Category: SharePoint 2007

My First Book is Really Done!

MCTS 70-631 Study Guide

  • I turned in my last chapter in early June, but it didn’t seem real.
  • I finished reviewing the proof pages at the end of July, but I still wasn’t convinced.
  • I created ancillary material to promote the book two weeks ago, and I thought maybe I was done
  • But when I got home from teaching this week and found a copy of my new book had been delivered by the publisher it finally sank in.

  I’m a published author!

 

I’ve contributed chapters to books for a number of years now and I’ve always wanted to have at least one with my name on the cover.  I’ve started on books of my own at least twice before, but circumstances always interfered and I wasn’t able to finish them.  This year I promised myself would be different and I’m happy to say it is.  I spend the first 6 months of the year co-writing a study guide for the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 MCTS exam (70-631).  The book will be on store shelves October 19, 2009, just in time for the SharePoint Conference in Vegas.  You can also order it direct from Amazon. If you haven’t certified on WSS yet, pick up a copy of the book and bring it with you to Vegas.  You can find me in the Mindsharp booth in the vendor area.  I’ll be PROUD to sign your book.

Hot Fix for SP2 available!

Occasionally when you install Service Pack 2 on a MOSS installation it will reset the license code so that SharePoint thinks it is an evaluation copy that will expire in 180 days.  It doesn’t actually break any functionality, at least not until the 180 days is up.  But it can be a bit disconcerting if you look at the licensing.  You can read more about the problem in the following KnowledgeBase article:
 
 
The SharePoint product team issued a Hot Fix last night that corrects the problem.  The Hot Fix can be applied either before or after installing SP2.  They are also working on getting the Hot Fix built right into the download of SP2, but that will take about 4 weeks before the download site is updated.  In the meantime you can download the hot fixes in the following locations:
 
 
 

SP2 is coming

In all the excitement about the establishment of a name and broad dates for release of the next version of SharePoint it would be easy to overlook the upcoming release of a mere service pack.  But don’t miss out on the release of this one.  Each time Microsoft has released a service pack or update for SharePoint there has been a marked improvement in functionality and stability.  SP2 will be no exception and the Office Service Pack team just announced that the it will be available on April 28th.  A short list of anticipated improvements for your SharePoint server is quoted from the release announcement below.  You’ll want to read the release announcement to look at all the changes in store for the whole office platform.  You can read the whole announcement here.  In two weeks I’ll add a link pointing to where you can download the Service Packs for WSS and MOSS.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2 include fixes and enhancements designed to improve performance, availability, and stability in your server farms. SP2 provides the groundwork for future major releases of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

  • An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.
  • SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.
  • Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

  • The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.
  • A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

WSS SP2 Download – Get It Here!

MOSS SP2 Download – Get It Here!

Microsoft Extends SharePoint Virtualization Support to Hyper-V

Microsoft announced today that it will be offering Support for MOSS SP1 and WSS SP1 running under any Virtualization Software that meets the requirements of the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).  As of now Microsoft will support SharePoint running on Hyper-V in a Server 2008 environment and running on Virtual Server 2005.

This is also an important announcement for those who want to run SharePoint on Vmware.  Although they aren’t currently listed on the SVVP website, NetworkWorld is reporting that Microsoft and VMware have reached agreement this week for VMware to join the SVVP.  There is no Press release on this, but you can read the Network World article here:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/081908-vmware.html

You can find out more information about Microsoft’s expanded Virtualization Support for SharePoint from the SharePoint Team BLOG at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/08/18/update-on-virtualization-support-for-sharepoint-products-and-technologies.aspx

64-bit only is coming….

I’ve been working on a talk that I’ll be giving to the Dallas next month to the Dallas/Fort Worth User’s group (more on that in another post) and I ran across confirmation of something I’ve been telling students for over a year now. When you are buying new hardware for a SharePoint installation, you should ALWAYS buy 64-bit hardware.  Yes, I know mixing and matching 64 and 32 bit servers in a SharePoint role isn’t recommended, but you should still try to make all new purchases 64-bit.  Why?  Because SharePoint makes extensive use of RAM for almost everything it does.  The minimum SharePoint server I recommend anymore has 4GB RAM in it, and that’s the maximum for 32-bit hardware.  But more importantly take a look at the following quote from the White Paper that Microsoft recommends everyone read BEFORE installing either SharePoint SP1 package.

“Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 are the last SharePoint Products and Technologies versions able to run on 32-bit hardware and operating systems.”

It’s now official.  The next version of SharePoint will be 64-bit only.  We’ve already seen this happen to Exchange and many have been predicting it would happen to SharePoint soon, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in print from an official Microsoft source.  You can find the full white paper here:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=105704&clcid=0x409