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6/4/2009

Sometimes life doesn't have to be difficult. If you've ever found yourself wondering how to efficiently move from one stage in the product lifecycle to another in your Sharepoint environment, then consider this:

Hector Ruiz, a consultant on the London Tideway SharePoint Migration project, writes in his blog about his success with DocAve's content management capabilities. Hector got the job done using DocAve's ability to set backup schedules and out of place restore capabilities.

Posted at 2:35 PM by AVEPOINT\Jack.Kuo | Category: Migration; Backup and Recovery; Deployment Architecture | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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)

4/15/2009

A work-around to restore granularity?

One of the many roles of an AvePoint Systems Engineer is to provide professional services to customers who have recently purchased DocAve. These customers might be looking to gain additional value out of our products by being taught how to leverage all of the included functionality, or they might simply be looking for training on how to properly configure and tune their DocAve system. My most recent on-site professional services visit was to a large enterprise customer near Washington, D.C. This customer was interested in learning best practices for DocAve deployment and configuration. I arrived on-site and began configuring the backup plans. During configuration of the platform-level backup, I noticed this customer had over 200 content databases! When I asked why they had so many content databases, I was told that on recommendation from a high-ranking SharePoint consultant, they were told to associate one content database per site collection in order to attain site-collection restore granularity! They certainly had their site-collection restore granularity all right...Anytime they lost a site they could restore the content database, but these 200 content DB's were making SharePoint management a nightmare! Think about the time required to mirror 200 content DB's over to standby server! What happens when you need to add a user to 200 site collections? DocAve was able to provide them with item-level restore granularity, allowing this customer to consolidate down to a reasonable number of content databases, saving a lot of headaches.

Posted at 9:43 AM by AVEPOINT\Michael.Shine | Category: Backup and Recovery | 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)

3/18/2009

Managing User Permissions in SharePoint

A few days ago I attended a talk on SharePoint best practices, given by Joel Oleson at the Chicago MTC. Joel definitely knows his SharePoint! (He was the first SharePoint admin when Microsoft first released the product internally for development & testing.)

One of the topics of the discussion was "best practices for SharePoint scalability", an important concept considering the adoption rate of a new SharePoint deployment at most companies. Joel mentioned that the most scalable objects in SharePoint are site collections. You can have in excess of 150,000 site collections, while the recommended limit for top-level sites is only 125! The downside to having hundreds of thousands of site collections is that users are managed at a site collection level. So what happens when you need to add a user to a bunch of your site collections at once? Without a third-party management tool for SharePoint, you'd have to log-in to each site collection and add the user manually. Joel recommended the use of third party tools (such as DocAve) to overcome the limitations of the native SharePoint administrative interface. Using DocAve's central admin interface, you can add or remove a user or group of users from multiple site collections at the same time, saving lots of time! Check out this TechNet article to learn more about planning for SharePoint scalability. And be sure to keep tabs on Joel's blog, where insights and info can always be found.

Posted at 6:29 PM by AVEPOINT\Michael.Shine | Category: Administration; Deployment Architecture; SharePoint Tips and Tricks; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

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)

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

New White Paper: Optimizing SharePoint Data Access using Intelligent Replication

For those of you managing SharePoint deployments that serve a geographically-distributed pool of knowledge workers, AvePoint just published an informative white paper that discusses how to make sure geo-dispersed end users can collaborate at optimal levels.

The paper first defines the objectives any successful data-access optimization strategy must meet.

Then it analayzes the various deployment architectures an organization can implemenent, highlighting the common pitfalls and barriers associated with each. (Stuff like limited or intermittent network connectivity, event conflicts, and so on.) Finally, it reviews "best practice" approaches for delivering continuous SharePoint data access. It's a great read for anyone trying to develop a system by which their geographically distributed end-users can collaborate unfettered.

If this is you, be sure to read AvePoint's newest white paper: Optimizing Data Access with Intelligent SharePoint Replication.

Posted at 5:29 PM by Tucker Hall | Category: SharePoint Tips and Tricks; Deployment Architecture | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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