Jie Li's GeekWorld

SharePoint Server 2010 Beta Key

Jie Li — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:44:00 GMT

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!

Jie.

OS Environment Comparison for SharePoint Server 2010 Beta Evaluation

Jie Li — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:42:00 GMT

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.

	Advantages	Disadvantages
Vista/Win7	Quickly switch to developing/demo environment by reboot Hibernate/Sleep support Possible to use all memory	No pre-req installer useless services started If it is not the main OS, then another partition is needed If it is the main OS, SharePoint installation will likely to affect the performance of your other programs If standalone installation and local account is used, then configuration/dev experience could be quite different from servers in domain enviroment
Vista/Win7 Virtualized	I can’t see any reason… If you can virtualize a vista x64, then you should virtualize a server OS since you can always save states	No pre-req installer useless services started If standalone installation and local account is used, then configuration/dev experience could be quite different from servers in domain enviroment If host machine does not have enough memory this could have performance problem Performance is slower than real machine 64bit virtualization software like Hyper-V, VritualBox and VMWare is required
Win7 VHD Boot	All advantages for Win7 VHD can be put on the same partition with main OS Possible to sysprep and redeploy image to other dev machine Possible to use all memory Good for dev or demo laptops	All disadvantages for Win7 If bitlocker is enabled, then VHD still need to be put on another partition After sysprep, everything needs to be reconfigured.
2008/2008 R2	Full experience of SharePoint Server 2010 Possible to use all memory	If it is not the main OS, then another partition is needed If it is the main OS, SharePoint installation will likely to affect the performance of your other programs (it is always recommended to install SharePoint without any other progams on the machine) Slower reboot process Lack of device drivers for some hardware Some companies do not allow dev to install Server OS
2008/2008 R2 Virtualized	Full experience of SharePoint Server 2010 Can be moved and redistributed Can use virtualization technology like save states, snapshots, live migration Best way for developing/evaluation, if hardware requirement can be met Can be used to build HA solutions	If host machine does not have enough memory this could have performance problem Performance is slower than real machine 64bit virtualization software like Hyper-V, VritualBox and VMWare is required
2008 R2 VHD Boot	Full experience of SharePoint Server 2010 Possible to sysprep and redeploy image to other dev machine Possible to use all memory	All disadvantages for Win2008/R2 If bitlocker is enabled, then VHD still need to be put on another partition After sysprep, everything needs to be reconfigured.

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

Jie Li — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:09:00 GMT

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

Jie Li — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:35:00 GMT

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.

Start with a fresh SharePoint Farm installation, make sure WCF fix (Please refer to my pervious post) is already applied on the machine.
A web application is already created at port 80. A site collection is also created.
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.)
Click System Settings – Manage Services on server.
Start Microsoft SharePoint Foundation User Code Service – this maybe not necessary, but I always do it first.
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
Start User Profile Synchronization Service. After you click the link, it should show something like this:
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.
When it’s finished, the job will disappear from Running category. Now check Services again, user profile sync service should be “Started”.
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.)
It is possible that you get an empty status now. It’s okay.
Click Configure Synchronization Connections.
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.”
Do a IISRESET in cmd line. Refresh the page, problem solved.
Now, click Create New Connection.
Fill in your domain information. Choose the users or OU you want to import. Click Ok.
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.)
Now go back to User Profile Service Application, the numbers should be shown on the side.
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.
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

Jie Li — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:13:00 GMT

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

Jie Li — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:34:00 GMT

[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

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.

Read hardware and software requirement article on TechNet.
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 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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 installled 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
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).

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

Jie Li — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:07:00 GMT

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.

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

Jie Li — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:17:00 GMT

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

Jie Li — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:38:00 GMT

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?

Jie Li — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:00:00 GMT

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.

Support Level	Browser	Jie’s Comments
Level 1	Internet Explorer 7 & 8, 32 bit	Even you are running a 64 bit operating system, your Internet Explorer is 32 bit by default.
	Firefox 3.x on Windows, 32bit	Yeah, Firefox jumps their versions quickly, we will have new support claims when they have new version 4 after testing work is done.
Level 2	Internet Explorer 7 & 8, 64 bit	Most of the time you won’t have this scenario.
	Firefox 3.x on non-Windows	Linux, Mac…
	Safari	Good for Mac and iPhone users
Level 3	Internet Explorer 6, Chrome, Opera…	Some of the browsers might work, but since we did not test them, they are not supported.

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

Will you come to SharePoint Conference 2009?

Jie Li — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:02:03 GMT

If you will, put these pics on your blog, on your web sites, or on wherever you want! It’s time to social!

“Fix” SharePoint 302 redirect problem by IIS7 and URL Rewrite

Jie Li — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Recently in my spare time I’m helping my friends to get their internet facing sharepoint site up and running. Since this is for the internet, the first thing they need to consider is SEO. So we have a well known problem now: SharePoint use 302 temp redirect instead of 301. If you do a search for “sharepoint 302” you will see a lot of articles talking about the problem.

Here’s the default SharePoint Site. The request was temporarily redirected (302) to Pages/default.aspx. Search engine bots don’t like it, they like 301. So this is BAD.

How to solve it? Oh, I’m a IT Pro person, I don’t want to deal with a custom redirect HttpModule – god knows what will happen if those custom code mess up my sites! So any other options?

I’m lucky because I installed SharePoint on Windows Server 2008, so I can use IIS7 features. I downloaded URL Rewrite module from http://www.iis.net/extensions/URLRewrite, installed it, and started to configure the redirect.

Choose your site in IIS Manager, click URL Rewrite, and create a new blank rule.

Use Regular Expressions to match ^$ (which means “empty”). Set Action Type to Redirect, and add the redirect URL (by default should be Pages/default.aspx), set redirect type to Permanent (301). You are all set!

Now, clear browser cache and revisit the site:

It is 301 now! Pretty easy, isn’t it?

URL Rewrite module is great. If you are a regex guru you can also create more complex rules to make everything fit for your site.

Upgrade Checker in SP2 – Behind the Scene

Jie Li — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:11:00 GMT

Following the pervious post Upgrade Checker in SP2 – prepare your way to SharePoint Server 2010, here’s the detail of what upgrade checker checks.

Where are the upgrade checker rules?

The upgrade checker rules can be found at

X:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\CONFIG\PreUpgradeCheck

By default, there’re two rule files, one for WSS(WSSPreUpgradeCheck.XML) and one for MOSS(OssPreUpgradeCheck.XML). You can create your own rule files and put it into this directory. The checker will automatically load them.

How to use upgrade checker?

A simple answer is, run

"X:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN\STSADM.EXE" -o preupgradecheck

X is the drive letter you install SharePoint.

There’re a few options with this operation, for example you can use “–rulefiles rulefilename” to specify which rule file it should check, “-localonly” to only check those rules marked as localonly. This could help you in certain scenarios.

The syntax of upgrade checker can be found here:

Preupgradecheck: Stsadm operation (Windows SharePoint Services)

How does upgrade checker check my farm?

By calling object model. You can check this by opening the rule files in a XML editor yourself. Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health is responsible for most of the rules. Here’s an example to check OSreqs.

If you are familiar with BestPracticeAnalyzer, you can also find these:

These are used to help check group, registry, sql and WMI objects.

There’re two rule types, Information and Error, what’s the difference?

Information rules will check server farm for certain configurations, which would need to be considered during the upgrade process. The configurations that being checked here will not stop you from upgrade, but you might need to follow the advice to upgrade the farm. These rules also tell you the summary of the farm, to help you estimate the time needed for upgrade. For example, UpgradeType rule will check your farm for eligible upgrade methods, ServerInfo will list all the server names in the farm.

Error rules will check if there’s anything wrong which could prevent things from being upgraded. For example, your server does not meet Windows Server 2008 x64 requirement, any orphaned objects in your farm that would not be a part of upgrade process, etc.

Any explanation for the rules shipped with SP2?

You can also refer to TechNet article here for WSS rules:

Pre-upgrade scanning and reporting for future releases (Windows SharePoint Services)

There’s not enough detail in the document, so I borrowed their nice table and added my own comments here:

ServerInfo
Description: All servers that are running SharePoint bits in the farm. Basically this is just a list of servers.

FarmInfo
Description: The components of this farm. For “components” it means how many servers, web apps, content dbs, and site collections in your farm. A sample report is here:

1 servers
3 web applications
3 content databases, approximately total size = 108199936 bytes
4 Site collections

UpgradeType
Description: The upgrade types supported by the farm. For most of the server farms, there will be two method available, Inplace Upgrade and Content Database Attach. Content Database Attach (also called DB Attach in some materials) is a recommended way to upgrade.

SiteTemplates
Description: This farm uses the following site definitions. This rule will list all the site defs in the farm, sample here (WSS+Search Server):

name = STS, language = 1033, template id = 1, count = 1, status = Internal
name = MPS, language = 1033, template id = 2, count = 0, status = Internal
name = CENTRALADMIN, language = 1033, template id = 3, count = 1, status = Internal
name = WIKI, language = 1033, template id = 4, count = 0, status = Internal
name = BLOG, language = 1033, template id = 9, count = 0, status = Internal
name = OSRV, language = 1033, template id = 40, count = 1, status = Installed
name = SRCHCENTERLITE, language = 1033, template id = 90, count = 1, status = Installed

Features
Description: The features installed on the farm. This would be a big list for every feature you installed on the farm. Sample:

Name = [S2SearchAdmin], Feature id = [2b1e4cbf-b5ba-48a4-926a-37100ad77dee], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Site], Status = [Installed]

LanguagePacks
Description: The language packs required for the farm. If you have any other language packs installed on your farm, you will need to install new SharePoint 2010 language pack after the upgrade process.

AAMURLs
Description: AAM URLs within the current environment to be considered when upgrading. It will list all AAMs, sample:

name = [Central Administration], zone = [Default], public Url = http://iws1:2000, internal Url = http://iws1:2000
name = [SharePoint - 80], zone = [Default], public Url = http://iws1, internal Url = http://iws1
name = [SharePoint - 80], zone = [Internet], public Url = http://www.mssearch.cn, internal Url = http://www.mssearch.cn

OSType
Description: This server machine in the farm does not have the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 or later installed. I would assume that you already know the system requirements of SharePoint Server 2010, if you don’t, please refer to Richard’s post here:Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

DatabaseSchema
Description: Content databases are modified by user, and cannot be upgraded.
Sometimes this things do happen, especially with wrong patch process. For example, I know an admin patched the farm database, and didn’t patch other servers in the farm so they are not working. What he did was, directly modify the database schema version to older ones! You should NEVER do this. Direct modification to SharePoint Content DB should always be avoided.

DataOrphan
Description: Content databases contain orphans. This will be reported when the items has no relationship with the parent. For example, a corruption happened in content DB so a site has no web, a list with no parent list. STSADM operation databaserepair will be suggested to find and fix the errors.

SiteOrphan
Description: Some sites cannot be referenced properly. Sometimes site collections are not in the sitemap, which cannot be upgraded. This could happen when you have duplicated URLs/hostheaders. You could detach the content DB or delete the site collection to fix this.

UnfinishedGradualUpgrade
Description: This farm is currently being upgraded by using the gradual upgrade process.
If there’re still some V2 sites (WSS v2 and SPS2003) inside the content DB which are not upgraded properly, you need to first finish this process.

MissingWebConfig
Description: This Web site does not have a web.config file. This definitely is a problem, so you may need to copy a web.config there.

InvalidHostNames
Description: Invalid host names found. This actually checks if there’re any reference with “http://localhost”. You need to change this to something that make sense.

InvalidServiceAccount
Description: The application pool account must be fixed. “NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SYSTEM” and “NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE” should not be used as app pool account.

DatabaseReadOnly
Description: Databases in this farm are configured as read-only and the upgrade will fail unless they are configured as read-write. Of course.

WYukonLargeDatabase
Description: Databases in this farm are hosted on the Windows Internal Database uses SQL Server technology as a relational data store for Windows roles and features only, such as Windows SharePoint Services, Active Directory Rights Management Services, UDDI Services, Windows Server Update Services, and Windows System Resources Manager. and are larger than 4 gigabytes.

WYukonLargeSiteCollection
Description: Site collections in this farm are hosted on the Windows Internal Database and are larger than 4 gigabytes.

There’re two additional rules for MOSS to check search related stuff. They check for server names, content sources, indexed file numbers, index size and search DB size, etc. You can figure them out by yourself.

Upgrade Checker in SP2 – prepare your way to SharePoint Server 2010

Jie Li — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:55:00 GMT

The upgrade checker in MOSS/WSS SP2 stsadm operation is very useful. It checks server farm for system requirements, database health and a list of rules. The rules can also be extended.

To use upgrade checker, first open a command line prompt, and run

"X:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN\STSADM.EXE" -o preupgradecheck

(X is the drive letter where you install SharePoint)

Make sure you are in administrator mode. Otherwise it would be denied.

You can see there’re a list of rules checked by the operation. I ~~will~~ have a seperate post talk about the detail of each rule.

SearchContentSourcesInfo
SearchInfo
ServerInfo
FarmInfo
UpgradeTypes
SiteDefinitionInfo
LanguagePackInfo
FeatureInfo
AamUrls
LargeList
CustomListViewInfo
CustomFieldTypeInfo
CustomWorkflowActionsFileInfo
ModifiedWebConfigWorkflowAuthorizedTypesInfo
ModifiedWorkflowActionsFileInfo
DisabledWorkFlowsInfo
OSPrerequisite
WindowsInternalDatabaseMigration
WindowsInternalDatabaseSite
MissingWebConfig
ReadOnlyDatabase
InvalidDatabaseSchema
ContentOrphan
SiteOrphan
PendingUpgrade
InvalidServiceAccount
InvalidHostName

A successful run could show the following:

Hey, we got a “OSPrerequisite… Failed” here. So let’s take a look at the report.

The report will give you the following information:

Search content sources and start addresses

Office Server Search topology information

Servers in the current farm

The components from this farm

Supported upgrade types

Site Definition Information

Language pack information

Feature Information

Alternate Access Mapping Url(s) within the current environment that should be considered when upgrading.

Lists and Libraries

Customized field types that will not be upgraded

Windows SharePoint Services Search topology information

And also the failed items it checked.

In my case, because this machine is still on Windows Server 2003 32bit, so it does not meet the requirement of SharePoint Server 2010, which needs to be install on Windows Server 2008 x64.

Failed : This server machine in the farm does not have Windows Server 2008 or higher 64 bit edition installed.

Upgrading to Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 requires Windows Server 2008 or higher 64 bit edition.
Please upgrade the server machines in your farm to Windows Server 2008 64 bit edition, or create a new farm and attach the content from this farm. For more information about this rule, see KB article 954770 in the rule article list at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=120257.

I will explain the detail of the checker in another post later.

Update: the post is here: http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/05/12/upgrade-checker-in-sp2-behind-the-scene.aspx

Install MOSS 2007 & WSS 3.0 on Windows Server 2008 R2 – you will need SP2 slipstream

Jie Li — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:00:38 GMT

Windows Server 2008 R2 RC is avaliable several days ago. You may ask questions: What if I want to install WSS/MOSS on Windows Server 2008 R2? Is that supported?

The answer: WSS/MOSS RTM & SP1 is not supported on WS2008R2. But with SP2, it is supported. If you try to run the installer without SP2 slipstreamed, it would be blocked and you cannot continue. Meanwhile, if you want to use SQL Server 2008, you will also need to apply SQL Server 2008 SP1 on it after installation.

So slipstream build of WSS and MOSS SP2 is required. WSS SP2 slipstream build can be found here: x86 x64. There’s no slipstream build for MOSS so you need to create your own one. Here’s a quick guide:

Remove all stuff inside the Updates folder of your MOSS installation directory. Download both wss and moss SP2 packages, extract them in command line using /extract:drive\path option, and then put all into the Updates folder. Delete Wsssetup.dll, this is important. Otherwise only WSS SP2 will be installed.

More details can be found on TechNet.

With SP2 slipstreamed, you can run the installer without any problem now. After installation, site version will be 12.0.0.6421.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 is also supported by MOSS/WSS SP2.