SharePoint Admin Fundamentals: Back to Basics Webcast Slides and Q&A

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Joel Oleson

Thanks for attending the Admin Fundamentals webcast. We had a good crowd. Sorry about my voice 🙂 I woke up a bit hoarse. You can download the SharePoint Admin Fundamentals deck. If you’ve already registered is will automatically skip that step or you can login.

It was great having Adam Woodruff. The demo of the new auditing and security features of Site Administrator was quite impressive.

I got a number of question throughout the deck…

Q: You mentioned the new version of SharePoint – do you have any more information on Sharepoint 14 (?) like projected release date, major changes etc?

A: I mentioned it in the context of it being 64 bit as revealed by the product teams, and the importance of purchasing 64 bit hardware. I don’t have any information that I can share around release or changes. There were some announcements at PDC, but the best place to learn about SharePoint 14 or vNext is at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas in October. http://www.mssharepointconference.com

Q: Would WFE only be good for a DMZ server to allow access to some items through an Intranet that users can access from public IP’s?

A: The WFE Only is a special binary installation which doesn’t include Query or Index binaries. It is a common installation mistake. It was designed for Internet DMZ deployments where people have very large farms of over 5-7 servers with 2 dedicated servers for WFE, and 2 dedicated servers for query. I’d recommend using ISA or IAG rather than deploying in this configuration.

Q: So if the Index Server Fails, what is the process of moving/copying the index file from a Query server back to the Index server when it comes back online ?

A: When the Index is rebuilt and has recrawled or is ready to propagate… it will propagate the index to the query server automatically. Problems can occur if the index fails during propagation. In this case the query server will error on search requests until the propagation is complete.

Q: Is the Index server what is considered the Applications server or the first server that is deployed?

A: In most architectural diagrams you’ll see the application tier as a middle tier. The order of deploying the servers doesn’t matter. The consideration is starting with one that runs central administration as the first server deployed. You aren’t restricted from running central admin on one server only. It is quite common to run central admin on more than one server.

Q: Questions on Site Collections as related to content databases.

A: Not sure I understand the full scope of the question, but it’s important to understand you can have one or more site collections in a content database, but you can’t split a site collection across a content database.

Q: 1) Can you specify which content database a site collection will be provisioned to ? 2) Can you break up a very large content database into multiple databases after the fact, when it has grown out of control ?

A: The ability to split up sites across databases is possible at the site collection level. So yes you can split up your site collections across databases. The most granular is one site collection per content database. Even after the fact you can do this. Using STSADM.EXE you can export site collections into a file which can be restored into a new content database. Quest has just released a beta of a product called the Migration Manager Reorg Wizard to split up your site collections and move content between databases.

Q: Can I post these reports to a SharePoint Site?

A: The reports can be saved. SQL reporting services SharePoint integration mode allows you to save the reports to a document library.

Q: What considerations are required for upgrading servers to 2008?

A: Both WSS and SharePoint Server 2007 support Windows Server 2008 with the post SP1 slipstream version. You should upgrade SharePoint to the latest rollup prior to upgrading your servers. I recommend the documentation on the SharePoint Windows Server 2008 Information Center on TechNet.

Q: Is the licensing for site administrator a per-WFE basis?

A: Yes, please contact a Quest sales rep for more detail.

Q: What does Site Auditor give you that can’t do with built-in MOSS auditing? Looks cool.

A: We’ve added custom events with easy reporting capabilities. The built in ones would require you to build reports.

Q: If you have sprawl right now and you set a policy, what happens to the sites that violate the policy?

A: We enforce the policy after the policy is set. So if you have a site collection with 10 sites, and you setup a policy where people can only have 5, it won’t delete the existing ones, it just enforces no new ones, and the new site collections would have max of 5. You can set a policy for site depth and it won’t impact existing, just prevent new creation which would violate the policy.

Q: Can I restrict NT Authority/all authenticated users to be added to sites by site owners?

A: You can determine or locate someone doing this and fix it, but you can’t enforce it. Security explorer would allow you to dump it and replace it.

Q: What kind of custom webparts are available in quest? Is there a content query webpart that can span site collections?

A: There will be demos of the web parts in the next webcast in this series. You can read more about Quest webparts. All of the Quest web parts work cross site collection.

Q: We’re running Site Admin 3.1 with Recovery Manager 2.7 – I am not seeing the Security Auditor feature. Does it require a special installation?

A. You should have it. It’s in 3.1 in Site Administrator in the distributed package, you’ll see a folder called security auditor latest version of it is 1.1. It will be rolled into the installation in the new version.

Q: No question, just comment. Thanks for this awesome presentation. Very helpful information for me as I plan/develop my environment.

Q: Reports used by the Site Admin module for example on the Security Auditor, does it use SQL Server reporting or MOSS Reporting services?

A: SQL Reporting Services native mode or integrated mode. You can use the web parts. Note the SQL Reporting services is free with SQL 2005.

Q: can you recommend a good site for building a site step by step?

A: TechNet has a deployment center that is focused on providing links for helping you get started along with an installation/deployment guide. There is some good content on MVP blogs with screen shot installation instructions.

Q: Hi, This is Anand. My site collection size is approaching 15 GB pretty fast. I see a recommendation from your blogs that beyond 15 GB dont try to take only STSADM Site Collection Back Ups. What other options do I have? Can I believe in the Content Database Back Ups Only?

A: I would recommend a dedicated database for site collections which HAVE to grow beyond 15GB or to split the sites into multiple site collections. You can do database backups only if you have a tool like Quest’s Recovery Manager which allows you to recover a site or site collection from a database.

Q: Does MOSS Reporting services mandates the install of MOSS on SQL Servers?

A: SharePoint Server Enterprise edition contains a reports center which does not require SQL Reporting Services.

Q: Thanks Joel. This was helpful.