Hueristic tendencies of Kipp Sorensen

I recently was engaged on a project where we had to migrate the SSP from one farm to another (both running SharePoint 2007).  In most cases when migrating content from one farm to another I find myself doing completely new configurations on the destination farm. The only time I would bother migrating an SSP is if we wanted to keep the SSP configurations or if we need to migrate audiences. I typically wouldn’t do a SSP migrate for User Profiles because we can always us the Profile Synchronization tool to accomplish this.

When migrating an SSP I typically use the STSADM commands to backup and restore my SSP. However, in this particular environment we had issues with the SharePoint farms being on different versions, thus we had to use the tools within Central Administration. The following are the steps I followed during the restore. I felt it necessary to document this process since the following Technet article was not sufficient for my needs. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc896556%28office.12%29.aspx

 

  1. SharePoint farms should be the same version but this process is possible if they are not. (In fact this was the only process where the versions could be different)
  2. Make sure the FarmAdmin on the destination farm is the same as the source farm. You may need to change your configrations to ensure they are the same.
  3. Prepare the Destination Farm
    1. Login as the FarmAdmin account
    2. Create Web Application for your SSP
    3. Create Web Application for your MySite
    4. Start the Search Services
  4. Backup SSP from Source Farm
    1. From Central Administration > Operations >Perform a Backup
    2. Select your SSP & click Continue to Backup Options
    3. Choose Full and enter a UNC path to locate your SSP backup
  5. Copy over the SSP backup files from the Source Farm to Destination Farm
  6. Make sure the permissions are correct on the folder where you placed the SSP backup. (I kept experiencing permission issues so I just granted everyone full control during this process and then removed those permissions when completed.)
  7. Stop the Search Services on the Destination Farm
  8. Restore the SSP
    1. Operations > Restore from Backup
    2. Enter the UNC path of where the SSP backup files are located and click OK
    3. Select the correct backup and click Continue Restore Process
    4. Select the SSP and click Continue Restore Process
    5. After restoring the SSP, then proceed to make the necessary farm changes. (Accounts, Permissions, Search Configs, Profiles, etc)
Build Release Component Download
14.0.4763.1000 RTM All components Download
14.0.4762.1000 RTM Farm Build Version
14.0.5114.5003 June 2010 CU SharePoint Foundation 2010 KB2028568
14.0.5114.5003 June 2010 CU Microsoft Shared Components KB2281364
14.0.5114.5003 June 2010 CU Microsoft SharePoint Portal KB983497
14.0.5114.5003 June 2010 CU Microsoft User Profiles
14.0.5114.5003 June 2010 CU Microsoft Search Server 2010 Core
14.0.5114.5003 June 2010 CU Web Analytics WFE Components KB2204024
14.0.5123.5000 August 2010 CU SharePoint Foundation​ 2010 KB2352346
14.0.5123.5000 August 2010 CU SharePoint Server 2010 KB2352342
14.0.5128.5000​ October 2010 CU​ SharePoint Foundation​ 2010 KB2394323
14.0.5128.5000​ October 2010 CU​ SharePoint Server 2010​ KB2394320
14.0.5130.5002​ ​December 2010 CU SharePoint Foundation 2010​ KB2459125 ​
14.0.5130.5002​​ December 2010 CU​ SharePoint Server 2010​ KB2459257
14.0.5136.5002​ February 2011 CU​ SharePoint Foundation 2010​ KB2475880​
14.0.5136.5002​ February 2011 CU​ SharePoint Server 2010​ KB2475878
14.0.5138.5000 ​April 2011 CU ​SharePoint Foundation 2010 KB2512804​
14.0.5138.5000 ​April 2011 CU SharePoint Server 2010​ KB2512800
14.0.5138.5000 ​April 2011 CU ​Project Server 2010 KB2512801
​14.0.6029.1000 ​Service Pack 1 ​SharePoint Server 2010​ KB2460045
​14.0.6029.1000 ​Service Pack 1 ​Office Web Apps KB2460073
​​14.0.6029.1000 ​Service Pack 1 ​Project Server 2010 KB2460047
​14.0.6029.1000 ​Service Pack 1 ​SharePoint Foundation 2010 KB2460058
​14.0.6105.5000 ​June 2011 CU ​​SharePoint Server 2010​ KB2536599
​14.0.6105.5000 ​June 2011 CU ​SharePoint Foundation 2010 KB2536601
​14.0.6105.5000 ​June 2011 CU ​Project Server 2010 KB2536590
​14.0.6106.5002 ​June 2011 CU Rev ​​SharePoint Server 2010​ KB2536599
​​14.0.6106.5002 ​June 2011 CU Rev ​SharePoint Foundation 2010 KB2536601
​​14.0.6106.5002 ​June 2011 CU Rev ​Project Server 2010 KB2536590

All the information about hotfixes and updates, as well as upgrade approaches can be found at the SharePoint 2010 updates page

Recently had a client that owned a wildcard certificate and had a single IP for the web server. I was under the impression that this was not possible but apparently I was wrong.

http://blog.armgasys.com/?p=80

I was working on some documentation for a client of mine and came across some create material on explaining the functionality of the the Managed Metadata features.

http://www.sharepointsharon.com/2010/11/sharepoint-managed-metadata-overview/

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/introduction-to-managed-metadata-in-sharepoint-server-2010-HA101859256.aspx

Disaster Recovery for Farm Configurations:

Backup-SPFarm -Directory <UNC path to backup folder> -BackupMethod full -Item “<Path to services>” -verbose

Example: Backup-SPFarm -Directory \\spappserver\backups -BackupMethod full -Item “Farm\Shared Services\Shared Services Applications” -verbose

The relevence of this post is minimal I am sure since no one is probably configuring SharePoint 2007 anymore…and if you are, my heart goes out to you. Anyhow, I have performed this configuration a number of times but never on MOSS 2007 running on 64bit, thus I guess things are different. Unfortunatly, the documentation from Microsoft and Adobe are not sufficient to get the iFilter completly configured, thus the reason for this post. Shall we get started..

1. Install the Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms on the Index Server. http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025

2. Add the Adobe PATH to your environment variables: After installing the PDF IFilter it is recommended that you set your system PATH environment variable to ‘bin’ folder of ‘Ifilter’ installation. (Index Server)

3. Check the Registry settings (Index Server)

4. Configure the PDF icon (All SharePoint Servers)

5. Restart Services at command promp (Index Server)

6. Add the file extension to the Search settings
  • Shared Service Provider > Search Settings > File Types
  • Add “pdf”

SharePoint, Windows 2008 (IIS7) Integrated Auth – HTTP Error 401. The requested resource requires user authentication

So the process of configuring kerberos has/could change with IIS7.  If we decided to setup SPN’s like we have done in the past then we need to make a minor adjustment to IIS. Otherwise, we can change our SPN configurations along with some IIS changes. From my understanding that later is suggested by Microsoft. This blog entry on MSDN should clear up the steps.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webtopics/archive/2009/01/19/service-principal-name-spn-checklist-for-kerberos-authentication-with-iis-7-0.aspx

Create:

In PowerShell, type the following command and adjust the name as required;
New-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroup –Name “Project 2010 Proxy Group”

Edit:

Central Administration > Application Management > Configure Service Application Association

From here if you click on the web application then you can assign a proxy group and if you click on the proxy group then you can change the associations.

It would very difficult to write a better article on setting up a User Profile Service Application than Spencer Harbar’s Rational Guide to implementing SharePoint Server 2010 User Profile Synchronization. However, after setting up a UPS a number of times I have learned some additional items that I wanted to get documented. I will list out these key points and then dive into the additional settings that need to be completed to have people search working properly.

Additional Tips on setting up UPS

Editing the User Profile Properties:

People Search Tips:

Give access to search to crawl the profile content

  1. Change the content access account; Application Management > Manage Service Applications > Search Service, click on the default content access account and change it.
  2. Navigate to Application Management > Manage Service Applications and select the user profile service application.
  3. Click on Administrators in the ribbon
  4. Add the search service account
  5. Grant the account “Retrieve Data for Search Crawling”

Access is Denied error

Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository. If the repository being crawled is a SharePoint repository, verify that the account you are using has “Full Read” permissions on the SharePoint Web Application being crawled.

  1. First do as the error says; check that search service account and default content access account have access to the web applications. This should already be done but it might be good to check.
  2. Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Web Applications > Select each web application.
  3. Click on “User Policy”
  4. Confirm that the proper accounts are listed. If not, add the search service and default content access account and give them “Full Read” permissions.
  5. Central Admin -> Application Management- > Manage Service Applications.  Select the ‘user profile service application’ and click the Administrators button in the ribbon.  Add your account that you want to be able to manage user contexts, and grant them at least the Manage Profiles right but I would suggest you to add also ‘Retrieve Data for Search Crawling’ .

Still not working, Disable the Loopback check (Yes, this still exists even in 2010)

  1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
  2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
  3. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
  4. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
  5. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
  6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
  7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

I was reading Shane Young’s blog today and ran across his blog post that references the KB from Microsoft.

Shane’s blog

Microsoft KB Article: You cannot upload files that are larger than 28 MB on a Windows Server 2008-based computer that is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

keep looking »