Thursday 27 February 2014

Adding Additional Search Crawl database to a SP2013 Search farm

Problem: By adhereing to Microsoft recommendations for search farms, a threshold that is passed fairly quickly is that the Search Crawl database should not exceed 20 million items per database.  I have a 12 server search farm with four partitions (recommendation 10 million items per index partion).  I need to add a second Crawler DB.

Initial Hypothesis: Figure out your current crawl databases.


Add additional Search Crawl databases
 Review the existing crawl search databases

I proved this on a test system by resetting my index and recrawling, the results after adding 3 content db's are shown below.



Resolution:  Add more crawl database to the search service application.

$SSA = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication$searchCrawlDBName = "SP_Search_CrawlStore2"
$searchCrawlDBServer = "SP2013-SQL3" # SQL Aliase could be the Conn str
$crawlDatabase = New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlDatabase -SearchApplication $SSA -DatabaseName $searchCrawlDBName -DatabaseServer $searchCrawlDBServer
$crawlStoresManager = new-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CrawlStorePartitionManager($SSA)
$crawlStoresManager.BeginCrawlStoreRebalancing()

Powershell to see what is going on:

cls
$SSA = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
$crawlStoresManager = new-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CrawlStorePartitionManager($SSA)
Write-Host "CrawlStoresAreUnbalanced:" $crawlStoresManager.CrawlStoresAreUnbalanced()

Write-Host "CrawlStoreImbalanceThreshold:" $ssa.GetProperty("CrawlStoreImbalanceThreshold")
Write-Host "CrawlStoresAreUnbalanced:" $crawlStoresManager.CrawlStoresAreUnbalanced()
Write-Host "CrawlPartitionSplitThreshold:" $ssa.GetProperty("CrawlPartitionSplitThreshold")
$crawlLog = New-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CrawlLog $SSA
$dbInfo= $crawlLog.GetCrawlDatabaseInfo()

Write-Host "Number of Crawl Databases:"
$dbInfo.Count$dbInfo.Values

More Info:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint_strategery/archive/2013/01/28/powershell-to-rebalance-crawl-store-dbs-in-sp2013.aspx

Wednesday 26 February 2014

Remote Debugging SharePoint 2013

Overview:  Object reference not set to an instance of an object is all the information I have in my customers ULS logs.  I need to debug an application in production that does not contain Visual Studio 2012.

My Steps:
  • Ran the Remote Debugguer (msvsmon.exe) on 1 of the production servers
  • Added a host file to point to my production server "SP-WFE1" (optional depending on where the web requests originate from)
  • Opened Visual Studio 2012 on a VM containing the projected (hooked up to TFS 2012) and opened the solution (.sln).
  • Select Tools > Attach to Process

..... Finish when time permits


More Info:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649389.aspx
http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2008/03/05/how-to-remote-debugging-a-web-application.aspx
 

Sunday 23 February 2014

SharePoint Online Random Tips

1.> SPO and PowerShell:
To connect and use SharePoint online you cannot have a small business plan (P).  The Medium and enterprise Office 365 plans allow the SPO PowerShell scripts to run (very few so far).
Steps to use PS against SPO:
1.1.> Download and install the SharePoint Online Management Plugin
 1.2.> Add the snap-in/module to your PowerShell (or use the console with the snap-in already loaded)
 1.3.> Connect to your SharePoint site and validate it works.

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2.> OOTB SPO Workflows:
P Plan only has three state workflow
E Plan has 5 basic workflows: signature, 3 state, approval, ..

Sandbox does not support Visual Studio based (code) workflows but you can create declaritive workflows via SPD.

SharePoint 365 Workflow Creation Process:
  • Prototype in Visio 2010 by using the SharePoint specific workflow, this can be demonstrated with the end user as they understand Visio workflow diagrams to explain there business process.
  • Export Visio 2010 diagram to SPD
  • Implement the workflow using SPD can integrate InfoPath forms
  • Custom actions are created using VS and can be deployed, the custom actions can be integrated into the SPD created workflow.
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Saturday 8 February 2014

DevOps and SharePoint

Components of DevOps
  • IT Automation
  • Agile Development
  • Operation and dev teams working together
  • Service vitalisation
  • Continuous releases
  • Automated testing (Recorded Web UI & Unit testings)
  • Performance
Why DevOps
  • Collaboration btwn Dev & Ops teams; reduce unknowns early on, info easily available, better decision making, improved governance.
  • Increase apps faster; faster time to market
  • Improve App quality; environments available and not tedious to deploy
  • Reduce costs; fewer staff required as tasks are automated
DevOps Maturity Model
There are different levels of maturity and your final goal will depend on your company.  Operations departments are very different in a bank as opposed to Facebook.
The 4 main stages to DevOps Maturity are:
  1. Early - Manual traditional approach to software delivery.  Little or no automation.
  2. Scripted - Moving toward more automation.  Some scripting is used to assist the tracked recorded deployment process thru DTAP environments.
  3. Automation - Reusable common automation approach to releasing applications.  Workflow/orchestration using the automation capabilities used over all the DTAP environments.
  4. Continuous Delivery - end-to-end application delivery process from dev to production environments.  Probably includes Continuous Integration, nightly builds

Presentation at SharePoint Saturday 2013 on of Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
http://blog.sharepointsite.co.uk/2013/11/iac-presentation-for-sharepoint.html


Sunday 2 February 2014

Audit and documenting a SharePoint on prem farm

Overview:  I have had and done several SharePoint infrastructure audits over the past few years.  These can vary from running through checklists of best practices to see what the customer setup has and finding out why they may of chosen to diverge. 

There is a lot of good tooling and checklists to help you audit your farm such as the built in Health analyser, central admin, PowerShell scripts and a great tool to help document your farm SPDocKitSetup from Acceleratio.

Tooling:
  • PowerShell
  • Health analyser
  • Central Admin
  • ULS logs and event logs
  • IIS (IIS RealTime Log Viewer)
  • Fiddler
  • SQL Management Studio, SQL profiler
  • Tool to audit and document your SharePoint farm: SPDocKitSetup
  • Third party tools like: DocAve and Metalogix (Ideara had a decent tool previously) can help audit and document your system.
The basic steps are:
  1. Document the farms topology;
  2. Verify versions and components installed;
  3. Compare MS recommendations to the farm settings, provide findings and allow the customer time to explain why these setting differ; and
  4. Monitoring, troubleshooting and performance.
Below are a few items to review:

SharePoint:
SharePoint Logs - I put these into my d drive
Multiple install accounts
List all customisations especially wsp and custom code
External Access - DMZ, network,

IIS:
Change the IIS default log location to a separate disk
Reclaim old IIS logs (Backup and remove from WFE's)
IIS RealTime Log Viewer - good tool for reading IIS logs

SQL basic checks:
I/O, CPU, Memory on the base database machine/s
MaxDop = 1
Initital mdf sizing and ldf sizing
ldf on fast disk, mdf of content db's on slowest disk (or just put it all on fast disk)
Backups

Maybe Reminders:
Remove all certificate files that are not needed (*.cer & *.pfx)
Ensure local account user name/passwords are changed & secure (I have a local admin account on my Windows template used to create all my VM's ensure this account is disabled or secured).

More Info:
http://nikpatel.net/2012/03/11/checklist-for-designing-and-implementing-sharepoint-2010-extranets-things-to-consider/
https://habaneroconsulting.com/insights/Do-you-need-a-SharePoint-infrastructure-audit
http://blog.muhimbi.com/2009/05/managing-sharepoints-audit.html
http://www.portalint.com/thoughts-on-sharepoint-audit/