SharePoint and VHDs...

fooshen — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:55:00 GMT

If you do a lot of SharePoint demos, chances are you will be using tons of VMs (Virtual PC, Virtual Server, VMWare, anything..). And if you're like me, you would not like to fire up multiple VMs; the less the merrier. This translates to squeezing in as many products/components into a single virtual image - but there are some caveats to know about:

Installing SharePoint on a Domain Controller

- You lose the Document Conversion feature. Document Conversion services can start, but whenever you try to convert a document to web, it simply fails.

Installing SharePoint and Exchange on the same box

- You lose the Incoming Email feature. SharePoint relies on IIS' Virtual SMTP to listen for incoming emails. And Exchange cannot co-exist with IIS' Virtual SMTP. I'm not sure if there are some creative work-arounds available, but will post it if I found any.

On another point (pun-intended), if you want to install Performance Point Server or Commerce Server into the same VM as the DC, you will want to install them first, but don't run its configuration wizards. Promote the VM to DC only after installation, and then only run the configuration wizard.

While still on the topic of VMs, here's some guerilla tips to keep your VHDs small and lean (faster to move around)

Shrink all your databases and transaction logs. If you have OCS 2007 installed, this can free up quite a substantial amount of space.
Set Virtual Memory settings to smallest possible minimum size. (I usually allocate 2GB RAM to my VMs, and my minimum virtual memory setting is 1GB).
Restart (so that the Virtual Memory usage will be resized).
Delete everything in %temp%. Some files might be locked, probably one or two. You may be able to delete them if its related services are stopped. Also look for *.log files lying around your virtual hard disk, taking up precious space but utterly useless since this is not a production setup anyway.
Clear all Event logs (You can also set maximum size for event logs, you don't need huge allocations for demos - right-click on the Event log categories and select Properties).
Run defrag - sometimes need to run multiple times for better results.
Run the Pre-compactor tool (this is available via an .iso image from the VMAdditions folder).
Run the Virtual Disk wizard, choose "Edit" and "Compact".

SharePoint's out-going e-mail with Exchange 2007

fooshen — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 18:33:00 GMT

When using SharePoint 2007 with Exchange 2007, I found out that SharePoint just couldn't send out *ANY* e-mails. This could be e-mail notifications from Workflow actions, or simply the "Welcome" e-mail from the "Add User" administration in the site collection. From Site Actions -> Site Settings -> People and Group, select New -> Add Users,

If you don't see the "Send welcome e-mail to the new users" part, then the "Out-going email settings" has not been configured in the Central Administration. (To do so, go to Central Administration's Operations page, Topology and Services, Out-going email settings).

Now, if our out-going email settings is pointing to Exchange 2007 Beta2, upon clicking on "OK" SharePoint will complain that the e-mail message couldn't be sent out.

To check what's going on, we will need to inspect the SharePoint log files, at <program files>\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\LOGS. The actual error message is: "#160005: Bad response from SMTP host'master.iventsys.com.my': 530 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated ."

Ah.. "Client was not authenticated". Exchange 2007, by it's hardened default state, will not allow anonymous clients to send e-mails.

First off, we will need to create a Receive Connector in Exchange 2007 to receive e-mail from Internet. From the Exchange Management Console, select Server Configuration -> Hub Transport, New Receive Connector.

Now, if we try to send SharePoint's Welcome E-mail again from the New User page, we will still get the same error on the web page. However, the SharePoint log file turns out a different message:

#160005: Bad response from SMTP host'master.iventsys.com.my': 550 5.7.1 Client does not have permissions to send as this sender .

"Client does not have permissions to send as this sender." This is because SharePoint will use the user email in the "From Address" field of our Out-going Email Settings from the Central Administration's Operations page.

So, how can we enable Exchange 2007 to accept SharePoint's anonymous sender, masquerading as the administrator@iventys.com.my as above?

After searching throughout for this setting in Exchange 2007's Management Console, turns out that it never existed in the console. To do this, we have to use the management shell for Exchange. Referring to this article on Exchange 2007 Wiki: http://www.exchangeninjas.com/TUPMAppA; we need to do the following from the Exchange Management Shell:

add-adpermission '<receivername>' -User 'NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON' -ExtendedRights ms-Exch-SMTP-Accept-Authoritative-Domain-Sender

where <receivername> is the name of our Receive Connector of Internet type created above.

And that's it! Now my SharePoint 2007 and Exchange 2007 can live together happily ever after (well, until the RTM at least).

fooshen's : Exchange 2007

SharePoint and VHDs...

SharePoint's out-going e-mail with Exchange 2007