SharePoint News - RealSharePoint.com

4/24/2009

FLASH: Microsoft Reveals that Common STSADM Command Can Corrupt Content DB's

Microsoft just released a knowledge base article that will likely send shivers down the backs of SharePoint administrators around the globe. According to Microsoft, the STSADM command MergeContentDB may fail when attempted on a site collection bigger than 10GB. Not exactly comforting news. But the really scary part is that running the command for collections over 10GB can cause both the source and the destination databases to become corrupted. (Ughh.)

Here's what Microsoft had to say:

"Under certain circumstances, the STSADM MergeContentDB command may fail in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. These circumstances include combinations of significant site collection size, user traffic, and SQL Server load. When the STSADM MergeContentDB command fails, both the source and destination databases can be corrupted."

It's not fun to hear that an STSADM command regularly used by admins can corrupt Content DB's. But it does speak to the importance of having a powerful SharePoint backup and recovery solution, so you can restore your data swiftly and with full fidelity should corruption occur. And in case you're looking for such a solution, I happen to have the inside scoop on the most powerful and cost-effective solution in the industry.

Posted at 4:10 PM by Tucker Hall | Category: Backup and Recovery; SharePoint Tips and Tricks; SharePoint News | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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 The more I thought about the article and its framing, the more I realized it represents an old, outdated way of thinking.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)

3/10/2009

At CIO Conference in Redmond, Stimulus Is In The Air

It’s not every day the public service employees get to be the coolest kids on the block. Normally it’s the big banks, big oil, or big pharma. Not this week. At the US Public Sector CIO conference, held on Microsoft’s Redmond Campus, all hands were on deck to cater to our Federal, State, and Local Government, and Educational leaders.

Why? You ask.

Two Words: Stimulus Package.

We all know the story about the economy, and the end of 2008 into the beginning of 2009 had a lot of IT departments pulling up on the reins in fear that the next spending proposal they were going to submit might be their last. Well, in some areas of the economy, that might still be the case for a while, but in the Public Sector, everyone is obsessed with the latest economic recovery plan that has passed and are scrambling to find out when and where the money will trickle down.

I have to credit Microsoft, they are not pulling any punches in the preparation. This summit, which AvePoint sponsored and exhibited, was thoroughly stocked with sessions on how run IT in this economy and how to prepare for stimulus money. Also I would say the ratio to MSFT employees to attendees was easily 1:1. There was even a session for partners, hosted by Vince Menzioni USPS General Manager, Partner Strategy that addressed how partners could position their sales and marketing efforts to align with Microsoft’s strategy. This gave a decent over view of the industries that stand to benefit most from the stimulus package at the top of the list was Education, State and Local Gov, then Healthcare, Financial Revitalization, and Energy sector.

What is most compelling to me is the focus on Transparency and Collaboration in government and educational programs. The need for programs to assist with Knowledge Management, Tracking, Reporting. The mantra that is coming out of D.C. and has already trickled down is the openness and fairness that stimulus package recepients will need to abide by. These themes bode very well for Microsoft, and specifically SharePoint.

With the recent inclusion of PerformancePoint in the SharePoint license, not to mention the bulk of partner generated BI and efficiency tools, a large number of organizations are looking to invest in tools to assist with tracking investments and analyzing performance.

If there was one complaint, it would be that CIO’s don’t seem too compelled to speak with SharePoint infrastructure management companies, but hey, we already know it’s the admins that really get the thrill out of using our products, and the CIO’s have those admins and us to thank for keeping their phones from ringing off the hook with unhappy SharePoint users. As long as we know, that’s all that matters.

-Chris Foreman

Posted at 8:57 AM by Tucker Hall | Category: SharePoint News; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/6/2009

Microsoft Technology Centers – What a Resource!

I am excited to report that this past week I conducted my first POC at the Microsoft Technology Center in Atlanta, for a large military organization.

The prospective customer approached us in search of an application for comprehensive, flexible replication, to help synchronize the dynamic ecosystem of their central command SharePoint infrastructure. The overall requirements for the POC were to create 3 farms in separate networks living in the same Active Directory domain - and run through a specified list of use-cases for replication. The amount of data we would be working with was in the range of 400 gigs spread over a 3-tier nested site hierarchy. Some of the more challenging proof points would be to determine/exhibit performance under the compromised conditions of their WAN connection.

These unique requirements posed a big challenge in the preparation phases of the POC. The facilities at the MTC allowed us to install the 8 Hyper-v VMs and the 500gigs of data we brought with us. We spent the earlier part of the week configuring the environments and working through a long list of use cases for DocAve Replicator, Backup and Recovery, High Availability, SharePoint Administrator, and Extension Archiver. Throughout this process we discovered the true value of many of the AvePoint products, as we replicated content back and forth, ran backups and item level restores, created and moved site collections, used our reporting capabilities to keep track of the many changes we were making both from a user security perspective and a SharePoint configuration perspective, created content DBs and web applications, moved site collections into other content DBs, etc…the list goes on and on.

It is not a common occurrence that you can prepare 3 Farms (to simulate a military SP environment) with real business use cases, set up and configure AD integration with SharePoint, and begin the daunting task of managing all the data with only 2 SharePoint Admins (my colleague Cesar and myself). And all of this in 2 days! Now as much as I would like to give credit to Cesar and I - the true accolades go to AvePoint’s DocAve product!!

To be honest, the scariest part was when airport security took our 2 terabyte drives and performed some special scan. All I keep thinking was “what will we do if we lose our VMs!!!”

Thursday began with great excitement because Steve from the MTC was gracious enough to let us use their Envisioning Center for the POC. For those of you who have not yet seen the MTC’s Envisioning Centers, I'll just say they create a “mood of innovation” that’s hard to beat.

When the prospective customer arrived with his Technical Lead, we began with a brief introduction of DocAve, then started a deep-dive into DocAve Replicator. We ran through a long list of use-cases covering various configurations and scenarios. The customer was impressed with DocAve’s approach to replication, and its strengths and flexibility from a settings and configurations perspective. (There were some serious sparks flying when we demonstrated event-based replication using a calendar use-case we had prepared.) They had great praise for DocAve’s ability to maintain the integrity of objects being replicated in SharePoint. After spending some 5hrs in the Envisioning Center, it was time to move to our lab room and begin playing with the WAN simulator to test performance.

The customer has some less-than-optimal conditions with regard to their WAN, such that they only have 4bm (fiber) and 2mb (satellite) pipes to their destinations. And that’s not all…on that limited bandwidth they see at times a 50% packet loss and a consistent 500msec latency. We tested all different types of replication: Full, incremental, event-based, byte-level differencing, etc. We changed things around with the WAN simulator and played with different types of content being replicated. In summary, we put DocAve Replicator through the paces!

The customer was impressed with both its capabilities and overall design. And we all were impressed with the amazing facilities the MTC’s provide to let SharePoint ISV’s like us showcase our products. Thanks to MTC Atlanta’s team and technologies, we had a successful POC and a great experience. I can’t wait for the next one!

Posted at 4:16 PM by Mario Carvajal | Category: SharePoint News | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/20/2009

Hey New England! Learn How to Maximize Your SharePoint Investment!

Are you looking to squeeze every penny of value from your SharePoint deployment?

Are you going to be anywhere near Waltham, MA this coming Tuesday, February 24th?

Then we have the event for you...

Vitale Caturano - New England's largest technology consulting firm - is presenting another of its premiere "Focus Series" events. This one-day, info-packed session will review how to maximize your SharePoint investment in today's marketplace, with a keynote delivered by Mauro Cardarelli, author of Essential SharePoint 2007 and Director of Portals & Collaboration at Vitale Caturano.

At this event, you can:

• Learn from industry-leader AvePoint how to maximize your SharePoint ROI

• Validate the health of your SharePoint environment with a "SharePoint health checklist"

• Learn how to leverage Silverlight to take your SharePoint sites to the “next level”

• See how Microsoft Virtual Earth and your SharePoint data can show your corporate data in a whole new way

• Join Hi Software to discuss how to ensure the information you put into your SharePoint environment is secure and compliant

• Join FAST Search to discuss the next generation of enterprise search and how it can help you recover, discover, and uncover corporate assets

• Hear a SharePoint customer tell how her organization has made SharePoint business critical… and how they manage user expectations

• Bring questions to our panel of SharePoint experts and get the answers you need

• Mingle and connect with other local SharePoint users

Here's the day's agenda...

Wednesday - January 28th, 2009

8:30am Registration

9:00am Keynote

10:00am Break Out sessions

11:00am Break Out sessions

12:00pm - 1:00pm Lunch& Networking

1:00 - 2:00pm Customer Success Story

2:00 - 3:00pm Break Out sessions

3:00 - 4:00pm Panel Discussion with SharePoint experts

So if you're plannig on being in the area, be sure to join us for this dynamic event. For more info and to sign up, visit www.vitale.com/sharepoint.

Posted at 1:35 PM by Tucker Hall | Category: Events and Happenings; SharePoint News; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/12/2009

Infonomics on SharePoint

An old colleague of mine referred me to this recent article on Infonomics Magazine written by Marcia Jedd about Taming SharePoint. Check it out. It’s quite an interesting read. Jedd calls MOSS the “McDonald’s of the enterprise content management world”. That’s the first I’ve heard it referred to in that way. It’s a cute moniker, given the way it has pretty much built its own brand name. It just doesn’t come with French fries or happy meals.

Nevertheless, the article touches upon some of SharePoint’s key strengths, along with some caveats. Can it really be the “biggest Swiss Army knife” in the world, as Errin O’Connor, president and founder of EPCGroup called it? Well, with the appropriate planning, proper optimization, and the right solutions to support it, most organizations will definitely see that spike in user adoption and realize the return on investment they are expecting from the platform. It will be interesting to see where the solution is headed. Gartner sees it as the dominant infrastructure platform for workgroups and departmental applications by 2012. Keep on marching!

Posted at 3:57 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: Administration; SharePoint News | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/11/2009

FAST-forward Your SharePoint Search

Microsoft just announced (yesterday) that they are finally solidifying plans of integrating FAST (Fast Search and Transfer) enterprise search technology into SharePoint. You might recall that Microsoft had spent $1.2 billion on acquiring this Norwegian company just a little over a year ago. It’s great to finally hear from Microsoft how they plan on leveraging this asset to improve the overall search platform within SharePoint. Yes, this is not gonna be fully integrated into SharePoint until the official release of the next version of SharePoint, but it’s definitely something, along with all the additional Office 14 enhancements, that we are all looking forward to.

As most have experienced, the search feature within Microsoft SharePoint has been somewhat subpar. It’s not bad, but certainly not the greatest. Some of the interesting things within the FAST technology stack that I can see providing value to SharePoint include increased scalability, better support for a mixture of structured and unstructured content, and linguistic capabilities.

I’m still a tad confused about the packaging though. This will likely be included in the SharePoint Enterprise Client Access License, but what happens to the existing Search Server and Search Server Express that were released not too long ago? It’ll be good to see a clearer roadmap on how each of these will stand apart from each other.

Posted at 5:46 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: SharePoint News | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/5/2009

Beaches, Casinos, and the 2009 SharePoint Conference

Details for the SharePoint Conference 2009 have been announced! Following last year's sold-out event in Seattle, the conference will now be held at the lush Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas, October 19-22, 2009. This spacious venue will definitely be able to accommodate the expected sellout crowd.

In the midst of the aquatic experience and the casinos, there's lots of content to be covered in the conference. Whether you're an IT admin, a developer, an architect, or even an IT manager, there's bound to be tons of technical sessions that will help all of us explore and learn how to maximize our current deployments. In addition, what makes this event superexciting, especially for me, is that this is everyone's opportunity to get the "lowdown" on SharePoint "14".

Registration has just opened earlier this week. You definitely won't want to miss out!.

Posted at 2:59 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: SharePoint News; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/4/2009

Staying SharePoint-Focused in Sunny La Jolla, CA

It’s the final day of the Best Practices SharePoint Conference in La Jolla, CA. As expected, the early morning sessions were less crowded, or even sparse. Many attendees are walking around in their casual attire, hoping to make a last minute trip to the beach or the golf course before heading home. I’ll have to hand it to MindSharp – they organized one helluva event. Great sessions, great sponsors, great food, and very eager attendees hungry for classes to better their SharePoint-related skillsets. And mind you, this was all held at a location where the view of the Pacific Ocean, the sprawling golf course, and of course, the perfect weather could’ve easily distracted all of us from paying attention to the speakers. The only complaint I had was that I had to stay at the other end of town and it took forever to make it there.

The event kicked off early Monday morning with a standing room only keynote headlined by the man himself – Joel Oleson. Even though Joel is part of Quest Software, he’s still playing the SharePoint evangelist role. When he speaks, we all listen. In fact, his followup session appropriately titled “Avoiding Failed SharePoint Deployments and Chaos” was one of the most popular ones of the show. You can find his looong slide deck on slideshare. I especially liked his one slide that outlined the 10 Steps to SharePoint Success (talk about alliteration). It was definitely the perfect recipe for ensuring a successful deployment. If I may shamelessly replicate it here, the 10 steps Joel mentioned are:

Confront reality
Create a governance plan
Get an executive sponsor
Create a dream team
Build services, not stuff
Define clear policies and standards
Invest in scalable information architecture
Don't forget change/risk management
Adoption is what counts
Keep it simple stupid

Yes, there were tons of other content – developer-oriented, admin-oriented, even information worker or end user-oriented. But alas, amidst all the great presentations, great food, great conversations, and exhibitors, I think those 10 prescriptive steps provided attendees with a great foundation they could walk away with. This was a great SharePoint event to start 2009, and just like everyone else, I can’t wait for the next one.

Posted at 2:41 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: Administration; Deployment Architecture; SharePoint News; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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