Van Laan on Sharepoint and all things Microsoft

ASP.NET Memory and CPU Considerations as they relate to SharePoint

This post is a potential placeholder for ongoing research into whether or not ASP.NET app pool and machine.config settings changes from the default are necessary for a stable SharePoint installation.

I haven't put them into place yet, but have seen a few installations where they might be necessary.

Here are the governing documents from Microsoft. No connecting mention to SharePoint at all, but it's certainly running on .NET 2.0 technology, so why not, right?

Contention, poor performance, and deadlocks when you make Web service requests from ASP.NET applications:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821268

MSDN Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability

Chapter 6 — Improving ASP.NET Performance

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998549.aspx

This aricle might be useful, as well:

828222 How to generate a dump file when ASP.NET deadlocks in IIS 6.0
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=828222

This questions are based off of seeing these events in the event log occasionally:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: W3SVC
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1013
Date:  6/12/2008
Time:  12:46:05 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: HostNameHere
Description:
A process serving application pool 'SharePoint - AppPool Name' exceeded time limits during shut down. The process id was '####'.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I like this bit of help from Matt:

http://www.dvsug.org/Matt/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=3

He's suggesting a memory threshold to recycle at between 800MB to 1.5 GB.

And he led me to this great article:

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2007/11/26/dealing-with-memory-pressure-problems-in-moss-wss.aspx

Talking about memory and CPU issues with SharePoint. Very good read.

And finally found Joel O's post on the topic:

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/10/29/sharepoint-app-pool-settings.aspx

And here's a great free utility for managing Application pools:

http://www.harbar.net/articles/APM.aspx

How to Check for whether MOSS SP1 is installed

Start Central Administration, Click on Operations, then Servers on server.

Without SP1, it's version:

12.0.0.6020

With, SP1, it is version:

12.0.0.6219

***Update 6.12.08 ***

Check out

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948945

And look at the file sizes, dates, and version number to see if you've updated to WSS 3.0 or not.

Also, this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936984

Contains a specific section on determining whether or not you've upgraded to MOSS SP1 on the third link down under Installation details. So there you go.

***End Update***

Event ID 1013 - SharePoint edits and uploads hanging

Short Version:

Symptoms: Uploads of documents, pictures, .aspx pages hanging. Edits of pages hanging when trying to check them back in. High-volume Publishing site.

Fix: Change shutdown timeout of application pool from default of 90 to 180, up worker threads for app pool web garden to two (I was lucky enough to have quad-proc machines).

Long Version:

So, recently went live with a SharePoint Publishing site that replaced an existing site that averages a few thousand hits per day. Web farm with two WFEs and an App server. On the first day things were going well for the anonymous external users hitting the site and getting the info they were used to getting. But not so well for internal IT users who were applying edits as requested to the site. Document uploads were taking forever and finally hanging.

The corollary event in the event log is this:

And the text is this:

Event Type:        Warning

Event Source:    W3SVC

Event Category:                None

Event ID:              1013

Date:                     6/9/2008

Time:                     9:59:13 PM

User:                     N/A

Computer:          SPWFE02

Description:

A process serving application pool 'Cybersubstation-Internal' exceeded time limits during shut down. The process id was '6264'.

And lots of 1013s in the event log, but many, many on our golive date and shortly thereafter:

 

Some research turned up this post from Steve Sheppard at Microsoft:

http://blogs.msdn.com/steveshe/archive/2007/12/19/overlapped-recycling-and-sharepoint-configuring-the-shutdown-timeout.aspx

He references the Planning and Deploying Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a Multi-server Environment at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262996.aspx which states that the App pool shut down timeout should be changed from 90 to 300 seconds.

So, go to IIS Admin, right-click on the web app in question and select properties. Select the Home Directory tab and look at the Application pool setting to determine which app pool to modify the timeout for (or just look at the one referenced in the event log).

Now, in IIS Admin, expand the Application pools and right-click and select properties on the app pool in question.

Select the health tab and you should see the default of 90 for shutdown timeout:

 

And changed to 300:

Both my servers immediately starting pegging all 4 cpu's mercilessly. They both shot up to around 100% pretty quick. I assumed this was some kind of temporary adjustment phase. 15 minutes later, it was still happening:

This was obviously worrisome. So I added another thread to the web garden of the app pool (which defaults to one):

Since I'm working with quad-proc machines, I figured this would offset the load nicely.

After monitoring the servers for another 20-30 minutes, the pattern had changed a bit. I now had another w3wp.exe for that application pool, and the total CPU no longer spiked at 100% and stayed there. But it was still consistently between 60-95%, occasionally touching 100%. Still not right.

So, contrary to the Microsoft recommendation from the link above, I dropped the app pool shutdown timeout from 300 down to 180-still double the default of 90, but less than the 300 recommended:

My two WFEs almost immediately calmed down on the CPU spike and have stayed there for about 30 minutes now, with only occasional spikes that only last about 15-20 seconds, even with the constant traffic the web site experiences from the outside.

Thanks Linda, Jeanine, Eddie, Theresa, Joey, Tom. 

Use HTML to make HREF within same SharePoint page

So, this is just a quick post to remind myself that old-school HTML tricks can be used fine within SharePoint web pages. So, within a Content Editor Web Part or Page Editor field, you can create a hyperlink to another point on the same page.

Click Edit HTML or Source Editor to view the html encoding of the page or web part:

Locate the place within your existing text where you want the link to jump to. Put this line in:

<a name=1></a>

Where "1" equals whatever name you want to give this jump-to point on the page. You could call this point whatever you like, just so long as it's unique in the page. You could call it <a name=FAQQuestion1></a>, to have the answer to the first in a long list of Frequently Asked Questions.

Then click OK to get out of the source editor.

Then, go back up to whatever point on the page you want to hyperlink down to this, use the mouse to select the words you want to hyperlink, then click on the Hyperlink button on the edit fields up top. Put in a hyperlink to

#1

in the first case above, or #FAQQuestion1 in the second case. As long as they match.

Save your work and you should have a hyperlink within the same page. Yay!

Automatically Populate Field in InfoPath from AD

This is an easy way to get AD info into an InfoPath form without writing code.

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/itaysk/archive/2007/04/05/InfoPath-_2D00_-Get-the-current-user-without-writing-code.aspx

Free WildCard People Search

Just found this great code snippet online that does wildcard people search. Out of the box SharePoint, even with SP1 (I was hoping SP1 would add this functionality, but...), search does not return wildcard results. So, doing a people search on "Ric" would return only those people whose first names were actually entered into Active Directory as "Ric" or who had some field, like department, that had "ric" in it. The code is at the bottom of this post.

And, to give credit where it's definitely due, here's the link to the original post:

http://www.ramonscott.com/Home/tabid/37/EntryID/1/Default.aspx

Here's what a search in default people search looks like when I search on ric:

As you can see, there's only results that have *exactly* "ric" in them. The rest of the results, truncated because they have lots of client info in them, all are returned because the user has a department field of "RIC."

Here's what it looks like when the code is pasted into a content editor web part on the page:

And here's what it looks like when I click Search on the above box:

As you can see, I'm now returning results on users named Richard, as presented by the default peopleresults.aspx page. So, you could do this, or pay Ontolica $10K to do it for you. (Though we're still missing some search components that should be basic, in my opinion, such as wildcard results on non-people data and extended boolean search.)

Additionally, here's a link to where someone extended this code to be able to do wildcard searches on additional fields with people search:

http://www.sharepointbuzz.com/index.php/2008/01/24/how-to-extend-wildcard-people-search-on-moss-2007/

Here's the code:

<script language="javascript">
//function to handle enter on keyboard
function txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(e)
{
  if (e.keyCode == 13 || e.keyCode==10)
  {
    e.returnValue=false;
    DoWildPeopleSearch();
    return false;
  }
  else
    return true;
}
//escape apostrophes in search strings
function escapestr(str)
{
return str.replace("'","%22");
}

//search function
function DoWildPeopleSearch()
{
var firstname = escapestr(document.all["firstname"].value);
var lastname =  escapestr(document.all["lastname"].value);
var url;

//search on last name
if(firstname == "")
{
url = "/searchcenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=LastName%3A" + lastname;
window.location=url;
return;
}

//search on first name
if(lastname == "")
{
url = "/searchcenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=FirstName%3A" + firstname;
window.location=url;
return;
}

//first and last
url = "/searchcenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=lastname%3A" + lastname +  "%20FirstName%3A" + firstname;
window.location=url;
return;
}
</script>

<table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%" ID="Table3">
<tr>
  <td width="80" nowrap>
   First Name:
  </td>
  <td width="100%">
   <input size="20" maxlength="100" id="firstname" name="firstname" type="text" onkeydown="txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(event)">
  </td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td width="80" nowrap>
   Last Name:
  </td>
  <td>
   <input size="20" maxlength="100" id="lastname" name="lastname" type="text" onkeydown="txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(event)">
  </td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td> &nbsp; </td>
  <td>
   <input type="button" onclick="DoWildPeopleSearch()" value="Search">
  </td>
</tr>
</table>

Thanks to Richard and Alex

Great list of General SharePoint posts

I've got this list set as my homepage now. Great, great list of posts:

http://sharepointsherpa.com/2008/02/13/sharepoint-2007-how-to-list/

Thanks, Scott Wheeler!

Redirect user based on AD property

So, Paul Galvin wrote this post and developed this webpart to redirect users based on an AD property. I need to test and screenshot it, but here's the link for now:

http://www.sharepointsecurity.com/blog/sharepoint/sharepoint-2007-development/redirector-webpart-sp-solution-file-download/

Automating site/subsite creation using stsadm and a batch file

So, this is a follow-up to a previous post on automating site collection where I gripe alot about how there's no provision for automating site creation. Guess I whined too soon, eh? This is the earlier post:

http://vanlaan.typepad.com/van_laan_on_sharepoint/2007/11/automating-site.html

So, all that griping aside, here's how to use a simple batch file and stsadm to create as many sites/subsites as you like.

Short Version:

• Create site template, save to template gallery.
• Install site template into global template gallery with command: stsadm -o addtemplate -title "TEMPLATETITLE" -filename FilenameLocation
• Create sites/subsites with command: stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/url/subsitename -sitetemplate _global_#0 -title sitename -description "Site Description" Can use a batch file and just have row after row of this command. Execute from cmd line to watch it process properly.
• One caveat here: You can certainly try to cut and paste cmd line commands from this post or any other web site. But if it doesn't work don't give up right away. Always, always try typing in the command manually, as spaces, dashes, and other characters don't always translate from html to the cmd prompt.

Long Version:

First, I'm emulating a client need here. The need is to create around 55 sites, all based on a custom template, on a single path beneath an existing site which hangs off of a site collection. The 55 sites names (and thus URLs) are all based on 3-letter codes that indicate for which city the particular site will be created. So, ATL for Atlanta, BOS for Boston, and so forth.

The first step was to modify an existing, simple team site and then Save that Site as a template in the site gallery. One thing I learned here is that sites cannot be saved as templates if the Publishing feature is turned on. Or at least that was what I experienced in this case. Turning on the Publishing feature (thus creating the Pages library with Approval turned on) removed the option from Site Actions, Site Settings to "Save Site as Template." Very strange. There's probably some logic behind that, but I can't hazard a guess as to what it would be.

So, anyways, Pusblishing feature off, I save the site as a template in the site gallery and then go to run my command from the command line which should create a site based on that template. I named the template "Stations" based on client needs. It looks nice and unique so it's obvious the sites created come from the template:

So the command to be run from the DOS prompt is:

stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ATL -sitetemplate stations -title "Atlanta Station" -description "Atlanta Station"

Huh, SharePoint doesn't seem to know what the file "stations" is, even though it's saved to my template gallery:

A little research leads me to the understanding that sites can only be created in this fashion if the site template has been uploaded to the global template gallery.

This can be verified by running the following command:

stsadm -o enumtemplates

Which, in my farm, returns:

Basically, just a previous global template I uploaded in earlier testing. But no stations template.

So, I need to upload my stations template to the global site template catalog.

This can be accomplished by first finding my template file in the site collection template gallery, right-clicking, and "save file as", just like you would any file off of a normal website:

Save the file in a nice easy path to reference from the command line. I chose to save my file as c:\temp\sitetemplate\stations.stp

Then, the template needs to be added to the global site template catalog via the following command:

stsadm -o addtemplate -title "TEMPLATETITLE" -filename FilenameLocation

Or, in my case:

stsadm -o addtemplate -title "Stations" -filename c:\temp\sitetemplate\stations.stp

Operation completed successfully--aslways like to see that. It also calls for an issreset, so going to input command iisreset -noforce now.

Now, my template should be available via the stsadm -o enumtempates command:

Ok, that's good results. As you can see, two templates were returned. One from an earlier template, and one from my recent stations template. Here's the output:

C:\Documents and Settings\sjomvl>stsadm -o enumtemplates

Dracula - Language: 1033 - Site Template: _GLOBAL_#0 - Template Id: 1

Stations - Language: 1033 - Site Template: _GLOBAL_#1 - Template Id: 1

Now, here's the interesting part. See that Site Template:_GLOBAL_#1 bit? That's the actual template name which SharePoint refers to to describe my Stations template! Not Stations, which would be nice and friendly, but _GLOBAL_#1! That's nice.

So, my command now becomes:

stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ATL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Atlanta Station" -description "Atlanta Station"

And I got an error:

"The Web site address "/stations/ATL" is already in use."

This is because my earlier attempt, while reserving URL and kind of creating the site, did reserve the space at /stations/ATL. If I navigate to that URL, I get a page telling me to choose my template. So, I go to Manage Content and Structure and navigate to that level and, sure enough, Atlanta Station exists. So I delete that site or site placeholder and then run my command again:

Operation completed successfully. Just what I like to see.

And the site is created and exists here:

Good times. Now to automate this process with good ol' notepad.

So, I'll take the above command and put it into notepad, then reproduce it 55 times over with different URLs, descriptions, and titles. This is what I came up with:

stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ATL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Atlanta Station" -description "Atlanta Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/BMI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Bloomington-Normal Station" -description "Bloomington-Normal Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/BOS -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Boston Station" -description "Boston Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/BUF -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Buffalo Station" -description "Buffalo Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/BWI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Baltimore-Washington International Station" -description "Baltimore-Washington International Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/CAK -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Akron-Canton Station" -description "Akron-Canton Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/CHS -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Charleston Station" -description "Charleston Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/CLT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Charlotte-Douglas Station" -description "Charlotte-Douglas Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DAB -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Daytona Beach Station" -description "Daytona Beach Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DAY -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Dayton Station" -description "Dayton Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DCA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Reagan Station" -description "Reagan Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DEN -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Denver Station" -description "Denver Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DFW -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Dallas-Fort Worth Station" -description "Dallas-Fort Worth Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DTW -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Detroit Station" -description "Detroit Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/EWR -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Newark Station" -description "Newark Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/FLL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Fort Lauderdale Station" -description "Fort Lauderdale Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/FNT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Flint Station" -description "Flint Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/GPT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Gulfport-Biloxi Station" -description "Gulfport-Biloxi Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/HOU -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Houston Station" -description "Houston Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/HPN -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Westchester County Station" -description" Westchester County Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/IAD -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Dulles International Station" -description "Dulles International Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ICT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Wichita Station" -description "Wichita Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/IND -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Indianapolis Station" -description "Indianapolis Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/JAX -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Jacksonville Station" -description "Jacksonville Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/LAS -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "McCarran Station" -description "McCarran Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/LAX -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Las Vegas Station" -description "Las Vegas Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/LGA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "La Guardia Station" -description "La Guardia Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MCI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Kansas City Station" -description "Kansas City Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MCO -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Orlando Station" -description "Orlando Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MDW -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Midway Station" -description "Midway Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MEM -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Memphis Station" -description "Memphis Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MIA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Miami Station" -description "Miami Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MKE -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Milwaukee Station" -description "Milwaukee Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MLI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Moline Station" -description "Moline Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MSP -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Minneapolis-Saint Paul Station" -description "Minneapolis-Saint Paul Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MSY -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "New Orleans Station" -description "New Orleans Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PBI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Palm Beach Station" -description "Palm Beach Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PHF -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Newport News Station" -description "Newport News Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PHL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Philadelphia Station" -description "Philadelphia Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PHX -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Phoenix Station" -description "Phoenix Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PIT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Pittsburgh Station" -description "Pittsburgh Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PNS -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Pensacola Station" -description "Pensacola Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PWM -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Portland Station" -description "Portland Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/RDU -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Raleigh-Durham Station" -description "Raleigh-Durham Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/RIC -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Richmond Station" -description "Richmond Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ROC -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Rochester Station" -description "Rochester Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/RSW -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Fort Myers Station" -description "Fort Myers Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SAN -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "San Diego Station" -description "San Diego Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SAT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "San Antonio Station" -description "San Antonio Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SAV -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Savannah Station" -description "Savannah Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SEA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Seattle-Tacoma Station" -description "Seattle-Tacoma Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SFO -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "San Francisco Station" -description "San Francisco Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SJU -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "San Juan Station" -description "San Juan Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SRQ -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Sarasota-Bradenton Station" -description "Sarasota-Bradenton Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/STL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Saint Louis Station" -description "Saint Louis Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SWF -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Newburgh Station" -description "Newburgh Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/TPA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Tampa Station" -description "Tampa Station"

Wow. Let me just say that that was not a straightforward process. It involved notepad.exe, excel and lots of data entry-type busy work. That portion definitely needs some automation, and even in winword crtl find-replace I didn't really find it.

Suffice it to say, the above text was saved as stations.bat, and then executed:

And off it goes. Again, I ran the stations.bat file by navigating to that directory and running stations.bat from the cmd line directly, which offered me a line by line status, as opposed to navigating to the folder and double-clicking the file. This will give me a cmd prompt window on each line as it goes. Each site is being created one by one, and when it finishes, I have this:

 

Good times.

Caveats: The global site navigation comes up turned off by default, which is a bummer. Also, there's no means to provision security in this method--it comes up inheriting parent's security by default. Otherwise, good times.

Batch file:

Download Station.bat

Windows Server 2008, SharePoint 2007, and IIS 7.0 (plus some event id 6482)

Some things to know when installing SharePoint 2007 on Windows Server 2008, plus a little 6482 error talk.

Just working through installing a SharePoint farm on 3 Windows Server 2008 servers and a Windows Server 2003 server for SQL 2005. The 3 Windows Server 2008 servers are two Web Front Ends and an Application server.

There is a set of TechNet instructions specifically for Server 2008 and SharePoint 2007 SP1 here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263408.aspx

Caveats:

IIS 7.0 is installed by default on Windows Server 2008. Additionally, IIS 6.0 compatibility mode must be installed, per the above article (and some experience, now). Here's the text from MS:

"IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility role service

If you use the Windows Server 2008 Server Manager to perform a default Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 installation, the IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility role service is not included. Since this is a required role service, you must use the following procedure."

The SP1 slipstreamed version of SharePoint 2007 must be installed. The installation won't even proceed on Server 2008 without this version and will error out if you try. Here are the Technet instructions for this:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261890.aspx

There are also multuiple blogs out there on this topic. Just google "slipstream sp1 sharepoint" and there are many results.

We initially installed IIS 6.0 compatibility mode (after adding the "Role" Application Server added IIS 7.0) and then installed SharePoint. As in many farm installations I've seen lately, the 6482, 6398, and 7076 errors starting popping up on the WFE's pretty quick. (These are well-known errors that occur every minute when an SP Timer job tries to update the IIS metabase, which has become locked.) Since these errors are known to be fixed by a hotfix (http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=6003) at KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923028) we went to deploy this hotfix, but it didn't work on Server 2008. We gave Microsoft a call and got the friendly suggestion that, since this error is based on the IIS metabase being locked, maybe we should remove IIS 6.0 compatiblity mode.

This was a bad idea.

The farm went Tango Uniform. Lots of errors started hitting the event log and none of the web apps were accessible. Funny thing, too, the 6482, 6398, and 7076 errors persisted. The MS Rep went real quiet and then advised us we might need to reinstall our farm, but in the meantime, he was going to "repro" our issue. A short while afterwards, he sent us the above TechNet article with instructions for deploying SharePoint on Server 2008. Amazingly, just a few pages in the article explicitly states that IIS 6.0 compatibility mode is required for SharePoint. Guess he didn't read it beforehand.

Anyways, we reinstalled compatibility mode, but only the SharePoint Central Admin and SSP Admin web apps started working again. So, we deleted those web apps from Central Admin (leaving the databases intact), then recreated them in Central Admin with a dummy database name. Once created, we disassociated the dummy database name and reassociated the previous database name and the web apps were fine. Whew.

So, 4 hours lost time thanks to an MS support suggestion we should've thought better of, but some lessons learned, as well.

Other general notes on SharePoint/Server 2008:

Server 08 is built on the Vista User Access Control mindset. You'll hit "Continue" on a dark screen when trying to run many things. You'll also need to run many things as Administrator.

Additionally, Server 08 has fully adopted the Server Manager mindset. Most administration is done through this Server Manager console, which is like a big MMC you built with all the roles as expandable branches in the tree:

All the elements you used to think of as elements that are managed by Management Consoles (MMCs) are grouped under the "Roles" paradigm in Server 2008:

Event Viewer, for example, is inside its own branch called Diagnostics, and defaults to a summary view. The old school Event Viewer is most recognizable in the Windows Logs portion of this tree.

So, a bit clunky at first, it starts to make sense over time and with use.

Specific to IIS 7.0 management, things are a bit different. SSL certs, for example, are handled at the IIS server level, as opposed to per web app. Instead of going into the properties of a web app and selected the Advanced button to apply host headers, the entire terminology and functionality has shifted to a section called Bindings. Here's a shot:

Notice Server certificates (SSL) is now up at the top-level as opposed to managed per web app.

So, in general, things are different in the Windows Server 2008, IIS 7.0 world, but definitely still manageable once you find your way around. Setup of elements such as NLB and IIS 7.0 were quite simple once located.