help simplify (or least consolidate) information on SharePoint 2010 Licensing.
This is a good reference for what is/is not included in the different versions of SharePoint: http://goo.gl/HWasj
Visual breakdown of the basic requirements of a SharePoint 2010 Medium farm by @SharePointLola http://bit.ly/hEsml4
Another good blog on SharePoint 2010 Topology.
The following scenarios do not cover whether or not to use Windows Server Standard or Enterprise or SQL Server Standard or Enterprise. However, for most scenarios, Windows Server Std will suffice for the web front ends and the application servers. Windows Server Enterprise is required on the backend if you need a failover cluster. Standard only supports NLB clustering and Enterprise is required to use failover clustering. As for the DB servers, this really depends on how much you will need to scale moving forward. This article is a good resource for comparing SQL Server versions: http://goo.gl/5Awry
This whitepaper is a good resource for why SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise is better with SharePoint 2010: http://goo.gl/1uD9Z
Good post on SQL Server High Availability.
Hardware and Software specs for SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010.
SharePoint 2010 Standard Internal only (no publically available content) (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc License x Number of Processors)*
• Users: SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALS x number of users accessing internal content
SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Internal only (no publically available content)(not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc License x Number of Processors)*
• Users: ((SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALs + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise User CALs) x number of users accessing internal content)(Ent CALs are cumulative. If you need Enterprise you must buy Standard and Enterprise CALs)
SharePoint 2010 Standard Internet Facing only (all content is publically available) (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard + Windows Server 2008 External Connector
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc license x Number of Processors)*
• Users: Content administrators for publically available content are covered under the Internet Sites license
SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Internet Facing only (all content is publically available) (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise + Windows Server 2008 External Connector
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc license x Number of Processors)*
• Users: Content administrators for publically available content are covered under the Internet Sites license
SharePoint 2010 Standard for both internal and public facing sites on the same hardware (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard + Windows Server 2008 External Connector
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc license x Number of Processors)*
• Users: SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALS x number of users accessing internal content
SharePoint 2010 Enterprise for both internal and public facing sites on the same hardware (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise + Windows Server 2008 External Connector
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc license x Number of Processors)*
• Users: (SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALs + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise User CALs) x number of users accessing internal content
FAST requires additional licenses for the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
*For virtualization of SQL Server - Only active nodes in a cluster require a SQL Server license. For Standard, Workgroup, and Enterprise, if you decide to license on a per processor basis, you must buy a SQL Server license for each virtual processor. For Enterprise Edition, you can also choose to license all physical processors in a box. This gives you rights to run SQL Server on any number of virtual processors running on the same physical server. If you use Server/CAL based licensing, for Standard and Workgroup editions, you must obtain SQL Server licenses for each Virtual Operating System Environment on which you run instances of SQL Server. However, for the Enterprise edition, if you have a Server license for the physical Server, you may run any number of SQL Server instances in any Virtual Operating System Environment that you run on that same physical server. If you are using hardware partitioning on a multi-processor server, you can use any number of virtualized instances for SQL Server Enterprise Edition as long as all processors in that hardware partition are licensed. For example, if you have a partition of 10 physical processors on a 32-processor server, purchasing 10 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 gives you the rights to run any number of SQL Server instances on physical or virtual environments on that partition.
Other references:
How To Buy SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 Hosting
Ari Baker Blog
Bamboo Solutions Price Calculator for SP2010
Dan Holme - SP2010 Licensing
Microsoft SharePoint Licensing Page
Windows Server 2008 External Connector
--Updated 1/18/2011 Added Windows Server 2008 External Connector to licensing lists for public facing sites.
I have tried to compile a list of sources to help simplify (or least consolidate) information on SharePoint 2010 Licensing.
This is a good reference for what is/is not included in the different versions of SharePoint: http://goo.gl/HWasj
Visual breakdown of the basic requirements of a SharePoint 2010 Medium farm by @SharePointLola http://bit.ly/hEsml4
Another good blog on SharePoint 2010 Topology.
The following scenarios do not cover whether or not to use Windows Server Standard or Enterprise or SQL Server Standard or Enterprise. However, for most scenarios, Windows Server Std will suffice for the web front ends and the application servers. Windows Server Enterprise is required on the backend if you need a failover cluster. Standard only supports NLB clustering and Enterprise is required to use failover clustering. As for the DB servers, this really depends on how much you will need to scale moving forward. This article is a good resource for comparing SQL Server versions: http://goo.gl/5Awry
This whitepaper is a good resource for why SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise is better with SharePoint 2010: http://goo.gl/1uD9Z
Good post on SQL Server High Availability.
Hardware and Software specs for SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010.
SharePoint 2010 Standard Internal only (no publically available content) (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc License x Number of Processors)*
• Users: SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALS x number of users accessing internal content
SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Internal only (no publically available content)(not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc License x Number of Processors)*
• Users: ((SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALs + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise User CALs) x number of users accessing internal content)(Ent CALs are cumulative. If you need Enterprise you must buy Standard and Enterprise CALs)
SharePoint 2010 Standard Internet Facing only (all content is publically available) (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard + Windows Server 2008 External Connector
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc license x Number of Processors)*
• Users: Content administrators for publically available content are covered under the Internet Sites license
SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Internet Facing only (all content is publically available) (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise + Windows Server 2008 External Connector
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc license x Number of Processors)*
• Users: Content administrators for publically available content are covered under the Internet Sites license
SharePoint 2010 Standard for both internal and public facing sites on the same hardware (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard + Windows Server 2008 External Connector
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc license x Number of Processors)*
• Users: SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALS x number of users accessing internal content
SharePoint 2010 Enterprise for both internal and public facing sites on the same hardware (not including FAST):
• Web Front-End Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise + Windows Server 2008 External Connector
• Application Servers: Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise
• Database Servers: Windows Server 2008 R2 + (SQL Server 2008 R2 Proc license x Number of Processors)*
• Users: (SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALs + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise User CALs) x number of users accessing internal content
FAST requires additional licenses for the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
*For virtualization of SQL Server - Only active nodes in a cluster require a SQL Server license. For Standard, Workgroup, and Enterprise, if you decide to license on a per processor basis, you must buy a SQL Server license for each virtual processor. For Enterprise Edition, you can also choose to license all physical processors in a box. This gives you rights to run SQL Server on any number of virtual processors running on the same physical server. If you use Server/CAL based licensing, for Standard and Workgroup editions, you must obtain SQL Server licenses for each Virtual Operating System Environment on which you run instances of SQL Server. However, for the Enterprise edition, if you have a Server license for the physical Server, you may run any number of SQL Server instances in any Virtual Operating System Environment that you run on that same physical server. If you are using hardware partitioning on a multi-processor server, you can use any number of virtualized instances for SQL Server Enterprise Edition as long as all processors in that hardware partition are licensed. For example, if you have a partition of 10 physical processors on a 32-processor server, purchasing 10 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 gives you the rights to run any number of SQL Server instances on physical or virtual environments on that partition.
Other references:
How To Buy SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 Hosting
Ari Baker Blog
Bamboo Solutions Price Calculator for SP2010
Dan Holme - SP2010 Licensing
Microsoft SharePoint Licensing Page
Windows Server 2008 External Connector
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
You are probably NOT a SharePoint Configuration ‘Expert’ if…
After reading Mark Rackley’s recent post, I found that while it was amusing, it was extremely helpful for me, being a consultant on the infrastructure side of SharePoint, as a reference when talking to developers well as great interview material. I struggled with the title to use for this post, but I went with Configuration Expert because titles such as Architect or Administrator can be somewhat ambiguous and broadly defined. I will be the second, after Mark, to say that I am not a SharePoint expert as I find that I learn new things specifically about SharePoint every day.
What am I saying: If you call yourself an expert, the following should apply.
What am I not saying: If any of the following do not apply, then you are not an expert.
Now, let’s begin:
You are not a SharePoint Configuration Expert if you still refer to SharePoint 2010 as MOSS.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 was commonly referred to as MOSS. Valid options for referring to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 are SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, or SP2010 and maybe a few others, but not MOSS.
You are not a SharePoint Configuration Expert if you install SharePoint without a plan…
There are so many different configurations with which SharePoint can be installed, that it is crucial to gather requirements prior to beginning an installation. Governance, Information architecture, performance, growth, service applications, and the list goes on, all play a vital role in a successful SharePoint deployment, and any SharePoint Infrastructure Expert should be able to speak to each of these and why they are important to a successful implementation.
You are not a SharePoint Configuration Expert if you ever recommend using the Basic Install...
These two articles, here and here, go into a number of reasons why no one should use the Basic Install. The bottom line is if you look at the limitations and the long term consequences of running the basic install, only the Advanced installation option should ever be run.
You are not a SharePoint Configuration Expert if you use the Product Configuration Wizard to install all of your service apps into production...
I run the Product Configuration Wizard for installing my dev environments. It’s easy and it’s simple. Best of all, I don’t have to worry about using PowerShell! (*sarcasm*)
This is a debatable topic, so I don’t think I can come out and say that you shouldn’t run the Product Configuration Wizard for any of the service applications ever. There are a few that you should never run it for (example User Profile Service), but there are some, that if you can accept ugly database GUIDs in the database names, it could be argued that there is no technical reason to avoid it. That being said, I will always recommend manually creating each service application as needed because the wizard does take some shortcuts, and I am rather particular about nomenclature in my installations.
You are not a SharePoint Configuration Expert if you use a single service account in your farm...
This particular topic is a perfect example of an ‘it depends’ topic. The number of service accounts required for SharePoint may depend on the particular business requirements for a specific installation. While there are some extremes on both sides, my point in this one is I believe best practice is to use more than one account. There is just too much security risk associated with using a single service account as your Farm Account, service application accounts and especially user profile service account. Todd Klindt has a good list of suggested service accounts.
You are not a SharePoint Configuration expert if you can't name the default authentication zones and know how many zones you can have...
This includes knowing how to extend a web application in order to implement the required zones. This TechNet article speaks to zones in SharePoint 2010.
You are not a SharePoint Configuration expert if you can't configure FBA…
First of all, FBA is not a directory, it is an authentication type. You can use FBA to authenticate against a customized claims provider, but you can also use it to authenticate against Active Directory. FBA is often a valid business requirement for remote or extranet access.
You are not a SharePoint Configuration expert if you always recommend the same farm configuration for every installation…
Wait, you mean I can’t just offer a cookie cutter SharePoint implementation? Businesses all have unique needs and unique processes. SharePoint is no different. Business requirements should dictate SharePoint deployments and not the other way around.
I’ll take a couple of points now from Mark’s blog:
You are not a SharePoint expert if you do not capitalize the P in SharePoint...
You are not a SharePoint Configuration Expert if you allow SharePoint Development Experts to manually copy DLLs...
I will also reiterate that you are not a SharePoint Configuration Expert if you are not involved in the community...
I will clarify my point in that it’s not about if you can drop the names of SharePoint ‘Experts’, but that you are sharing your experiences and offering your help to the community. Basically I would hope to be able to find some reference to you somewhere in the SharePoint community if you are touting yourself as a SharePoint expert.
Finally, I agree totally with Mark in that SharePoint consultants and experts who don’t know everything are far less dangerous than those who think they know it all and are unwilling to listen to reason, the community, or their peers. It takes more than just the ability to click next a few times to understand the SharePoint infrastructure.
Thanks to @SharePointLola and @mrackley for the assist on this post!
Thanks to @SharePointLola and @mrackley for the assist on this post!
Friday, February 25, 2011
Backups Equal Disaster Recovery - Not So Fast
I am beginning a series of blog posts that speak to a topic that many people have in the back of their mind but most are afraid to confront: Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC). I get asked about these a lot and specifically how they pertain to SharePoint. The problem is that there are many more levels to data protection than just DR and BC, and they are not unique to SharePoint. I am going to take a stab at going through the different levels that are ecompassed within DR and BC from a data protection perspective and speak to a number of details in each that are particular to SharePoint. In this first post I am just going to identify the different levels of protection (or lack of protection) and provide a summary in my own words for each. In each subsequent post I will take a deep dive into each item and speak to my experiences and how the perspectives for each change based on the audience. A CIO sees each level differently than the IT manager who see them differently from the System Administrator and so on.
Protecting business data is much different than ensuring that a business is protected from the loss of its data. If you think of it as I just stated, the former is much easier than the latter. In the real world, protecting a business' data is easy, but worthless. What good is data if it's tucked away on a tape offsite, if it takes a day to get it back onsite and no one has a tape drive or server with a SCSI card in it to read the data. Even if all of the hardware is in place to read the data, what good is it if I can't provide business resources quick access to the data. By the time the data is somewhat accessible, it's been two days. And since the business never took the time to figure out that it actually costs them $10,000/business hour of downtime, but only spent a couple thousands dollars on a new tape drive, it's going to take months to recover from a 10 second brown out in the building.
This scenario is not unlikely, nor is it uncommon. Per an Iron Mountain white paper called, “The Business Case For Disaster Recovery Planning: Calculating The Cost Of Downtime,” "A frequently cited study in Contingency Planning and Management magazine found that 40 percent of companies that shut down for three days failed within 36 months."
While those numbers can be increased or decreased based a number of factors, they should cause fear for any executive (especially in a small business) who has not considered how useless merely having backups of critical data is to his or her business. Consider a small business whose primary income source is billable consulting hours, and immediate access to archived data is not critical. Now consider a stock trading company, they could lose thousands or millions of dollars in seconds if they do not have access to their data. The business owners must NOT merely consider the cost of disaster recovery, but the cost of downtime and disaster prevention compared to the cost of disaster recovery.
Protecting business data is much different than ensuring that a business is protected from the loss of its data. If you think of it as I just stated, the former is much easier than the latter. In the real world, protecting a business' data is easy, but worthless. What good is data if it's tucked away on a tape offsite, if it takes a day to get it back onsite and no one has a tape drive or server with a SCSI card in it to read the data. Even if all of the hardware is in place to read the data, what good is it if I can't provide business resources quick access to the data. By the time the data is somewhat accessible, it's been two days. And since the business never took the time to figure out that it actually costs them $10,000/business hour of downtime, but only spent a couple thousands dollars on a new tape drive, it's going to take months to recover from a 10 second brown out in the building.
This scenario is not unlikely, nor is it uncommon. Per an Iron Mountain white paper called, “The Business Case For Disaster Recovery Planning: Calculating The Cost Of Downtime,” "A frequently cited study in Contingency Planning and Management magazine found that 40 percent of companies that shut down for three days failed within 36 months."
While those numbers can be increased or decreased based a number of factors, they should cause fear for any executive (especially in a small business) who has not considered how useless merely having backups of critical data is to his or her business. Consider a small business whose primary income source is billable consulting hours, and immediate access to archived data is not critical. Now consider a stock trading company, they could lose thousands or millions of dollars in seconds if they do not have access to their data. The business owners must NOT merely consider the cost of disaster recovery, but the cost of downtime and disaster prevention compared to the cost of disaster recovery.
I see basically three facets of protecting a business from data loss: Backups, Disaster Recovery, and Business Continuity. The cost is indirectly proportional to the downtime tolerance level also known as the Recovery Time Objective (RTO). In other words the less downtime a business can withstand, the more it's going to cost to mitigate the risk of downtime. Here is a simple graph to show this relationship:
Keep in mind that just have the data available is one thing, but a business' resources for revenue generation, must also be able to access the data (could be employees, could be customers). I will factor this into some of my discussions, but for summary purposes I will keep this somewhat high-level.
Backups
Backups ensure that data critical to a business' revenue generation or penalty prevention (think SOX, GLBA, HIPAA) is in a state that can be recovered. In other words, that data is on tape, disk, other media or in the cloud somewhere that can be accessed and restored. Cost factors for backups are related to the speed of backups, the speed of restoration, the length of retention, the size of the data set, and the security of the data.
Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery is the ability to recover access to data (not just recover data) from a specific point in time (Recovery Point Objective or RPO) within a certain amount of time (Recovery Time Objective or RTO). I do not include a Force Majeure disaster within the scope of DR and I will explain this later.
Within DR there are also three scenarios to consider:
Real-time recovery - This is the ability to recover data at the item level. Think individual emails, documents within a SharePoint library, tables within a database
Data Corruption Recovery - The systems are still up and running, but a database has corrupted, a software update has hosed an OS, someone deleted a system file.
Hardware Failure - The database server dies and not only do the databases have to be restored, but that third party application has be redeployed after SQL Server has been successfully reinstalled. (doh, I knew I should have created an Active/Passive cluster)
Cost factors for DR include application complexity, resource availability, investment in Backup strategies, investment in high availability and/or disaster prevention.
Business Continuity
Business continuity is the ability to continue generating revenue even when the "normal" means of day to day operations are unavailable. Think hurricane Katrina or a severe ice storm knocks out power for a week.
Cost associated with BC include investments in DR, strategic relationships with vendors, resource (both revenue generating and non-revenue generating) availability.
The bottom line is there are many considerations to take into account when calculating the costs and ROI associated with protecting a business' data. I intend to provide a little insight here into some of those considerations, and provide some specific examples and suggestions that are directly related to SharePoint.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Catch 22 for Approval Workflow in SharePoint Designer
--I began blogging on this, and found someone else's blogpost from Dec 2010 who also blogged on this exact topic. Though I never saw his blog post prior to writing this, credit to Lars Nielson.
I ran into an interesting dilemma while working on my most recent project. The project involved a number of document libraries that required content approval as well as versioning.
The scope of work greatly limited the amount of customizations that could be made to SharePoint (i.e. building workflows in Visual Studio).
This introduced an interesting problem based on our initial game plan. The workflow is basically a document goes through a change process and committee approvals before it is published. End Users cannot see changes until an approved document is published.
The change process was the complicated piece to this because the organization had a number of variables within the process, so the only solution was to require each step in the workflow to be manually kicked off.
When I made it to the approval stage, we initially had content approval on in the libraries. And here is where the catch 22 comes in, trying to set content approval status to Approved in a document library that requires a document to be checked out and content approval is on.
To set the content approval status from Designer, ok easy enough, there is an action for that....uh oh, the document must first be checked out. ok, check out document, set approval status....uh oh, I get an error that says content approval status cannot be set while a document is checked out.
Catch 22. Basically to set content approval status in designer, the document must be checked out, but content approval status cannot be changed while a document is checked out.
Possible work-around - We did not go this route, we basically turned off content approval, and used a workflow to notify approvals, and once approval was granted, a user would publish a major version of the document. This was acceptable for this engagement.
I was going to explain the workaround here, but I ran across a blog post while getting my info together of someone who already documented it. So in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, Lars gets credit for this solution. Lars Nielson blogged on this exact topic in late 2010. http://discoverlars.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/update-the-approval-status-in-a-sharepoint-designer-workflow/
The bottom line in this is that for highly complex workflows, you really need Visual Studio.
I ran into an interesting dilemma while working on my most recent project. The project involved a number of document libraries that required content approval as well as versioning.
The scope of work greatly limited the amount of customizations that could be made to SharePoint (i.e. building workflows in Visual Studio).
This introduced an interesting problem based on our initial game plan. The workflow is basically a document goes through a change process and committee approvals before it is published. End Users cannot see changes until an approved document is published.
The change process was the complicated piece to this because the organization had a number of variables within the process, so the only solution was to require each step in the workflow to be manually kicked off.
When I made it to the approval stage, we initially had content approval on in the libraries. And here is where the catch 22 comes in, trying to set content approval status to Approved in a document library that requires a document to be checked out and content approval is on.
To set the content approval status from Designer, ok easy enough, there is an action for that....uh oh, the document must first be checked out. ok, check out document, set approval status....uh oh, I get an error that says content approval status cannot be set while a document is checked out.
Catch 22. Basically to set content approval status in designer, the document must be checked out, but content approval status cannot be changed while a document is checked out.
Possible work-around - We did not go this route, we basically turned off content approval, and used a workflow to notify approvals, and once approval was granted, a user would publish a major version of the document. This was acceptable for this engagement.
I was going to explain the workaround here, but I ran across a blog post while getting my info together of someone who already documented it. So in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, Lars gets credit for this solution. Lars Nielson blogged on this exact topic in late 2010. http://discoverlars.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/update-the-approval-status-in-a-sharepoint-designer-workflow/
The bottom line in this is that for highly complex workflows, you really need Visual Studio.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Clearwater Community Church
So, this is a little off topic from my normal posts, but I released a new website for my church today. I used Wordpress as the CMS. This is just phase 1, I have a lot of good ideas to keep incorporating into it as time goes on.
I'd love to hear some technical feedback on the design and look and feel.
Check it out at http://www.valuegod.org/.
I'd love to hear some technical feedback on the design and look and feel.
Check it out at http://www.valuegod.org/.
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