Jie Li's GeekWorld

PDF iFilter Test, with SharePoint 2010

Recently Foxit updated their PDF iFilter 2.0. An interesting improvement is “optimized for multi-core processor”. It claims that you can get 3 times better performance compared with its own version 1.0. Let’s see how my test result goes.

Machine:

Dell 2950 (I bought this two years ago)

2 x quad core Intel Xeon E5410 @ 2.33GHz, 8GB Memory, 3 x 10000 rpm HD RAID 5

File set:

22,559 PDF Files in 84 folders, 15.7 GB total, from People’s Daily Archive

Content Source:

File Share, on the same machine, to avoid network latency and bottlenecks

Software Platform

Windows Server 2008 R2

SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov CTP

SharePoint Server 2010 Beta

Foxit PDF iFilter 2.0 x64

TET PDF iFIlter 3.0 x64

Adobe PDF iFilter 9.0 x64

After each crawl, reset index, restart osearch14 service.

Test Result – I have not finished the Adobe one yet, it would take several hours. will update the table when it’s done.

Amazing! The full crawl was done in just 13 minutes. If you still remember the last test I did, Foxit version 1.0 got 10.73 files per second on SharePoint 2007 x64 with the same hardware spec.

Here’re the screenshots of the CPU usage…

Vendor	Screenshots	Comment
Foxit		Foxit PDF iFilter 2 is able to use multiple cores. Most of the time CPU usage is at around 90%.
TET		TET PDF iFilter 3 is also able to use multiple cores. CPU usage is 100% all the time.
Adobe		Adobe PDF iFilter 9 is single threaded. It can only use one core of the machine.

Nice job, Foxit!

Jie.

What to expect for SharePoint 2010 Administrators?

If you have the chance to come to our Redmond building 16 & 17, you will find us super busy working on the stuff for SharePoint 2010. Trainings, Articles, Courseware, Books, Hands-On Labs, Demos, Blogs and Forums…I just can’t stop thinking and discussing with my co-workers about all these stuff any minute these days.

So what to expect in the coming days?

Virtual Machine

An all-in-one virtual machine we used internally will be shared on the download center.  It is based on the public beta builds, has everything inside configured, around 10GB compressed. The good thing is, nearly all our HOLs will be based on this image, which means if you downloaded the image, you can try out those HOLs (we will publish them later) on it.

HOL

HOLs is being built or refreshed for public beta. We are trying to cover those important topics as much as possible. For example, how to setup User Profile Sync (I know you complained a lot with the beta), how to make the most out of usage logging, getting started with Windows PowerShell for SharePoint Server 2010 (this is the top rated HOL in SharePoint Conference!)… And of course, they will be refreshed when SharePoint 2010 gets RTM. If you do have some good idea on a new HOL just ping me and I will see if we can cover it in our big list.

TechNet

If you are also a reader of SharePoint IT Pro documentation blog, you will know that TechNet library for SharePoint 2010 is getting a lot of updates. For example, Windows PowerShell for SharePoint Server 2010 Beta would be a good reference to have for your Windows PowerShell study. We also keep polishing the content everyday, if you found anything that’s not good you can also ping me and we will try to fix.

Webcasts, Blog Posts…

There’ll be a lot! Stay tuned for the details. If you do care about a special topic, name it and we will see if it can be the next one in our schedule!

Jie.

ULS Viewer, for SharePoint 2010 Troubleshooting

My friend Dan Winter posted 2009 SharePoint Toolbox Review today on his blog. Within the post, the best tool I like is the ULS Viewer. If there’s an election of SharePoint Administrator troubleshooting tools, I would vote it as the president!

So what is ULS? It stands for Unified Logging Service. Mr. Winter explained that a lot in his blog so I would not repeat. But, it is the top one thing you should look at when you want to troubleshoot some SharePoint issue. Of course, troubleshooting is not always to get the symbols, debug and trace problems… If that is indeed needed, then it may be a bug.  Most of the time, ULS log is already quite helpful. For example, sometimes I got a service error in the webpage, some errors in event log, but nothing told the exact root of the problem. Then when I looked into ULS log, it told me that the credential of the user did not work. It is really helpful.

I did a user research earlier this year, more than 75% of SharePoint Administrators had no idea about ULS log. There’re some reasons. Since the ULS log is designed mainly for product group and customer service usage, the default format is not very user friendly. The log is hard to read, and you may get overwhelming messages instead of the useful ones. Now, we have ULS Viewer to solve the problem.

For SharePoint 2010, by default, ULS log is at

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS

You can check the directory and try to read those logs. I was quite used to that, with notepad:)

ULS Viewer can be used in different modes. The log can be read from log files, real time ULS log, or even clipboard. Here’s some examples:

On a machine running SharePoint 2010, run ULS Viewer. Click File, Open From, then choose ULS (This could also be done by simply press Ctrl+U). Immediately the logs will be shown in real-time. You can filter message level by click the icons in the middle. This can tell you what is going on inside SharePoint.

The best feature I love is the Toggle Correlation Tree button. In SharePoint 2010 we can use correlation id to trace a series of event inside SharePoint. For example, in this screenshot, my machine is trying to flush usage log. The different entries may be buried in the big ULS log file, but with correlation id you can easily track them – they shared the same id “c000006c-5b56-412b-9de1-78aae06d121f”.

Another good feature is the notifications. You can set notification level for ULS Viewer, by default it will pop up notification for Critical message. For example in this screenshot, when Health Analyzer checked my machine for a security rule, it wrote a critical message into the log. With ULS Viewer, you can quickly identify the location of the message. If there’s an exception, you can also check the detail of that.

I’m ready to throw my notepad away – ULS Viewer is the one to go with, for troubleshooting.

Jie.

SharePoint 2010 Beta with FILESTREAM RBS Provider

You may have already been busy trying different new fancy features of SharePoint 2010. Time to try something really hardcore for IT Pro! Remote Blob Storage is always what people are asking for – to put blob objects outside of SQL Server database, directly on file system or on some storage solutions like Documentum and FileNet. In such way, it may provide cheaper storage or better performance. SharePoint 2010 support RBS, and also can leverage SQL Server FILESTREAM RBS provider for customers to try out the capability.

In SharePoint 2010, FILESTREAM RBS Provider is also used for getting around the 4GB database limitation in SQL Server Express. Given the fact that SharePoint Foundation 2010 (used to be called Windows SharePoint Services v4) is no longer a part of Windows Server operating system, it will not use Windows Internal Database. So when Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 users are trying to upgrade their farms, they may have an internal database larger than 4GB, which would pass the limitation of SQL Server Express. There will be a prompt to let user download this FILESTREAM RBS Provider to put large blob objects on file system, store the rest like metadata, configuration in databases. In this way, the limitation of SQL Server Express can be bypassed. But, at the same time you should consider to move to other SQL Server editions. With the growth of the databases, SQL Server Express and Windows Internal Database are not the choices for scalability.

Note: FILESTREAM RBS Provider does not always provide better performance. We will release document on TechNet for recommendation and planning.

You can also consider using a third party RBS provider.

Documentation (Updated on 12/04/2009)

Overview of BLOB storage

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748607(office.14).aspx (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748649(office.14).aspx (SharePoint Server 2010)

Install and configure Remote BLOB Storage

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee663474(office.14).aspx (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748631(office.14).aspx (SharePoint Server 2010)

Enable a content database to use Remote Blob Storage (RBS)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748605(office.14).aspx (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748641(office.14).aspx (SharePoint Server 2010)

Upgrade from a stand-alone installation of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to SharePoint

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee663471(office.14).aspx

Installation Notes

The key component is the provider itself. With SharePoint 2010 Public Beta, we need to use the FILESTREAM RBS Provider shipped with SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov CTP. Don’t worry, it can be installed and used with SQL Server 2008.

The original download link on TechNet article pointed to an older version of the provider which was used with SharePoint 2010 Technical Preview (a.k.a. June CTP). This link has already been updated with the new one, so if you downloaded “RBS_X64.msi” earlier, please re-download it. The correct installer should be 4.67MB, with a digital signature time stamp at Nov 1st, 2009.

When you copy and paste the script, be careful with the quotes – there could be issues with them. You need to clean the wrong quotes, and replace them with the right one.

Follow the steps described in the documentation and get it setup. If you get into any problems, please report them to SharePoint 2010 - Setup, Upgrade, Administration and Operation Forum on TechNet Forums.

Another point is, you can allow only big files to be put into FILESTREAM. Since FILESTREAM performance is not as good as the databases when it deals with small files (for example, <1M), you can change this threshold.  The following Windows PowerShell command change the setting to 1M (1048576 bytes), file below 1M will be stored in DB.

$cbd = Get-SPContentDatabase “WSS_Content”
$cbd.RemoteBlobStorageSettings.MinimumBlobStorageSize=1048576
$cdb.Update()

It would be good to test the performance based on your own storage and hardware.

FAQ:

Q1. Who should consider using FILESTREAM RBS Provider?
A: People who are using Windows Internal Database to host their Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or SharePoint Server 2007 content database, and want to upgrade to 2010 products, should consider FILESTREAM RBS Provider. Also, FILESTREAM RBS Provider could also be considered to deal with the following scenarios:

1. Store terabytes of data for archiving purpose.
2. Media streaming.

Q2 removed. :-) 

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

Install Language Packs on Windows 7/Vista

If you are evaluating SharePoint 2010 Beta on Windows 7/Vista, you may also want to try language packs on it. The language packs were not released with other beta bits on 11/18 publicly, but now they are available.

Beta Language Packs for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta and SharePoint Server 2010 Beta are now

So when you run the installer, you may find it reports an error say it cannot be installed on non-server system. This is expected. Since they share the same installer with SharePoint bits, you can use the same workaround to make it install.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx

Follow the same way to extract all files to a folder, then modify \files\Setup\config.xml, add <Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/> under configuration tag, then save it.

This would allow you to install SharePoint 2010 beta language packs on Windows 7/Vista, if SharePoint is already installed.

<the same workaround can also work on Office Web Apps, since they share the same installer>

Jie.

SharePoint Server 2010 Beta Key

In case you can’t find it on download page after registration page:

SharePoint Server 2010 Beta(Enterprise Client Access License features) product key:

PKXTJ-DCM9D-6MM3V-G86P8-MJ8CY

BV7VC-RMR6B-26P6Y-BTQDG-DX2KQ

Both keys can be used. Feel free to post it elsewhere!

EDIT: The second key is a wrong one. Thanks to Olivier Brin to point it out. That key is for search server trial. Please use the first one during beta period, we will also update download center to remove the second one.

Jie.

OS Environment Comparison for SharePoint Server 2010 Beta Evaluation

SharePoint Server 2010 can be installed on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. You can find installation steps for different OSes on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx . So is there any difference between these OSes when you want to play with SharePoint? Here’s a table to compare different configuration. If you have any suggestions on this table, please comment and I will update.

Note: I’m not discussing SharePoint Foundation 2010 in this table. 

Remember – boot from VHD does not mean virtualization – it has nothing to do with virtualization at all. In that case, you can’t move such VHD directly to other machine. When you want to move the VHD, you have to sysprep it, which will lose all configuration on the system.

So, for developers, I would suggest dual boot or VHD boot to Windows 7 or virtualization. For IT Pros, 2008/R2/virtualization should be the way to go for evaluation. But you should judge that yourself – it depends on your environment and your goal.

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

Update Center for Office Products is now online

The update center for Office and SharePoint is online now.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ee748587.aspx

From now on, things like patches and updates will have an official place to communicate. You can subscribe to the RSS feed OfficeAndRelatedProductsUpdates if you want.

I will stop doing the long CU blog post on SharePoint team blog. We will post a notice when something is available, and point customer to the update center for more information.

Jie.

User Profile Sync Setup in SharePoint Server 2010 Beta

This is how I setup user profile sync for SharePoint Server 2010 Beta on my machine. You should not take this as an official guide. But the steps may help if you have been drive crazy. :)

You should also check out TechNet article and the steps on our team blog first, they are more "official". And it's not come from "another MS guy in the wild" like me:)

[Update - we are considering to gather all information and put it back to TechNet article, could be video walkthrough, screenshots, and hope that could help. After that is done, i may remove the content here.]

The following steps in done on Windows Server 2008 R2. But it also applies to Windows Server 2008. The WCF fix for R2 and Win7 is not currently available to public but it will be released in coming days here.

1. Start with a fresh SharePoint Farm installation, make sure WCF fix (Please refer to my pervious post) is already applied on the machine.
2. A web application is already created at port 80. A site collection is also created.
3. Don’t do anything on User Profile Service Application now…If you did, you may need to rebuild the farm. (am i kidding? no… this is beta.)
4. Click System Settings – Manage Services on server.
5. Start Microsoft SharePoint Foundation User Code Service – this maybe not necessary, but I always do it first.
6. If you are on Domain Controller, run the following script to make sure User Code Service has the right permission to run.
   $acl = Get-Acl HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName
   $person = [System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]"Users"
   $access = [System.Security.AccessControl.RegistryRights]::FullControl
   $inheritance = [System.Security.AccessControl.InheritanceFlags]"ContainerInherit, ObjectInherit"
   $propagation = [System.Security.AccessControl.PropagationFlags]::None
   $type = [System.Security.AccessControl.AccessControlType]::Allow
   $rule = New-Object System.Security.AccessControl.RegistryAccessRule($person, $access, $inheritance, $propagation, $type)
   $acl.AddAccessRule($rule)
   Set-Acl HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName $acl
7. Start User Profile Synchronization Service. After you click the link, it should show something like this:
   
8. Although the service is “Starting”, we can check the timer job if it is running properly. Click Monitoring – Check job status. Now you may find a job “ProfileSynchronizationSetupJob” is running. This may take several minutes to finish. If it finished instantly then something is wrong, you may have to rebuild it again.
   
9. When it’s finished, the job will disappear from Running category. Now check Services again, user profile sync service should be “Started”.
   
10. Time to setup connection! Click Application Management – Manage service applications. Scroll down to find and click User Profile Service Application. (Hint: you can copy the link to this item and add this to Resource links on Central Administration main page to save time in the future. You can do the same to Search and Managed Metadata.)
11. It is possible that you get an empty status now. It’s okay.
    
12. Click Configure Synchronization Connections.
13. Oh – why I got this? “An error has occurred while accessing the SQL Server database or the SharePoint Server Search Service. If this is the first time you have seen this message, try again later. If this problem persists, contact your administrator.”
    
14. Do a IISRESET in cmd line. Refresh the page,  problem solved.
    
15. Now, click Create New Connection.
16. Fill in your domain information. Choose the users or OU you want to import. Click Ok.
     
17. The connection you just created should be there. If not, you may need to rebuild. (I’m a bad guy, always telling you bad news.)
    
18. Now go back to User Profile Service Application, the numbers should be shown on the side.
    
19. You can choose to Start Profile Synchronization now. After some time, the number would change. It depends on the size of the OU you just chose.
    
20. Click Manage User Profiles, and try to find a user. Yes, he is there!
     
    

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

Public Download for SharePoint 2010 Beta Products

Finally! Please note the OS requirement of SharePoint Fundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 should be Windows Server 2008 x64 and Windows Server 2008 R2 only. We are working to correct those pages.

The prerelease (beta) version is for evaluation purposes only.  Upgrade to the final release version is not supported.

SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=906c9f5a-6505-4eba-bf24-95e423ac1703

Microsoft SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 Beta
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=77c30c6c-47fc-416d-88e7-8122534b3f37

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products (Beta) Management Pack
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c8a9d749-b7a8-412a-b2db-f3e464ed3fcf

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 (Beta) Management Pack
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=43d5ee9a-b9a6-441d-a35e-8a7b9b15e20c

Microsoft Office Web Apps (Beta)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=27d81b1c-18ae-4983-8e1c-224bb747eb99

Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Beta
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=bcc37c48-11fb-40a2-8cfb-743de20260f6

Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Internet Sites Beta
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=aa37e8b0-c4d6-4452-a476-b81ee0bfbda5 

Microsoft SharePoint Server for Internet Sites Enterprise 2010 Beta
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=580fc452-4948-44ab-9995-a0599271ad48

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta (64-bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=eeda9ab1-ac53-4870-9e1c-38940343d677

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta (32-bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=82df15bd-16a5-460e-a7c4-22599c669bb1

Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint Beta 2

Related FAST Documents on Download Center: 

FAST Search Server Cmdlets Overview (Beta)

FAST Search Server deployment and configuration (Beta)

Known Issues – FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (Beta)

Planning and Architecture for FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (Beta)

FAST Search Server for SharePoint PowerShell Cmdlet Help (Beta)

Monitoring for FAST Search Server

You can refer to my pervious post for SharePoint Server 2010 Beta installation steps. 

http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/16/installation-notice-for-sharepoint-2010-public-beta.aspx

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

Installation Notice for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta

[12/7 - +Office Web Apps on Win7] 

[11/23 - added a short notice on win7+Office Web Application - this will not install and no workaround so far] 

[11/21 - added setup keys in case people can't find them]

[11/19 - updated user profile sync instructions - update WCF Fix for R2 and Win7 - update script for PowerPoint View/Edit] 

Since SharePoint 2010 has been made available for MSDN/TechNet subscriber public now, here’re some steps you would like to follow to get a successful installation. But keep in mind: This beta is not supported and you CANNOT upgrade the installation to RTM when it’s released. This Beta should only be used for evaluation purpose.

The public download of SharePoint Server 2010 Beta (Enterprise) is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=77c30c6c-47fc-416d-88e7-8122534b3f37

The key you can use is:

PKXTJ-DCM9D-6MM3V-G86P8-MJ8CY

BV7VC-RMR6B-26P6Y-BTQDG-DX2KQ This key should be avoided - it is a wrong key.

Any one in the two would work. 

Please note there's no technical difference between SharePoint Server 2010 + Enterprise CAL and SharePoint Server for Internet Sites Enterprise. It is only about licensing.

1. Read hardware and software requirement article on TechNet.
   
   
2. Prepare a Windows Server 2008 x64 machine with 8GB memory. Windows Server 2008 R2 requires a hotfix which is not yet released to have the service applications running so I don’t recommend to use that now which is released finally so now you can use it. Web Server Editions are not supported. Windows Server Fundation edition is not supported either. You can also install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 and Vista, however additional steps would be required as pre-requisite installer does not work currently on client OS.Windows 7 N and KN would not work due to an installer bug. Please also note Office Web Application cannot needs to follow the same edit of config.xml to be installed on client OS.
   
   If you give the machine very little memory, something like 2GB, and even have SQL Server running on the same machine, you would likely to get some timeout errors with service applications, for example, search and user profile.
   
   
3. Get your AD ready. Create a new account for services, for example contoso\sp_admin.
   1.       Open Active Directory Users and Computers
   2.       Right click domain and select “Delegate Control”
   3.       Click Next
   4.       Click Add
   5.       Enter object name (i.e. contoso\sp_admin)
   6.       Click Ok
   7.       Click Next
   8.       Select “Create a custom task to delegate”
   9.       Click Next
   10.     Check "Replicating directory changes”
   11.     Click Next
   12.     Click Finish 
   
   
4. Install WCF FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2) . Please note the 2008 fix also applies to Vista, while the 2008 R2 fix also applies to Windows 7.
   If you don't have this fix installed, you will get "Unrecognized attribute 'allowInsecureTransport'" error in ULS log. And most of the service applications will not run properly.
   
   
5. Prepare SQL Server 2005/2008 envoriment. If it is on a different box, don't forget Windows Firewall settings. For SQL Server on Windows 2008/R2, you can use the script in KB968872 to open all necessary ports.
   1. SQL Server 2005 SP3 and CU3
   2. SQL Server 2008 SP1 and CU2
      
      
6. Run Pre-Requisition Installer to download and install required components. You can also download them seperately. I listed all download links in SharePoint 2010 Pre-Requisites Download Links. The links are also available in requirement article, or by clicking “Learn more about…” in the installer.
   
   
7. Setup the farm using complete farm installation. Standalone installation is not recommended, and should be only used when you want to install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7/Vista for dev purpose.
   
   
8. Go with configuration wizard to setup all service applications. Use the user you created in step 3 as SharePoint Managed Account for services and web applications.
   
   
9. Read Config Profile Synchronization to setup profile sync. Dave Pae is going to post complete steps for Profile Sync on SharePoint Team Blog. Follow the instruction on SharePoint Team Blog. You can also check my steps on how to setup user profile sync.
   
   
10. If you are using SharePoint on DC, the following Windows PowerShell command would need to be run to enable Sandboxed Solutions.
    $acl = Get-Acl HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName
    $person = [System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]"Users"
    $access = [System.Security.AccessControl.RegistryRights]::FullControl
    $inheritance = [System.Security.AccessControl.InheritanceFlags]"ContainerInherit, ObjectInherit"
    $propagation = [System.Security.AccessControl.PropagationFlags]::None
    $type = [System.Security.AccessControl.AccessControlType]::Allow
    $rule = New-Object System.Security.AccessControl.RegistryAccessRule($person, $access, $inheritance, $propagation, $type)
    $acl.AddAccessRule($rule)
    Set-Acl HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName $acl
    
    
11. If you are trying to use Office Web Applications on DC(Office Web Application need to be installed seperately, like a language pack or an update. Please also note that Office Web Application cannot be installed on needs to follow the same edit of config.xml to install on Windows 7), then the following commands need to be run to make the services work. Please note that in different languages, Service Application names could be localized. You can find them out by Get-SPServiceApplications, and then change the names in the script as necessary.

    $e = Get-SPServiceApplication | where {$_.TypeName.Equals("Word Viewing Service Application")}
    $e.WordServerIsSandboxed = $false
    $e.WordServerIsSandboxed

    $p = Get-SPServiceApplication | where {$_.TypeName.Equals("PowerPoint Service Application")}
    $p.EnableSandboxedViewing = $false
    $p.EnableSandboxedEditing = $false
    $p.EnableSandboxedViewing
    $p.EnableSandboxedEditing
    #(Please use the below script for PowerPointServiceApplication - You need to enter "Y" for the answer of each cmd)
    Get-SPPowerPointServiceApplication | Set-SPPowerPointServiceApplication -EnableSandboxedViewing $false
    Get-SPPowerPointServiceApplication | Set-SPPowerPointServiceApplication -EnableSandboxedEditing $false

    In the server's c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config
    Add the line below in the end of the dynamicTypes.
    <add mimeType="application/zip" enabled="false" />

    IISRESET

12. Enable Developer Dashboard and turn to OnDemand for troubleshooting page performance issues. It can be done by STSADM or SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (Windows PowerShell).

1. STSADM: stsadm -o setproperty -pn developer-dashboard -pv OnDemand

2. Windows PowerShell:

   $svc=[Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService

   $ddsetting=$svc.DeveloperDashboardSettings

   $ddsetting.DisplayLevel=[Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDeveloperDashboardLevel]::OnDemand

   $ddsetting.Update()

Happy SharePointing!

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

October 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are published

The server-packages of October 2009 Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download. October 2009 Cumulative Updates introduce more rules on Pre-Upgrade Checker, which can help customers to prepare the upgrade of their SharePoint farm to SharePoint 2010.

Download Information

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974989

Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974988

Detail Description

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974989 (link may not be live yet)

Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974988 (link may not be live yet)

Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server

To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended.

1. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and language packs
2. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and language packs
3. October 2009 Cumulative Update package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
4. October 2009 Cumulative Update package for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Please note: Start from April 2009 Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.

The version of content databases should be 12.0.6520.5000 after successfully applying these updates.

You can also refer to April Cumulative Update post for deployment guides, slipstream how-to links and FAQs.

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

SharePoint 2010 Pre-Requisites Download Links

Update: Windows PowerShell v2 RTM download link, KB971831 download link, KB976462 download link

If you don’t have internet connection on the machine you want to install SharePoint 2010, then you need to download pre-requisites manually.

Note: This article applies only to Beta 2 (Public Beta) currently, I will update this when it’s RTM. If you are using Technical Preview, then this does not apply to you.

The download links will be provided when you click Learn more about these prerequisites in the pre-req installer tool. However, this link is not activated yet. So I will list the links below.

SharePoint Server

The following is needed for installation on Windows 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008.

KB971831 (This KB only applies to Windows Server 2008 and Vista)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971831 (this is the KB article)

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=KB971831&DownloadId=7285 (this is the download)

KB976462 would be the WCF Fix article for Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976462 (link not activated yet)

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231 (this is the download)

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/5/5/35522a0d-9743-4b8c-a5b3-f10529178b8a/sqlncli.msi

Microsoft "Geneva" Framework Runtime
http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/3/D/F3D66A7E-C974-4A60-B7A5-382A61EB7BC6/MicrosoftGenevaFramework.amd64.msi

Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/9/F/C9F6B386-824B-4F9E-BD5D-F95BB254EC61/Redist/amd64/Microsoft%20Sync%20Framework/Synchronization.msi

Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/c/4/cc4dcac6-ea60-4868-a8e0-62a8510aa747/MSChart.exe

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/D/0/AD021EF1-9CBC-4D11-AB51-6A65019D4706/SQLSERVER2008_ASADOMD10.msi

Filter Pack 2.0 should be already included in installation files.

On Windows Server 2008, additional files are needed.

.Net Framework 3.5 SP1

.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (Full Package) KB959209 KB967190

PowerShell V2 RTM (It's better to use RTM than CTP3 - Remoting is not working correctly in older builds)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=d37e25cf-db05-4b23-a852-cdf865d81b82&displaylang=en

SQL Server 2005 Patches

SQL Server 2005 SP3

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=AE7387C3-348C-4FAA-8AE5-949FDFBE59C4&displaylang=en

CU3 for SQL Server 2005 SP3

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967909

SQL Server 2008 Patches

SQL Server 2008 SP1

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=66AB3DBB-BF3E-4F46-9559-CCC6A4F9DC19&displaylang=en

CU2 for SQL Server 2008 SP1

Cumulative update package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1

Hope this helps.

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

Index and Search PDF Files in SharePoint Server 2010

Like Office SharePoint Server 2007, there’s no OOTB PDF iFilter in SharePoint Server 2010. If you add PDF as a file type for SharePoint Search, you will get the following result:

You can see that only the file attributes are indexed.

You need to install a x64 PDF iFilter for this. There’re three PDF iFilter on market, Adobe, Foxit, and TET. You can refer to my earlier post for comparison. Since the registry name is changed in 2010, you may need to manually modify it to make the iFilters registered. Foxit recently updated their installer to reflect this change.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/ifilter/

Quote from Foxit PDF iFilter change log:

Version Number: 1.0.0.3213

* Fixes a crash issue that is caused by embedded fonts.

* Adds the following registry settings in the installation program: 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.pdf]

"Extension"=".pdf"

"FileTypeBucket"=dword:00000001

"MimeTypes"="application/pdf"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]

@="{987f8d1a-26e6-4554-b007-6b20e2680632}"

So run the installer, and then restart SharePoint Server Search 14 service. This service name is subject to change when RTM, but you can easily get the idea.

Recrawl the files.

It worked. Please note the installer will not get you PDF icon file, you need to follow the steps here http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/ifilter/installation.html to download icon file and modify DOCICON.XML.

This also applies to Search Server 2010. FAST Search index PDF files OOTB, so you don’t need to go with these steps.

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

SharePoint 2010 - What does that mean for IT Pros?

So, it’s time to lift the curtain. For people at SharePoint Conference 2009, feel free to meet me on the site. For those IT administrators who can’t make it to Vegas, here’s something you should know about SharePoint 2010. Of course, you should check out http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=165421  (link may not be activated yet) for IT Pro Evaluation Guide. Shane Young did a good job on this guide and he definitely should be given a credit. :)

If you are a new Administrator for SharePoint, you can try our free screencast series Getting Started with SharePoint 2010 on TechNet. It is done by 5 SharePoint MVPs, covers from level 50~300, 9 modules.

Installation and Upgrade Requirements

Requirements! Keep in mind that SharePoint 2010 is 64bit only, so it’s time to upgrade your server operating systems to x64. 64 bit architecture brings more memory support, not only the total amount of memory can be supported, but also how much memory that a single process can address. You can refer to the following two articles for 64bit benefit details and plan for upgrade.

Advantages of 64-bit hardware and software (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Migrate an existing server farm to a 64-bit environment (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Note: Nearly any server hardware you can find on the market after year 2005 is 64 bit capable.

Hardware requirement

I don’t want to go through the whole piece of hardware requirement, but just to point out some important things.

For production environment, the memory is recommended to be 8GB or above. SharePoint 2010 introduces a lot of new service applications, things like Visio service, Access service all consume memory. You can still run SharePoint with 4GB memory, or maybe even less, but for performance consideration you should give it more. After all, 16GB DDR2 FB-DIMM only costs ~400 dollars today (10/19/2009) on Newegg.

Always use fast disk arrays for your SQL Server. Don’t install SQL Server on the same machine with SharePoint unless it’s not for production.

Software requirement

Operating System: Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 (Patches will be installed with pre-req installer)

Developers can install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7, but this should not be used in production.

Database: SQL Server 2005 SP3 with CU3 or SQL Server 2008 SP1 with CU2 or SQL Server 2008 R2 (still in beta but will be supported when RTM)

The following figure shows what will happen if you don’t have the correct CU applied on SQL Server.

.Net Framework version: 3.51 (.Net Framework 4 is not supported currently)

If you want to upgrade from SharePoint Server 2007, then you need to make sure at least service pack 2 is applied on the farm. Otherwise it will be blocked. The following figure is to show the logs when Upgrade-SPContentDatabase cmdlet is run on a database older than SP2 (12.0.0.6421) attached to the 2010 server farm.  The upgrade is blocked right away, because database schema did not meet the minimum requirement.

Client Browser Support

We made a great progress to replace ActiveX controls with AJAX and Silverlight, and made the pages compatible with the web standards, to support a broad selection of the browsers cross platforms.

Note: Mobile Browsers are supported with Mobile View.

Details of system requirements can be found here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx (Link may not activated yet)

Improvements for IT Pros

Scale with Governance

Investment on SharePoint 2010 focused on better scalability, with less chaos. With the new architecture of Service Applications and Protocols, SharePoint 2010 can scale from a single server for small business to multiple server farm or even multi tenancy hosting deployment in large enterprise. With the benefit of x64 hardware, we tested up to 50 million items in a single document library, 100 million items in a single search index. Unlike SharePoint 2007, now you can have multiple indexer to crawl your content at the same time. With FAST for SharePoint and FAST ESP, your enterprise search solution can also scale up to billions of items easily. Resource Throttling can help when end users make some “bad” moves on the server. For example, if a user want to sort on a big document library with more than 5000 items in a view, he will be stopped and informed that he can use other ways to achieve his goal, without slow down the whole server farm.

Deployment Flexibility

If you have installation experience from SharePoint 2003 and 2007, you will be surprised on how many steps you need to go to get a 2010 server farm up and running. Prerequisites can be downloaded and installed automatically, Configuration Wizard reduces the pain to setup every service applications. We also support scriptable deployment with Windows Powershell, automation guys would love it. Virtualization is supported everywhere, it helps on scalability, management, high availability and disaster recovery.

Intranet, Internet, Extranet…SharePoint 2007 has been proven to handle all these deployment scenarios. Now SharePoint Server 2010 also support multi-tenancy. You can even setup a SharePoint hosting solution in your own organization.

Keep in mind, no matter when, we always recommend you to use complete server farm installation mode. And it would be better to avoid installation on a Domain Controller in production unless you are running SBS. SQL Server should always be separated on a different box too to get much better performance.

IT Productivity

Windows PowerShell, Ribbon UI, Health Monitoring… There’re a lot of tools and features to make SharePoint Administrators exciting.

People already started to use Windows PowerShell for 2003 and 2007 management. However, it is more like to deal with object models. For me, it’s more like a developer job, not that easy for IT Professionals. In 2010 we introduced more than 500 cmdlets for SharePoint, from site creation to service application management. Although sometimes you still need to use STSADM, most of the time, Windows PowerShell is the way to go. With the powerful script environment, some large operations used to take hours to finish now can be done in minutes.

For example, the following script can get the sizes of all sites owned by a user quickly.

Get-SPSite -Limit ALL -Filter {$_.Owner -eq "contoso\sp_admin"} | Select URL, @{Name="Storage"; Expression={"{0:N2} GB" -f ($_.Usage.Storage/1000000)}

A health and monitoring center is offered directly in Central Administration. It is also called SharePoint Best Practice Analyzer (SBPA). SBPA is rule based, it use timer jobs to run the rules and detect problems in the server farm. It can also has Actions implemented, to fix the problems just by several clicks. When a problem is found, it is displayed in a health report page, administrators can also set alerts with emails or SMS to get informed. This rules system can also be extended with your own custom rules.

Ribbon UI is introduced in SharePoint 2010 everywhere. With a completely redesigned Central Administration site, It greatly reduced the time and clicks to manage services, web applications and site collections.

Visual Upgrade can help Administrators to switch between 2007 look and 2010 look. If the new one does not work, switch it back to fix the problem.

Conclusion

That’s already a lot of things, right? Especially Windows PowerShell support, that is a huge change in IT Pro’s life. At first you may find it’s a little bit tough, but after you know the basic concept of it, you will benefit from it and never want to turn back.

There’ll be a lot of blog posts coming after, so please stay tuned. Meanwhile, remember to download the bits when it is public on Nov. Check out IT Pro Evaluation Guide on TechNet for complete explanation of all new features for IT Pro.

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint