This is a continuation of the previous article, SharePoint vs. Snapshots , which us recommended prior reading. Hopefully after reading my previous post on how SharePoint and snapshots really, really don't get along well, you're wondering how you might...

Sometimes when testing a performance issue with SharePoint, you really just want a very simple tool that will do nothing but submit a request to the SharePoint server and tell you EXACTLY how long that request took. And sometimes you want it to automatically...

Note : for the purposes of this article I'm focusing exlusively on virtualization and storage based snapshots. SQL snapshots are a different matter altogether and if available, are used frequently by SharePoint itself. The two should not be confused....

There are two simple truths in IT and in life that should be considered: Technology infrastructure is not free... there is always a cost to someone somewhere. As long as something is free, there is no reason to limit or manage my use...

If you’re a good SharePoint Administrator, this should be your default answer for most requests that you receive. No, I’m not crazy, and yes, I’m serious. Don’t believe me? Let me ask some basic questions: What is the single most important job of any...

Update : This issue does appear to have been resolved in the August 2011 Cumulative Update (build 6109). Although I have not validated this, I would defer to the product group for their fix if possible. If you have not yet, or do not yet have a plan to...

SharePoint 2010, with all of its new service applications and social features, just LOVES databases. I don't know the actual count, but I think I've heard as many as a possible 15+ databases if you light up every feature... and that's before you create...

I've been asked recently what the "best" or "correct" settings are for the SharePoint Diagnostic Logs (aka "ULS" logs) in a production environment. Of course, the immediate answer is "it depends". ;) First, consider that the ULS logs are designed with...

There is a lot of interest in the ability of SharePoint 2010 to use the new Remote Blob Storage (RBS) capabilities of SQL 2008 R2. Much of it good... some of it bad. The main issue is that many people are under some false assumptions about what RBS does...

I had an opportunity recently to ask (repeatedly) various experts and product group team members a very simple question: Why do we (Microsoft) purpetuate the "N tier" (web/app/data) myth in SharePoint? I'm not crazy... but I'm not living in 1998 anymore...

The term "Custom Code" gets thrown around quite a bit, and the default perspective most people have can be not quite accurate... so lets clarify this simply: "Custom Code" (noun) - Any functionality integrated into a product that does not have committed...

Many of my customers have a serious fear of defining service level agreements for SharePoint. The apparent belief is that SLAs are created by letting customers and senior management dream up lofty, unattainable goals that the system owners are then held...

While doing an install of SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2, my customer and I bumped into a problem: we couldn’t manually add some assemblies to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Obviously, UAC (User Account Control) was blocking us… but...

We get asked frequently which backup solution we recommend… and the obvious answer is ForeFront Data Protection Manager 2010 which includes protection for the entire SharePoint stack (Windows, SQL, and SharePoint itself). Of course we recommend it… WE...

An interesting quirk was discovered at a customer site recently. They have a single SharePoint farm hosting their internet-facing public “www” site, and were using in-place web content management…. meaning they had a single web application that was extended...

SharePoint 2010 introduced the ability to host SharePoint on Windows 7 for development purposes… which is fantastic… no more VM. However, when SharePoint 2010 installs/configures services it configures them to start up automatically (or...

There’s no question: Wiki is officially a corporate buzzword… and as with most buzzwords, a lot of people will say they need one without understanding what makes a wiki a Wiki. So… what makes a wiki a Wiki? A Wiki is flat. As in, one great, bit massive...

Microsoft offers (for Premier support customers only) a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Risk Assessment product… basically a way to analyze your SharePoint farm (including WSS, product naming aside) for a possible 450+ known potential issues, and real...

You may not have heard of this serious medical condition, but it exists in most people. It is the irrational fear of SharePoint Site Collections (and particularly Self Service Site Creation). The primary driver for this fear is that allowing people to...

It’s really surprising how many people really don’t. They might think they do… but they really don’t… or they don’t take a full inventory of the possibilities. Yes, most of us are relatively good at making some attempt to push scheduled activities off...

While most companies make sincere attempts to stay as “out of the box” as possible, there comes a point at which custom or 3rd party code becomes necessary to meet the needs of the organization. This is NOT a bad thing… SharePoint is...

There are times when you really want to know how your page was processed, what controls were loaded, etc. Well, there’s an old trick that not every developer knows they can turn on… page tracing output. This is easily done, and I like the idea of doing...

We hear this in the field constantly… a server begins experiencing difficulty or somehow acts “different”… and the first thing we hear is usually something along the lines of “no changes were made!” Truth be told, there is only one time when no changes...

We see many instances in which the SQL DBA for SharePoint is the same as the SharePoint administrator, which also happens to be the same person as the security admin, and the support staff, and the etc., etc., etc. Even though we see these roles blended...

In SharePoint-Land there are two concepts that people have a hard time separating out: “Collaboration” and “Content Management”. A lot of people like to blend them together, use methods, features, technology, or processes… but the truth is these are separate...