DocAve Tips and Tricks - RealSharePoint.com

3/26/2009

Suite 2.0 - Old Thinking vs. New Realities

Storage Decision recently published an article on application-specific backup tools that has caused me to do some thinking. The more I thought about the article and its framing, the more I realized it represents an old, outdated way of thinking. Here’s what I mean…

Let’s face it, SharePoint is a disruptive technology…and it’s not alone. Gazing into the technology horizon, it’s easy to discern that the world is moving ever-onward toward continually disruptive technologies. New terms like “Enterprise 2.0”, “Web 2.0” and “Cloud Computing” seem to enter the community lexicon almost daily. It’s a wonderful thing, and speaks to our continuing innovation. But it also speaks to a fundamental change in the way we must think about our technology solutions.

These emerging technologies have two things in common: First, the technologies themselves are empowering end-users to generate and share original content at an unprecedented scale. This is an unabashedly good thing. The second common feature of these technologies results from the first, but is not so wonderful: Across the board, these technologies require complex backend architectures, server arrays, and systems configurations to operate. This means that – though the end-user is empowered – administrators face a whole new world of complexity with regard to backend management. Consequently, the quaint terms, nice little boxes, and silo-styled thinking that the IT world has used to classify technologies are no longer accurate. A great example of this is common use of the terms “Point Solution” and “Suite”. The way today’s less inspired media uses these terms reveals how little they actually understand the changing reality of technology generally, and the evolution of platform solutions in particular.

In contrast to the Storage Decision article, I would argue that any “backup-only” solution – regardless of the number of disparate platforms it protects - is actually the new “point solution”. A solution that only delivers backup, even if it does so across a handful of platforms, cannot be classified as a suite. Rather, it is a point solution for backup, and that’s all.

This is primarily because the multiple platforms these “backup-only suite solutions” claim to protect have become so unique and complex, the multi-platform solution is incapable of delivering adequate functionality for any particular one of them. The smart “backup-only” vendors have realized this, and have started adding archiving and other functions to their backup-point solutions. But without true expertise in the particular platform and its complexities, it’s rarely – if ever - a best-of-breed solution.

The new “suite” approach is to take a complex platform, truly understand its usage and its infrastructure requirements, and build a product to fully address its needs in all their nuance and complexity. This approach leads to the creation of a full menu of best-of-breed, platform-specific products. This is the “suite” of the 21st century. Suite 2.0.

Marginally addressing a single concern (e.g. backup) across a handful of platforms is the new “point” solution. Point 2.0.

Comprehensively handling the infrastructure management requirements of a platform in all of its complexity – that’s a new suite.

The smart companies have realized this. To see this you only have to look as far as IBM and their very recent restructuring of the Tivoli sales organization. IBM, like most companies stuck in the old way of thinking, used to have storage experts that targeted the storage administrators responsible for doing backup, and tried to sell backup-only solutions to them. But IBM realized that with the dawn of platforms like SharePoint, the decision-making landscape was changing. When IBM’s salespeople talked to prospects about

SharePoint, the storage admin was no longer involved in the backup management decision. It was now the Windows application people and the SharePoint team running the show. And it was these same folks who were also making decisions about platform architecture, archiving, configuration, security management, system look and feel, etc. So IBM restructured their sales team to reflect the new reality. No longer would IBM’s backup experts target storage admins – but rather they would have platform management experts target the application admins. Today, IBM leverages enterprise sales reps that know the platform, and they sell “suites” of solutions that meet multiple needs across a single platform. No longer are they trying to sell a single backup platform for multiple systems, but instead have appreciated the unique, integrated needs of the platform as a whole, and approach the platform admins saying, “Oh, you’re using that system. Well, look at all the things we can do for it.”

This is a telling story when considering SharePoint backups. To simply say that SharePoint data protection involves only database backups fundamentally misunderstands the concerns of today’s SharePoint administrator. Saying database backups are sufficient to adequately protect the platform shows a clear lack of understanding of SharePoint, how it is used, and how it is deployed. A single SharePoint content database can have hundreds of sites, each with very different use and very different requirements and service level agreements. Some can be highly business-critical and some less so. If the business-criticality of Site A demands hourly backups, and Site B demands weekly backups, is it realistically adequate to leverage a solution that can’t discern between sites? No one is going to backup the entire database every hour! Several of the so-called “suite” solutions referenced in the Storage Decision article advertise that they can do item-level restores from a database backup, but how many of them can do item-level backup? The answer is they can’t, so how protected is the platform?

And what about all the customizations, webparts, and features that are integral components of those sites, but that aren’t part of the database and sit on the web or app servers? It only takes one disaster for companies to realize how critical these componansts are. How many of these so-called “suite Solutions” can backup anything outside the content database? The answer? None.

"Suite" isn’t exactly the right term for these solutions, is it?

And that’s just the backup side. Today’s "Suite 2.0" delivers all of the infrastructure management solutions an SP admin needs to protect, optimize, and manage his or her deployment. That’s a Suite 2.0 solution, not a point solution.

AvePoint’s DocAve is comprised of 20 different modules, each independently deployable yet fully integrated into a unified platform. Together, they handle everything from backup and restore, high availability, centralized configuration and security management, content management and restructuring, data synchronization and replication, archiving, auditing, eDiscovery, monitoring, reporting and analytics, and migration from legacy data sources. This is no point solution. I’d argue that DocAve is the true suite here, and that people who are used to the old terminologies—where one specific function (like backup), marginally performed across multiple platforms was considered a suite—are going to have to comprehend the type of suites today's administrators demand. Suite 2.0. It’s a new world, with a new perspective. The old ways of thinking and discussing platform solutions no longer hold. It’s about time the media started realizing it.

Posted at 6:20 PM by Tony Lanni | Category: Events and Happenings; SharePoint News; Backup and Recovery; Administration; DocAve Tips and Tricks; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/13/2009

Microsoft's Michael Gannotti Podcasts About DocAve

If you're a fan of SharePoint you've probably heard of Michael Gannotti, one of the most highly regarded experts in the SharePoint community. As a Senior Technology Specialist at Microsoft, he keeps a pretty close eye on trends in the SharePoint multi-verse. Michael's blog is one of the most popular on the web, and his podcast, Mikey's Tech Talk is a great weekly resource for the latest in SharePoint tips and trends.

Recently, Michael podcasted about AvePoint and DocAve. He had recently seen a demo of the product, and had some pretty intersting things to say. It's a great episode, so be sure to check it out here.

Posted at 3:29 PM by Tucker Hall | Category: DocAve Tips and Tricks; Migration; SharePoint News; Events and Happenings; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/5/2009

SharePoint and The Sixth Sense

SharePoint administrators - let me know if you're with me on this: The last time you looked at the permissions in your SharePoint sites, did you feel like you were in the movie The Sixth Sense?

"I see dead accounts!"

No matter how well your permission scheme is designed, and how diligently you follow the best practice of using your AD and SharePoint groups to avoid giving out unique user permissions... individual user permissions always creep in. Usually this happens when a user browses somewhere, doesn't have the permissions to do what he wants to do, so requests (and is granted) them. Or sometimes it happens that someone new joins a project and the quickest way to get him ramped up is to give him permissions explicitely, rather than going to the AD group, filling out the forms, and waiting around for him to be added to the right group(s).

So how can you avoid this? What does SharePoint offer to help efficiently manage permissions, without turning your deployment into a house of the walking dead? (accounts, that is).

Well, being able to clone and transfer permissions would be helpful. Being able to generate a report or search for permissions would be great. Being able to detect deactivated or deleted accounts in AD, and then finding them in SharePoint would be awesome!

Does SharePoint offer this natively?

Does Bruce Willis have hair?

If you can't wait for Microsoft to deliver these tools - that is, if they ever plan to - check out DocAve. DocAve's SharePoint Administrator module lets you clone and transfer accounts with ease, and quickly identify (and deactivate) dead ccounts. With DocAve, you can even perform criteria-based searches of your SharePoint configuration to quickly target exactly the elements/users you want to manage.

When it comes to saving time and delivering a secure platform, these powerful capabilities will pay back in spades. When it comes to ridding your deployment of "the walking dead", it's like having a Sixth Sense for SharePoint!

If this sounds like something your organzation could use, then check out the powerful security management tools offered in DocAve SharePoint Administrator.

Posted at 9:59 AM by Han Wang | Category: Administration; DocAve Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/4/2009

Now Backup & Restore Your SharePoint "My Sites"

The long-awaited functionality is here! Did you know that DocAve 5.1.1 allows you to backup and restore SharePoint mySites at a granular level? You can choose to restore any "My Details" "My Links," "My Colleagues," or "My Memberships" as well. This functionality makes DocAve's award-winning granular Backup and Recovery that much more powerful.

Posted at 9:15 AM by AVEPOINT\Michael.Shine | Category: Backup and Recovery; DocAve Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/6/2009

SharePoint Refactoring - Changing a Site Collection's Content Database

For this article, I'm borrowing a term from the software development world - refactoring. For those of you who haven't heard of this term, it means to change the structure without changing functionality. It is usually applied via automation (e.g. by the IDE) and is necessary to maintain code sanitation over time.

As SharePoint farms grow in size and content, administrators often need a quick and reliable way to perform refactorings of their SharePoint structure to keep the farm running optimally. One such operation would be to change the content database a site collection is residing on. Best practice is to limit the number (and size) of site collections on each content database - especially for mysites.

DocAve v5 has this capability as part of its SharePoint Administrator module, or you can do it manually using stsadm. I will describe the easy process: Using DocAve.

First, you will need to create the content database, which you can do easily using SharePoint Central Admin or DocAve's Central Admin. Next, in DocAve's Central Admin, select a site collection. On the right in the actions list, select "Change content database". Pick the new content database and then you're done! DocAve will migrate the content over to the new database and take care of the rest.

As you can see, DocAve can simplify some of your SharePoint refactoring tasks, keeping your SharePoint running smoothly.

Posted at 12:24 PM by Han Wang | Category: Administration; DocAve Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/2/2009

Automatic Failover to a Standby Server

Most of you are probably familiar with DocAve's "High-Availability" feature. DocAve's High Availability module is a one-switch disaster recovery solution for Microsoft SharePoint. It allows SQL database replication to a standby environment in order to minimize downtime. Until DocAve v5.1.1, during a disaster you would have to navigate to the DocAve "Failover Controller" to bring online your standby system. Not anymore! New to 5.1.1, DocAve High Availability can plug-in to any existing auto-failover detection mechanisms/scripts. When a failover is detected, a batch file can be run from the command line that will automate the execution of a user-configured failover plan. 0 Downtime!

Posted at 8:48 AM by AVEPOINT\Michael.Shine | Category: Backup and Recovery; DocAve Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/29/2009

Handling Broken Inheritances...and More

When inheritance is broken in SharePoint, it makes security management a lot harder. Isolating all subordinate permissions and access from the parent can prove very detrimental to your health (See "increase in user generated stress"). Identifying broken objects can get very labor-intensive. A lot of browsing and clicking around is going to happen. A small farm could take hours, a large farm…well, good luck with that.

A securities management tool is what you need. With DocAve SharePoint Administrator, you will have the capability to easily identify objects with broken inheritance. You can set the scope of the search to farm, web application, site collection, site, list/libraries and folders levels. The search results will show you the Path (URL), Object Name, Path Type, Inherited (yes/no), User Name, Group, Account Type and Permission.

Security Search

From the generated report, you can easily select an instance and perform the following actions – Edit, Delete, Inherit Parent, Break Inherit, Change Group, Add Users. You can also download the report to PDF, XML and CSV formats for further review.

Security Options

Furthermore, with DocAve SharePoint Administrator, you can detect dead accounts automatically, transfer user permissions, add users to multiple sites in a single step, conduct security trimming, leverage a powerful report center, utilize an STSADM GUI, and more!!!

Posted at 3:17 PM by Philip Panajon | Category: Administration; DocAve Tips and Tricks; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/28/2009

A Simple Way to Add a Content Database

Microsoft has issued guidelines regarding content database sizes, warning that a single content DB should not exceed 100GB. Companies running SharePoint - whether they have deployed a small, medium, or large-scale farm - can take steps to ensure that their DB’s fall within these guidelines. It’s just a matter of proper planning.

An average SharePoint farm usually has about 2000 users. Each new user translates to an average of 2 additional MB's on the content database. It follows that – all things being equal – as your end-user base grows, your content database will eventually approach the upper limits of its stable capacity.

Many SharePoint administrators decide to add another content database to an existing web application, to relieve the existing database. Adding this content database directly through SharePoint can be quite a daunting task. You must log on to the central administration interface, navigate to the application management tab, select content database(s), then select the web application you wish to add. Once you have added the content database(s), you must take the following steps to move site collections to your new DB.

1. At a command prompt on the drive where SharePoint is installed, change to the following directory:

%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft shared\Web server extensions\12\Bin

2. Type the following command, and then press ENTER:
Stsadm -o enumsites -url <URL> > <path/file name>.xml

Where URL is the address of the Web application that contains the site collection that you want to move, and path/file name is the name of the XML file that you want to create with the site collection data.

The previous step creates an XML file that contains all of the site collection URLs in the current database.

3. Open the XML file that you created in a text editing application. If there are any URLs for site collections that you do not want to move, be sure to delete them from the file. The only URLs that should remain in the XML file should be for the site collections that you want to move.

4. Type the following command, and then press ENTER:
Stsadm -o mergecontentdbs -url <URL> -sourcedatabasename <database name> -destinationdatabasename <database name> -operation 3 -filename <file name>

Where url is the address of the Web application that contains the site collection that you want; sourcedatabasename is the name of the database that you want to move the site collection from; destinationdatabasename is the name of the database that you want to move the site collection to; operation 3 is the “Read from file” operation; and file name is the name of the file that contains the site collection URLs that you want to move.

5. Restart IIS by typing the following command, and then pressing ENTER:
iisreset /noforce

As I said….quite a daunting task!

Thankfully, DocAve has made is very simple to add a content database to an existing web application. Using the DocAve SharePoint Administrator module, you can quickly drill down to to the web application with the “overflowing database” problem, click on the option to “Add Content Database”. In two mouse clicks you can add the new content database to your selected web application. After the database has been added, you have the option to move site collections from DB to DB within the web app. Presto, you’re done!

Posted at 2:58 PM by Faraz Saiyed | Category: DocAve Tips and Tricks; Administration; Deployment Architecture; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/27/2009

The Problem with Restoring SharePoint Content from SQL Server Backups

So here is the setup...

Your organization has existing SQL Server backups from all your SQL Server databases. You've migrated your content onto SharePoint, but your organization still depends on the SQL backup to cover your SharePoint content databases. Then one day, the inevitable happens and some user calls the help desk with a corrupted document that has to be restored ASAP.

What do you do?

Well, your first instinct might be to restore that content database to a previous state, but you can't do that as you'll wipe out all the changes to SharePoint content since then.

Then you think about restoring the SharePoint content database to a staging server, hook up a scratch web application to it, browse down to the content you are trying to restore, export it out, and import it back into production SharePoint. This might work, but it's a painfully tedious manual process, and any history and metadata associated with the content will be lost...unless entered again manually.

It looks like you'll have to go to your tool chest. Enter DocAve v5, which includes a "Restore from SQL Backup" feature that does exactly what you want!

There are two ways to use the tool. You can browse through a staged content database, or have DocAve stage and analyze the database backup file for you. Either way, you pick and choose exactly what content you want to restore (down to the item-version level), and decide where you want to restore it. DocAve takes care of the rest!

For existing DocAve v5 customers, this feature is easy to use: Using the navagation bar, simply navigate to Data Protection -->Restore Controller-->Restore from SQL Backup.

For those who aren't yet DocAve users, take a few moments to learn more about DocAve's powerful Backup and Recovery module.

Posted at 3:02 PM by Han Wang | Category: Backup and Recovery; DocAve Tips and Tricks; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/22/2009

Social networking in SharePoint

Who doesn't love social networking? www.facebook.com is the #1 visited website in the world. How else would you possibly keep in touch with everyone from your grandmother to your 1st grade classmates?

Social networking is going to be big in the next version of SharePoint as well. Along those lines, I'd like to introduce the social networking features in DocAve v5. DocAve allows an administrator to install what's called a "User Clustering Webpart" which allows end-users to view other users who have similar permissions to their own...similar to the facebook "people you may know" feature!

How does it work?

Let's say you are a marketing employee who also helps out in the finance department...so you have access to the finance and marketing site collections in SharePoint. In large corporations, there may be other employees with the same or similar access. DocAve can present these employees to you in an easily readable fashion, so you can identify and synch-up with people who are doing the same work as you are!

Interested? Learn more about how DocAve is enabling social-professional networking.

Posted at 5:17 PM by AVEPOINT\Michael.Shine | Category: Administration; DocAve Tips and Tricks; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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