SharePoint 2013 Licencing

Overview:  I have looked at licencing in the past and SP2013 licencing seems

• There is only 1 server licence (not longer, standard, enterprise or Internet as was the case in SP2010), pricing for the server licence has come down significantly.
• Cals are still broken into Standard or Enterprise.  Pretty similar pricing but you can mix and atch cals depending on what your users use.
• OWA is not paid for at the server level, no cals needed in read-only mode but if you are editing documents you need office cals licences.

Disclaimer:  These are my note and I'm not an expert on licencing.  This is my rudimentary understanding.  If any one with good info pls comment or let me know so the post has real value.

SP2010 licencing
SP2010 licencing ore info on this site 

SharePoint 2013 Zurb Foundation Publishing site tips

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<h4>Executive Directors</h4>
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<ul>
<li id="tooltip1"><a href="#">Paul Beck, Chief Executive Officer<span> </span></a></li>
<li id="tooltip2"><a href="#">Richard Larkin, Commercial and Strategy Director<span> </span></a></li>
</ul>


 

SSRS 2012 with SP2013 component diagram

I like diagrams as they help me understand faster.  I wrote a post about 9 months ago about installing SSRS for SP2013, and recently a friend called me to moaned about the documentation available and I remember it being very poor.  My posts cover the topic be re-reading the posts and it could be clearer.  The key is to understand the pieces and where they sit.  He had seen my posts but some related to SP2010 and the 1 specific post relating to SP2013 using SSRS 2012 is not instantly understandable.  It has valuable info but where the parts/components reside is not perfectly clear so I put this diagram together.

There are only 4 parts, the fewer servers to have the easier it is to do theses steps.  I.e. on 1 server farms like dev it's pretty easy as all the SQL components are installed hopefully during the initial SQL Server 2012 SP1 install.

Part 1, you need a SP 2013 farm
Part 2, you need to have a database with the SSRS components/functionality install.  Now if you are using the same database as your SP database ensure the SSRS components were installed at the initial build.  This diagram assumes you have a separate SQL instance which is pretty reasonable.
Part 3, you need to run a core SQL install (only needs the SQL component relating to SSRS) on the SharePoint App/web server.  This 1 or more servers containing the SharePoint binaries.  This is the step that is new/different and most people don't do.
Part 4, run some Powershell to create the SSRS SSA and hook up the relationship.  This is done on any of the SharePoint servers such as your main CA box.

This post couple with the overview should help you understand the components needed for large or automated installs.
http://blog.sharepointsite.co.uk/2013/08/installing-ssrs-2012-on-sp2013-within.html


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Tip: If you need to move your Reporting Services database to another server, you need to manually add the RSexecRole to the new SQL Server.

OWA intermittently not returning office documents in Office Web Apps 2013

Problem: Intermittent requests are not returning the pdf/word documents. Most requests are working and occasionally 1 request doesn't work. Every 4th request tries to get the pdf to display on Office Web Apps for a few minutes without any error message and then stops trying and displays the message "Sorry, Word Web App can't open this ... document because the service is busy."

I have 4 OWA/WCA servers on a stretched farm being used by SP2013 etc.

Initial Hypothesis: Originally I thought it was only happening to pdfs but it is happening to word and pdf documents (I don't have excel docs in my system). My monitoring software SolarWinds is badly configured on my OWA servers as the monitor is showing green, drilling down into the servers monitoring; the 2 application monitors are both failing. The server should go amber if either of the 2 applications monitoring fails and in turn red after 5 minutes. At this point I notice that I can't log onto my 4 OWA/WCA server. Web request are not being returned. I look at my KEMP load balancer and it says all 4 WCA servers are working, I notice the configuration is not on web requests but on ping (not right) and the NLB/KEMP is merely redirecting every 4th request to the broken server.

Resolution:

1. Reboot the broken server, once it comes up I can make http requests directly to url http://wca.demo.dev/hosting/discovery on the rebooted server.
2. SolarWinds monitoring is lousy - need to fixed the monitoring.
3. Kemp hardware load balancing needs to be changed from checking the machine is "ON" to rather checking each machine using a web request.

SolarWinds Monitoring is not configured correctly

 

Backup and Restore Site Collection in SP2013

Overview:  I have seen several customers us Backup and restore to help speed up the development process and have the ability to deploy between DTAP environments.  So the basic premise is create the site collection on dev/a and use backup and restore to promote the site collection including customisations and code in the next environment.

SharePoint 2010:  In SP2010 this worked assuming the env you are going to has a higher patch level than the source environment.  So if you went from SP2010 + cu to SP2010 + SP1 in production backing up and restoring the site collection works.  The trick was to package all assets into the site collection and to ensure all environments were on the same edition/patch level (or at least the destination farm was patched to a higher level than the source farm).

SP2013:  You can use PS backup and restore to move site collections but it is further restricted.  The source and destination environment need to be the same edition.  My issue is I can't move a troublesome production environment back to UAT as my UAT has been patched and is a later/newer version of SP2013 on prem.

I learnt this when restoring the site collection from 15.0.4481.1005 (SP2013 + Mar CU) on the source and trying to go to 15.0.4569.1000 (SP203 + SP1) y destination farm.

Restore-SPSite : 0x80070003
At C:\Users\SP_install\AppData\Local\Temp\5ae5fd1c-86ac-4032-8975-c739f39b6f36.ps1:3 char:1+ Restore-SPSite –Identity "http://uat.futurerailway.org" –path "C:\Software\Deplo ...
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Share...dletRestoreSite:SPCmdletRestoreSite) [Restore-SPSite], DirectoryNotFoundException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletRestoreSite  

Conclusion:  To move Site collection between farms or to different content databases, the SP farms need to be using the exact same version of SP.

Writing SharePoint PowerShell Modules or snap-ins

A module is a self-contained set of code that once loaded can be called/used.  I use modules to keep similar SharePoint functionality that I want to reuse.  There are 2 basic types of modules:
1.> Script modules, this is the easiest and most common type of module.  Take you .ps1 file and rename it .psm1
2.> Code/Binary modules are compiled dll's that can be loaded and used.  You can also create a snap-in with binary code.
3> Snap-ins, are compiled code dll's.  The snap-ins can be loaded and used within your PS console.


Snap-ins are not code modules.  I prefer to keep my files as ps1 files and load them in a controlling .ps1 files before using them or if I need to write code that uses the CSOM I would use C# and create a snap-in that I can port and consume.


More Info:
http://zimmergren.net/technical/sp-2010-how-to-create-a-powershell-snapin-part-1
http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/Extending-Windows-Powershell-with-Snap-ins.id-320555.html

Installing CU1 for SharePoint 2013

Overview: I need to upgrade from SP2013 CU June 2013 to SP2013 SP1. 

Tip: SP1 does not require the March 2013 PU to be installed.  In my situation it was already installed.

Steps:
1.> Check there are no upgrades pending.
2.> Run the SP1 upgrade on each machine in the farm containing the SP binaries.
3.> Ensure the Upgrade is required PS>get-spserver $env:computername).NeedsUpgrade
if True on all SP machines (can also verify on a large farm using CA as shown below) then
4.> PS> psconfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force  (This will upgrade the SharePoint databases and update the binaries on the 1st machine).
5.> Run psconfig on all the remaining SharePoint servers in the farm.

Result:  The farm should upgrade, my dev farms upgrade however my UAT and Prodcution farms did not complete the upgrade, the fix is shown below.

More Info:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sambetts/archive/2013/08/22/sharepoint-farm-patching-explained.aspx

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Problem:  The Usage and Health database cannot be in an AOAG when upgrading.
 ERR          Failed to upgrade SharePoint Products.
An exception of type System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException was thrown.  Additional exception information: The operation cannot be performed on database "SP_UsageAndHealth" because it is involved in a database mirroring session or an availability group. Some operations are not allowed on a database that is participating in a database mirroring session or in an availability group.
ALTER DATABASE statement failed.
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): The operation cannot be performed on database "SP_UsageAndHealth" because it is involved in a database mirroring session or an availability group. Some operations are not allowed on a database that is participating in a database mirroring session or in an availability group.
ALTER DATABASE statement failed.
   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection, Action`1 wrapCloseInAction)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj, Boolean callerHasConnectionLock, Boolean asyncClose)
   at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.TryRun(RunBehavior runBehavior, SqlCommand cmdHandler,

Tip: Any CU, PU or SP will not perform the upgrade if the Usage and Health SharePoint database is a AOAG database.  You need to remove the db and perform the upgrade.

Initial Hypothesis:  The error message is pretty clear that the problem is the UsageandHealth database can't be modified in the upgrade process if it is part of the availability group.  I use an aliase so I could repoint the aliase to the primary database do the upgrade and then update the SQL aliase back to point to the listerner or the approach I use is to remove the AOAG listener for the usage database, perform the upgrade to SP and readd the AOAG for the HealthandUsage database.

Resolution:
1.> "Remove the UsageAndHealth database from the Availability Group",

2.> Perform the SP1 upgrade
3.> Change the Recovery model to "FULL" and perform a Full backup.
4.> Add the database back in as part of the availability group.

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Problem: When running PSConfig to upgrade my SP2013 farm to include SP1, the upgrade fails and the PSConfigDiagnostic log informs me of the problem:
WRN Unable to create a Service Connection Point in the current Active Directory domain. Verify that the SharePoint container exists in the current domain and that you have rights to write to it.
Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: The object LDAP://CN=Microsoft SharePoint Products,CN=System,DC=demo,DC=dev doesn't exist in the directory.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServiceConnectionPoint.Ensure(String serviceBindingInformation)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.UpgradeTask.Run()

More Info
http://onpointwithsharepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/configuring-service-connection-points.html
http://sharepointfreshman.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/1-failed-to-add-the-service-connection-point-for-this-farm/
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/af31bded-f33f-4c38-a4e8-eaa2fab1c459/
http://blogs.technet.com/b/balasm/archive/2012/05/18/configuration-wizard-failed-microsoft-sharepoint-spexception-the-object-ldap-cn-microsoft-sharepoint-products-cn-system-dc-contoso-dc-com-dc-au-doesn-t-exist-in-the-directory.aspx