07 January, 2011

SharePoint 2010:Remote BLOB Cache

By default, a SharePoint farm uses content databases on SQL Server as its only data source. Farm content generally includes documents and pictures, which can each be on the order of several megabytes in size. Files and other unstructured data have historically been stored as binary large objects (BLOBs) within the database.

While there have been many improvements in the way that BLOBs are handled within a SQL Server database3, there are limitations. The VARBINARY(MAX) data type is used for native BLOB storage, and can accommodate files up to two gigabytes (2147483648 bytes) in size. In rare circumstances, this may not be adequate for all of the files that will be stored in the farm. Also, the performance of writing BLOBs to and retrieving BLOBs from the database is generally not as good as the performance offered by file systems, which can degrade users’ perception of a SharePoint solution.

Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) feature pack is available for SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2; it provides libraries and APIs that allow SQL Server to interact with BLOBs stored outside of the database. SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 provide a data type called FILESTREAM that allows BLOBs to be stored within an NTFS volume, but managed by the database. This feature cannot be directly used by SharePoint4, but there is an RBS provider for FILESTREAM that can be used with local SharePoint databases (such as those often employed by SharePoint Foundation 2010); this local database requirement makes the FILESTREAM provider for RBS unsuitable for most farm-based architectures. For farm deployments with separate database servers, RBS providers other than FILESTREAM may still be used.

For example, a provider for a dedicated external store, such as an EMC2 Centerra system, that makes use of the SQL Server RBS API calls may be employed. These RBS providers allow third-party products to leverage RBS to store and retrieve files that reside outside of the database. Using Remote BLOB Storage requires configuration of both SQL Server 2008 (or SQL Server 2008 R2) and SharePoint Server 2010. These systems are expected to offer higher performance for reading and writing large files, but will generally require special attention when administering sites or performing backup/restore operations.

SharePoint 2010: Central Administration Improvements

Central administration has been redesigned completely with features like a ribbon interface that is similar to Office 2007 and 2010 products. The ribbon is context-aware, and makes accessing the subtasks within any selected functional area more intuitive. The central administration site looks similar to Windows control panel, where different tasks and activities are grouped into categories. The new home page also provides convenient access to most common tasks by grouping them together into categories such as application management, monitoring, security, backup, and so on.



Backup and Restore

Microsoft added a few very important enhancements to SharePoint backup and recovery. SharePoint 2010 provides several levels of granularity for performing backup and restore. This includes farm configuration, site collections, sub sites and lists.

The central administration site provides a simple interface to perform full backup and restore, perform granular backup or configure backup settings. In earlier versions of SharePoint, administrators built a secondary farm to perform granular recovery of SharePoint content. This is no longer required with SharePoint 2010. In SharePoint 2010, administrators can perform content restore from unattached content databases. Using unattached content database feature, you can connect to a content DB restored to any SQL server in the network and use SharePoint 2010 to browse the contents of the database. An administrator will be able to restore content at a very granular level.

Similar to any other administrative function within SharePoint 2010, you can automate or script your backups using Windows PowerShell. Every backup and restore activity that can be performed using central administration can also done at the command-line using PowerShell. Windows PowerShell also provides a few more additional backup/restore options such as file compression and SQL snapshots which are not available through central administration webpage.



SharePoint 2010 Health and Monitoring

SharePoint 2010 includes new tools to monitor
health and track performance of a SharePoint farm. This includes features such as unified logging, developer dashboard, usage database, SharePoint maintenance engine, and out-of-box usage reports. Most of these improvements are done to provide a more proactive way of monitoring and reporting. Administrators can also use PowerShell cmdlets to monitor the health of a SharePoint farm.

The integrated Health Analyzer identifies common problems and provides prescriptive guidance to help administrators
resolve them. The tool includes several default rules for Security, Performance, Configuration, and Availability. Each rule can be independently enabled and have its scope set to determine the servers that are checked. If a rule is enabled, then SharePoint 2010 will periodically check the conditions associated with the rule, based on a defined schedule. Certain rules can even be set to allow SharePoint automatically correct violations.

27 December, 2010

Office Web Apps

Office Web Apps are online mechanisms to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft OneNote applications that allow us to access documents from anywhere. Some of the features include concurrent editing with Excel files, meaning you can have several people all editing the same file at the same time. Way cool! Another is dynamic saving, which works in all apps except Word. This means there is no save button and changes are automatically saved back to the server.

Windows browser support includes IE 7 and IE 8, Firefox 3.5 and later, and Safari 4 and later. Expect good results when working from a Mac or Linux machine. You also have pretty good mobile support for viewing, but not editing files. Office Web Apps works on Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, iPhone, and some others.

Don’t look to Office Web Apps to replace your Office client; rather, it’s a complementary offering. Although the viewing support is fantastic, editing is limited and is only practical for lightweight tasks.

I would like to share some vital points that i had observed after the deployment of office web apps:

1. Office Web Apps must be installed on every server in SharePoint 2010 Farm

2. Office Web Apps is it is not a part of SharePoint 2010, its Office 2010 functionality and is integrated with SharePoint 2010.

3. SharePoint 2010 has to be installed first before you can install Office Web Apps.

4. Office Web Apps works with SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Foundation 2010.

5. Installing Office web applications on SharePoint 2010 installed on Win 7 client is not supported.

6. Office web applications are meant for intranet and not for Extranet Collaboration Environments where there are large numbers of users.

7. You can control default open behavior to open using Office Web Apps, you cannot control the default new behavior to use Office Web Apps. What I mean by this is if you have Office Installed on Client its always going to use office client when you try to add new document to document library.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned info then please let me know, Thanks...

18 December, 2010

How to disable protected mode in office 2010 (protected view

Protected mode is a new security feature available in Microsoft Office 2010.It enhances protection against risky Outlook email attachments, files that came from the Internet, files that fail validation or files that are located in potentially unsafe locations.

“By default Office 2010 will open documents in protected mode that fail validation, have been downloaded from the internet, are located in potentially unsafe location and include attachments. Protected view opens the document in read-only mode thus minimizing the exposure to some potential security threat.

If you are an experienced user who is annoyed by the protected view, you can always disable it even though it is not recommended by Microsoft.


Please refer the following steps as how to disable the protected mode in Office 2010:

-Run one of the Microsoft Office 2010 applications (e.g. Word 2010/Excel 2010/PowerPoint 2010).


-Click on Office button, and select Options.

-In the “Options” dialog, select Trust Center in the left pane.

-Click on Trust Center Settings in the right pane.

-Select Protected View in the left pane of “Trust Center” dialog.

-Disable any of all of the protected mode options as below by clicking the check boxes:

-Click OK.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned info then please let me know,Thanks..



22 September, 2010

SharePoint 2010: Installing and Configuring Features

Features are SharePoint Server 2010–specific declarative (XML) programming elements.
Features configure, associate, define, create, and copy.

Features are most commonly used for the following:
■ To define the columns that make up list types and the fields that the columns
are based on
■ To copy Web parts and master pages to their respective galleries
■ To associate Visual Studio workflows with a list or site
■ To modify and extend the configuration of the SharePoint Server 2010 user
interface
■ To serve as a control panel that allows code and configuration changes to be
turned on and off in the browser

Note: Features can affect four different scopes: farm, Web application, site collection, and site. Site-scoped and site collection–scoped features can be controlled by information workers, which allows farm administrators to delegate responsibility for them.

Feature Location:

Features are XML files and must be contained in a folder in C:\Programs Files\Common
Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\ 14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES.

Basic Know-how:

Features are generally composed of two types of files: a feature header file and one or more element files. Because the feature files are simply XML and because they are located in TEMPLATE\FEATURES, they can be easily inspected by browsing to the appropriate folder and examining the contents of the files. Feature header files are generally named Feature.XML.

Feature Life Cycle
There is a four-stage feature life cycle.
-Features are installed, activated, deactivated, and uninstalled.
-Features can be manipulated with Stsadm.exe, Central Administration,and Windows Power Shell.
-Features are deployed using solution packages with either full-trust or sandboxed deployment mechanisms.

How to install a Feature:
Features are deployed with solution packages and should be automatically installed when deployed. Although it is uncommon to have to manually install features, you should know what the installation process does to install features.

To install a feature, the necessary feature files must already be deployed to the
TEMPLATE\FEATURES directory on all servers in the farm. Installing a feature simply
makes it available to be activated. Any installed feature that does not have the
property Hidden=True can be seen and activated through the SharePoint Server
2010 user interface.

Features must be installed using either Stsadm.exe or Windows Power-Shell.

Stsadm.exe is located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web
Server Extensions\14\BIN. To install a feature using Stsadm.exe, use the following
command:

stsadm.exe -o installfeature
{-filename
|
-name
} [-force]

To install a feature using Windows PowerShell, use the following command:

Install-SPFeature -Path
[-AssignmentCollection
] [-Confirm []]
[-Force
] [-WhatIf []]
[
]

How to Activate/Deactivate features:

To activate or deactivate a farm-scoped feature using Central Administration,
do the following:
1. Browse to Central Administration, System Settings, Manage Farm Features.
2. Click either the feature’s Activate or Deactivate button.
3. To deactivate a feature, confirm the deactivation.

Activating Web application–scoped features in Central Administration has changed considerably and is now accomplished using the new management Ribbon.

To activate a Web application–scoped feature, do the following:
1. Browse to Central Administration, Application Management, Manage Web
Applications.
2. Click the row that contains the Web application that the feature should be
activated on.
3. Click the Web Application tab in the management Ribbon.
4. Click the Manage Features button in the management Ribbon
5. Click either the feature’s Activate or Deactivate button.
6. To deactivate the feature, confirm the deactivation.

ACTIVATING AND DEACTIVATING FEATURES IN A SITE COLLECTION

If a feature has been installed to the farm and scoped to a site collection, a site collection administrator can then either activate or deactivate the feature. To activate or deactivate a site collection–scoped feature, do the following:

1. Open the appropriate site collection in the browser.
2. From the Site Actions drop-down menu, click Site Settings.
3. Click the Site Collection Features hyperlink in the Site Collection Administration
group,If the Site Collection Administration group contains a Go To Top Level Site Settings hyperlink, click on it to go to the top-level site, and then click the Site Collection Features hyper-link.
4. Click the Activate or Deactivate button.
5. To deactivate a feature, confirm the deactivation.

ACTIVATING AND DEACTIVATING FEATURES IN A SITE

If a feature has been installed to the farm and scoped to a site, a site owner can activate and deactivate the feature. To activate or deactivate a site-scoped feature,
do the following:
1. Open the site in the browser.
2. From the Site Actions drop-down menu, click Site Settings.
3. Click the Manage Site Features hyperlink in the Site Actions group
4. Click the Activate or Deactivate button.
5. Confirm the deactivation.

ACTIVATING AND DEACTIVATING FEATURES USING STSADM.EXE

Features can also be activated and deactivated from the command line using Stsadm.exe. Activate or deactivate features using the appropriate stsadm.exe command:

stsadm.exe -o activatefeature
{-filename
| -name |
-id
} [-url ] [-force]

Or

stsadm.exe -o deactivatefeature
{-filename
| -name |
-id
} [-url ] [-force]

ACTIVATING AND DEACTIVATING FEATURES USING WINDOWS POWERSHELL

Windows PowerShell uses a slightly different naming system than Stsadm.exe and
the user interface. Instead of using the activate and deactivate parameters, Windows
PowerShell use the verbs Enable and Disable. To activate (enable) or deactivate
(
disable) features with Windows PowerShell, use the appropriate cmdlet:

Enable-SPFeature -Identity

[-AssignmentCollection
]
[-Confirm [
]]
[-Force
] [-PassThru ] [-Url ]
[-WhatIf [
]] []

Or

Disable-SPFeature -Identity

[-AssignmentCollection
]
[-Confirm [
]]
[-Force
] [-Url ] [-WhatIf []]
[
]