Monday 10/19
4:30
PowerPoint: http://www.mssharepointconference.com/SCSSessionDecks/SPC309_Klindt.pptx
Video: http://www.mssharepointconference.com/pages/members/sessiondetails.aspx?sid=SPC309
What you need to know in 2-3 sentences:
PowerShell rocks in SharePoint 2010, learn it, live it, love it. Dashboard developer, this is the tool you have needed to see exactly where the problem is occurring on a page in your site. Timer jobs are now in full effect with a dedicated server for running jobs, progress bars for status and run on demand functionality for jobs you schedule.
I got your interest? Read on for specifics……
This is an absolute MUST for anyone remotely involved in the SharePoint administration, configuration and overall maintenance process. Shane Young (President of SharePoint911.com) and Todd Klindt (SharePoint Consultant now working at SharePoint911.com) put on a great show.
They run a very entertaining comedic routine jabbing each other back and forth as the regular SharePoint guy and the MOSS professional. They give a great point/counterpoint to each topic they discuss. There are bits here that refer to what I would call a SharePoint beginner rather than a seasoned admin. Still, they manage to cover all the basics in enough detail to keep the most experienced of admins attentive.
Here is a basic rundown of the main topics that their talk entailed:
Windows PowerShell
- Full support in SharePoint 2010
- This is a replacement for the old standby STSADM. Everything you can do with STSADM you can do with PowerShell only better. Live it, learn it, love it.
- Check out my other review on using PowerShell with SharePoint for a more detailed look.
New backup/restore tricks
- If you used the backup/restore in SharePoint before you were probably not impressed
- Farm backups still work the same way but now allow multiple threads
- You now have the option to do configuration only backups. Thank you Microsoft for listening!
Granular backups are now located in the Central Administration page and they have added more items.
- Site Collections
- Webs
- Lists
- Unattached content database
- If you are like me and SharePoint backups are not working for you, fear not, PowerShell is your friend. In the booklet that came with the show materials there is a GREAT PowerShell Script for backups. I will post it later.
Throttling
- SharePoint CAN handle more than 2000 items per list. Whoever started that rumor you can now rest as it was fully debunked in the demo. Lists can now handle 50 million items!
- Many additional options have been put in place to prevent massive errors that you or your users could cause.
- The server FINALLY monitors its own performance.
With large lists comes large responsibility….Performance will degrade as a list grows.
- Result sets are trimmed down to handle this performance drop and restore the interface to usable functionality.
- Users and admins have different settings assigned
- Much like VPN settings you can new specify "Happy Hour" settings for large tasks/jobs to run
- The Object Model allows a developer to override these settings. Rejoice the developer!
- IT always has the last laugh though, Windows PowerShell can override the Object Model override. Check mate IT.
Throttling during high server load is a new feature in 2010
Performance is only monitored if the threshold is exceeded
- Warning: your users will get 503 errors when this occurs
- Warning: your timer jobs cannot start
- Warning: put requests are still allowed
Designed to protect the server during peak loads
- Available memory
- CPU percentage
- ASP.NET queue
- Wait time in queue
This is checked every 5 seconds
- What it means to you? Even if you are 3 over the limit it starts throttling and then logs the event. When you are 1 below the limit it stops throttling
Developer Dashboard
This has to be one of the most useful additions in SharePoint 2010. This is a full dashboard that allows you to see every part that is operating in your page. It will allow the following
- Tracking infinite loops in code in webparts
- Find out if pages are truly "loading slow" or your users are just reporting false positives for slow page loads. BE CAREFUL WITH THIS. This should not be used as a tool to point fingers at your users to show proof they are wrong and you are right. This is merely to figure out what is going on with slow page loads.
- This has three states ON, OFF and On demand. Very nice with the on demand feature as you can flip this on only when you are experiencing issues or debugging.
What do you get with the developer dashboard
- Times to render various components on the page
- Page checkout level
- Database query information
- Webpart processing time
- Any critical events or alerts
GOTCHAS
The developer dashboard state can only be toggled with a STSADM command L
ON:
- STSADM –o setproperty –pn developer-dashboard –pv on
OFF:
- STSADM –o setproperty –pn developer-dashboard –pv off
ON DEMAND:
- STSADM –o setproperty –pn developer-dashboard –pv ondemand
- I would stick with the on demand setting so you have it available when you need it.
Monitoring SharePoint
ULS logs and correlation IDs
- This gives you compression by default, less noise, event log flood protection and is on by default settings. This leads to much cleaner logging and less headaches when something triggers a million other alerts.
- SQL logging database is utilized. Very nice as you can build customer queries to get to the root of what is going on and you do not have to sift through all the clutter.
Best practices analyzer
- Makes use of health rules to alert if there are any problems
- Rules are extensible
- Rules are run by timer jobs
- Auto repair option. This feature was demonstrated and it is great to know that if you have an infinite loop in a webpart, SharePoint will inform you on the page and automatically repair it back to a working state.
Timer jobs
- Server Affinity. FINALLY you can setup one server as a master server for which all timer jobs will be run off of. This was BADLY needed.
- Run timer jobs on demand. Wouldn't it be nice if after you scheduled a job, you could check that it runs properly with all permissions, etc? Now you can with the run on demand feature.
- PROGRESS BAR!!! Wondering if you job is actually doing anything? Well wonder no more, the handy progress bar lets you know how far along your job is progressing.
Patching
- Now you can run you servers and databases at different patch levels in harmony.
- You have the option to view pages in the new 2010 format and change over that format when you are ready and debug pages as you go.
