Technical WebLog of Aaron Saikovski

Windows 8 Release Preview and SharePoint 2010

Aaron Saikovski — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:27:58 GMT

**Firstly at the time of writing this article this isn't an officially supported configuration so you are on your own for now – this may change in the future though ** I recently rebuilt my work laptop with the Windows 8 Release Preview (Build: 8400)...(read more)

Troubleshooting FAST Search 2010: EventID: 2567 - Failed to connect to FASTServer.MyDomain.com:13391 - Failed to initialize session with document engine: Unable to resolve Contentdistributor

Aaron Saikovski — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 04:30:18 GMT

When performing a content crawl with a FAST Content SSA it pays to check the event logs on the central administration server for the error 2567 as this usually means that the FAST Content service application has been incorrectly configured to connect...(read more)

First post for 2012 – Updated Setting the Machine Powerplan using PowerShell

Aaron Saikovski — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:52:06 GMT

Happy 2012 everyone! Here is an updated Powershell script for setting the powerplan on a server in a much more efficient manner. A big shout out to Amir Rothschild - PFE Extraordinaire & Shay Levy - PowerShell MVP – Thanks guys! Here is the...(read more)

Get the application pool for a web application using the IIS7 PowerShell snap-in

Aaron Saikovski — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:52:35 GMT

Recently I was playing around with the IIS 7 PowerShell snap-in and I found a simple way of obtaining what application pool a given web application is running under. The code is pretty simple and to do this, run from a standard PowerShell console...(read more)

Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool v2.1.0 - ready for download

Aaron Saikovski — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:13:11 GMT

The latest verion of the PAL tool can be downloaded from here: http://pal.codeplex.com/ This version includes a new threshold file for SharePoint 2010. We look forward to your feedback and comments. email me at Aaron.Saikovski [AT] microsoft...(read more)

SharePoint 2010 build versions – updated with links

Aaron Saikovski — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:54:50 GMT

Many folks from the recent Melbourne SharePoint Saturday event were asking me about version table from my patching slides so here it is: Build Version Download links October 2011 CU 14.0.6112.5000 SPF: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2596508 SPS...(read more)

Slides from SharePoint Saturday Melbourne – October 2011

Aaron Saikovski — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 07:55:08 GMT

Thanks to all those who attended my session on patching at SharePoint Saturday. Here are the slides from my presentation:...(read more)

SharePoint 2010 build versions

Aaron Saikovski — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 07:51:11 GMT

Many folks from the recent Melbourne SharePoint Saturday event were asking me about version table from my patching slides so here it is: SharePoint Build Version October 2011 Cumulative Update 14.0.6109.5005 August 2011 Cumulative Update...(read more)

Optimising Office Web Apps rendering performance

Aaron Saikovski — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 07:08:47 GMT

I was recently working with one of our large enterprise customers and they were experiencing rendering and performance related issues with Office Web apps in SharePoint 2010, specifically the word and PowerPoint viewing services.

I did a bit of digging and changed some of the worker process/CPU core allocation settings and we found rendering performance improved quite significantly. We also made sure they patched the office web apps install bits as they hadn't patched with SP1 or the June CU for OWA. This made some big improvements as well.

**All of the changes listed here may very in your environment but are based on supported and documented articles**

Key TechNet references:

Configure Word Viewing service settings: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee837420.aspx
Configure PowerPoint service application settings: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee837424.aspx

Here are the steps to change the OWA worker process and CPU core allocation settings using trusty PowerShell:

1) Get the number of cores available to the worker processes via WMI calls:

$CPUConfig = Get-WmiObject Win32_Processor 
$NumCores = $CPUConfig.NumberOfcores

2) Calculate the Worker Process Count based on the Number of Cores multiplied by 2. (The recommendation is to have 2 worker processes per CPU Core):

$WorkerProcessCount = ($NumCores * 2)

3) Next we change the Word Viewing Service MaxActiveProcessCount parameter (by default is is set to 3 worker processes) (Apologies for the wrapping of the code)

$serviceAppId = (Get-SPServiceApplication | 
where {$_.TypeName -eq "Word Viewing Service Application"}).ID 
Set-SPWordViewingServiceApplication -Identity $serviceAppId -MaxActiveProcessCount 
$WorkerProcessCount

4) Finally we change the PowerPoint viewing service ViewingWorkerProcessCount parameter (Apologies for the wrapping of the code)

Get-SPPowerPointServiceApplication | Set-SPPowerPointServiceApplication 
-ViewingWorkerProcessCount $WorkerProcessCount

Finally for the word viewing service, we found that changing the default setting for MaxRenderingLifetimeInSeconds from the 5 minute default had some positive effects as well. This will vary according to your environment and should be changed based on the following formula (From TechNet):

Divide the maximum number of pages of the largest documents by 700. This will determine the number of minutes required to render the documents.
Then multiply the number of minutes by 60 to determine the maximum rendering time in seconds.

Happy rendering!

Just Published - Deploying SharePoint Server 2010 updates on mission critical sites

Aaron Saikovski — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 23:08:52 GMT

Here is an article that has just been published around updating/patching your farms with minimal to little downtime. We look forward to any feedback you might have on the article.

This has been tested in our labs and we look forward to hearing from you around your experiences with performing patching in your environments.

Here is the link to the article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh495476.aspx

Please fee free to email me with any comments, questions or concerns – Aaron.Saikovski [AT] microsoft.com