Aggregated Feed: SharePoint Microsoft Individual Blogs

File Server Capacity Tool (FSCT) Release Candidate available for download

josebda — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:11:00 GMT

The File Server Capacity Tool (FSCT) is a capacity planning software for CIFS/SMB/SMB2 file servers. It’s also useful for identifying performance bottlenecks. FSCT results include the maximum number of users for a file server configuration, throughput for that configuration and performance counters for the server and clients used.

This is a command line tool and the target audience is IT Professionals and Storage Solution Providers. It is not a GUI tool for end users. You will also need a few computers in a lab environment to try it. You can see a sample configuration in the diagram below:

We have been running a private beta for FSCT since last year and now a Release Candidate is available for public download for the first time. To get it, go to http://connect.microsoft.com, sign in (you will need to register if you’re new to Connect), then click on “Connection Directory” and look for “FSCT RC”. Please read the License Agreement carefully, since there are restrictions on the disclosure of the results you get from the tool.

The download includes an overview presentation and a white paper that provide detailed instructions on how to use the tool. There is a new public forum for discussions about FSCT has just been configured and the product team is keeping an eye on it. That forum can be found at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/fsct.

If you want more details before downloading, you can check my previous posts on FSCT at http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/tags/FSCT/default.aspx.

For an in-person conversation with the FSCT team, plan to attend SNIA’s Storage Developers Conference (SDC 2009) in September.
You can find the FSCT talk in the agenda at http://www.snia.org/events/storage-developer2009/agenda2009

I encourage you to download the Release Candidate software, try it on your lab, ask questions on the online forum and join us at SDC for some live Q&A.

Experimenting with PowerShell

josebda — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:38:00 GMT

Powershell is a command line interface for Windows that offers a very powerful and flexible model.
It is now a feature included with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, not an optional download as before.
In this post, I show some sample commands that can help you understand some of the basic features and a few more complex ones.
If you never played with it before, try running some commands in a PowerShell prompt.

Shows a list of commands:	Get-Command
Shows the help overview:	Get-Help
Show the help for “Dir”:	Get-Help Dir

Let's use the Dir command now (actually an alias for Get-ChildItem) and a number of ways to transform the output using pipeline functions:

Shows Directory:	Dir
Shows Directory in list format (two ways):	Dir \| Format-List Dir \| FL
Shows Directory sorted by file length:	Dir \| Sort Length
Shows Directory sorted by file length in descending order:	Dir \| Sort Length –Descending
Shows all the methods and properties for the objects resulting from Dir (files and folders):	Dir \| Get-Member
Shows a selected list of properties instead of the default list:	Dir \| Select Directory, Name, Extension, Length
Shows directory in HTML format (not much use going to the console like this, though):	Dir \| ConvertTo-Html
Output the Directory listing to a file:	Dir \| Out-File psfilelist.txt
All together now: Shows selected list of properties, sorted, in HTML, going to a file. You need to open the file yourself:	Dir \| Select Directory, Name, Extension, Length \| Sort Length -Descending \| ConvertTo-Html \| Out-File psfilelist.htm

Now exploring other “drives” in PowerShell, including the certificate store and the registry.

Get list of PowerShell “drives”:	Get-PSDrive
Shows environment variables:	Dir ENV:\
Shows the certiticate store:	Dir CERT:\
Shows root certificates for the machine:	Dir CERT:\LocalMachine\Root \| Select FriendlyName, NotAfter
Shows “HK Local Machine” portion of the registry	Dir HKLM:
Shows specified part of the registry:	Dir HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

Another easy way to get interesting data is with Get-Process.

List running processes:	Get-Process
Shows all the methods and properties for the process objects:	Get-Process \| Get-Member
Shows selected list of properties of running processes, formatted as table:	Get-Process \| Select Id, Name, Product, CPU, WorkingSet \| Format-Table –autosize

Combining PowerShell with WMI is also very interesting. You can leverage any WMI provider on the box using Get-WmiObject.
You can get a list of WMI Classes from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394554(VS.85).aspx

Shows all WMI objects with "disk" on the name:	Get-WmiObject -List disk \| Select Name
Shows disk partitions:	Get-WmiObject Win32_DiskPartition \| Select Name, Size, BootPartition
Shows logical disks:	Get-WmiObject Win32_LogicalDisk \| Select DeviceID, DriveType, Size, FreeSpace
Shows mapped drives (with NET USE command):	Get-WmiObject Win32_MappedLogicalDisk \| Select Name, ProviderName, FileSystem, Size, FreeSpace \| Format-Table

PowerShell also lets you call the .NET Framework, which is a huge library.
You need to use a syntax where the full class name (library.class) is mentioned in [], followed by a :: and the method name.

You can find a reference for it at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229335.aspx

Shows network interfaces:	[System.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface]::GetAllNetworkInterfaces() \| Select Name, Speed, OperationalStatus
Shows identity of the current logged user:	[System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent() \| Select Name, AuthenticationType, IsAuthenticated, IsSystem
Shows drive information:	[System.IO.DriveInfo]::GetDrives() \| Select Name, DriveType, IsReady, TotalSize, TotalFreeSpace, RootDirectory \| Format-Table -autosize

It’s also interesting to iterate through the list of resulting objects, to perform additional actions.
You use the ForEach keyword, which allows you to run something for each item. The item is referred to as $_.
You can also use the symbol % instead of ForEach.

Change to the application data folder, which is obtained from the environment variables:	Dir Env:\AppData \| ForEach { CD $_.Value } Dir Env:\AppData \| % { CD $_.Value }
Show all text files enumerated by the Dir command:	Dir .TXT \| ForEach { Type $_ } Dir .TXT \| % { Type $_ }
Show root directory for all drives enumerated by GetDrives:	[System.IO.DriveInfo]::GetDrives() \| foreach { Dir $_ } [System.IO.DriveInfo]::GetDrives() \| % { Dir $_ }

A similar syntax is used for Where (actually an alias for Where-Object), which can be used to filter objects in the pipeline.

Show selected properties of processes using more than 10MB of memory, in descending order, formatted as table:	Get-Process \| Select Id, Name, Product, CPU, WorkingSet \| Where { $_.WorkingSet -gt 1010241024} \| Sort WorkingSet -Descending \| Format-Table –autosize
Shows all services that are stopped:	Get-Service \| Where { $_.Status -eq "Stopped" }

Now let's focus on the DFS-Namespaces service, which is something I’m working on (these will only work if the box is a Windows Server file server with the DFS-N role service installed):

Shows all 2000 mode domain namespaces on the current computer, using the registry:	Dir HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\DFS\Roots\Domain
Shows all 2008 mode domain namespaces on the current computer, using the registry:	Dir HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\DFS\Roots\DomainV2
Shows all standalone namespaces on the current computer, using the registry:	Dir HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\DFS\Roots\Standalone
Shows all namespaces of all types on the current computer, using the registry:	Dir HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\DFS\Roots –Recurse \| Select PSChildName, ValueCount, Property
Shows properties of the DFS-N service in the registry:	Dir HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dfs
Get status of DFS Service (formatted as list)	Get-Service DFS \| fl
Starts the DFS-N service (two ways):	Get-Service DFS \| Start-Service Get-Service DFS \| % { $_.Start }
Shows all WMI objects with DFS on the name (will include some DFS-R ones as well):	Get-WmiObject -List DFS
Shows DFS Targets on the current computer, using WMI:	Get-WmiObject Win32_DFSTarget
Shows selected properties of DFS nodes on the current computer, including it's a root and its state, using WMI:	Get-WmiObject Win32_DFSNode \| Name, Root, State \| Format-Table –autosize

I hope that has helped you see how interesting PowerShell can be. Here are a few links for additional information and tutorials:

Windows Powershell Owner's Manual: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/winpsh/manual/default.mspx
List of cmdlets (help topics): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347701.aspx
Powershell ScriptCenter: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptcenter/dd742419.aspx
Powershell on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell
Some free video tutorials: http://www.idera.com/Promo/Practical-PowerShell
Official Powershell team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell
Powershell Guy blog: http://thepowershellguy.com/blogs/posh

The June cumulative update for WSS V3 and MOSS 2007 has been released yesterday

Stefan_Gossner — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:39:00 GMT

As discussed by the Office Sustained Engineering group cumulative updates for all Office Products including WSS 3.0 and SharePoint 2007 will be released every second month.

Yesterday we released the so called June Cumulative Update. The so called "Uber" packages for MOSS will be released in a couple of days. Currently you can download the individual global and localized fixes for your specific language packs.

This is the second Post-SP2 hotfix! That means it is highly recommended to install Service Pack 2 before installing the June CU.

As usual you can find the details about the fixes and the download locations on the blog my colleague Joerg Sinemus published:

http://blogs.msdn.com/joerg_sinemus/archive/2009/07/01/moss-and-wss-june-cu.aspx

I am now on Twitter (and more active on Facebook)

josebda — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:56:00 GMT

It started posting articles electronically back in the BBS days in the late 1980s.
I create a web page with my own domain name in 1998 (back in Brazil with a ".br" domain name that I no longer own).
I moved to a US domain when I moved to the United States in 2000 (it’s still there at http://www.barreto.us and it hasn't changed much in years).
In July 2004 (around five years ago, almost to the day), I started blogging here at http://blogs.technet.com/josebda.
It’s actually kind of fun to go back and re-read that very first post at http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2004/07/06/173623.aspx
I stopped posting in both English and Portuguese two years later (too much work to post in two languages, side-by-side), but kept posting in English regularly to this date.
To this date I have posted 270 blogs (not counting this one :-), an average of about 5 per month.

As of this month, I am also starting to use twitter. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/josebarreto
There were a few things I learned in the last few weeks as I got started.
Obviously you need to visit the site and create the account, hoping no one grabbed your name before you did.
Next, I spent some time getting the lingo: tweets, shortening URLs with bit.ly, retweets, following, replies, @name, #subject, etc.
Then I tried to find interesting people to follow and watched what they tweet about, how frequently.

I soon figured out that I could retire my RSS reader in favor of a twitter client, which is now how I am getting my basic news.
I am pretty OK now with the number of other twiterers I am following, and it does pretty much match my old list of RSS feeds, plus a few new finds.
I chose to use TweetDeck on the PC and PockeTwit on the phone (any suggestions there?).

I started writing my own tweets a few days ago, mostly one for every blog post I get out the door. I guess I am too tied to old models, huh?
I am also starting to retweet some of the stuff I am following, as my next step into the new model.
If you haven’t already, you should get started. It is a different way of doing things, but it has worked quite well for me so far, especially as it replaced some of my old tools.
I find myself using the twitter clients for most of my news and updates (personal or work-related).

An interesting side effect is that it got me back to Facebook (at http://www.facebook.com/jose.barreto) and I started posting updates there as well.
I created the Facebook account a few years ago, added a few friends over time and even got a “vanity URL” earlier this year, but I never really got into posting frequent updates.
Not that Twitter and Facebook are directly related, but it sounded simple enough to post updates on both.
I learned that there used to be a Facebook app to do that automatically, but apparently that no longer works.
It even got me to load a Facebook application on my Windows phone. How about that?

There’s a lot of hype about Twitter, but it does seem to have an interesting model, a new twist on things.
You’re not likely to find out what I had for breakfast every morning, but you will at least learn of any new blog posts I publish (RSS is so 2000-and-late :-).
As with most things, time will tell if the model does work. We will find out when I post about it five years from now…

Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit 1.2 available as a free download

josebda — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:22:00 GMT

Microsoft released the File Server Migration Toolkit version 1.2 (FSMT 1.2), which will help you migrate file shares from computers running Windows NT 4.0 Server, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Storage Server 2008 to computers running Windows 2003 Server, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Storage Server 2008. You can use it to consolidate multiple file servers or simply to migrate files between servers.

This is an update to the previous FSMT 1.1 that fixes an issue with Windows Server 2003 clusters. This version has also been tested with the Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate (full support for Windows Server 2008 R2 is expected and will become official after tests with the final release, which should be out later this year).

Here are the main benefits of FSMT:

Simplifies the complex and error-prone migration process of SMB shares and data
Maintains UNC paths and eliminates broken shortcuts and links
Maintains security settings after the migration
Consolidates shared folders with the same names from different servers
Supports server clusters as source and target file servers
Provides roll-back functionality
Support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Storage Server 2008
Includes both the DFS Consolidation Root Wizard and the Dfsconsolidate.exe command-line tool
Available in 5 languages (English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish)

Here’s a screenshot:

Download and test it today from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d00e3eae-930a-42b0-b595-66f462f5d87b&DisplayLang=en

Also, be sure to also visit the FSMT Web Site at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=128527

How many DFS-N namespace servers do you need?

josebda — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:05:00 GMT

Introduction

Whenever you’re deploying Windows Server DFS-Namespaces, you will need to figure out how many servers will be required.
Since I moved to the role of DFS-N PM, I noticed that the specific information on how many namespace servers you need is something that isn’t clearly posted anywhere.
Although we never really had any problems with performance of the namespace server themselves, the question of where to place them is quite common.
Hopefully, this blog post will help clarify the topic.

Note: We're not discussing here the type of namespace you should be using (standalone, 2008 domain mode, 2000 domain mode).
We assume you already made that call and you're now deciding how many namespaces servers you need and where they should be.

Performance

A single namespace server can typically handle thousands of referrals per second (the exact number will depend on details like the number of targets per link, the server configuration, the network bandwidth).
Since DFS-N clients will cache those referrals, you will be hard-pressed to find a scenario where a single dedicated namespace server would become a significant performance bottleneck.
However, there’s a lot more to this than raw referral performance.

Zero?

The first option for you is not to deploy any additional servers specifically for DFS-N.
If you have a small environment, you can simple enable the DFS-N role on an existing domain controller or file server (you are likely to have some of those already).
In that case, you need zero new servers. Let’s look into the two options: DCs or file servers.

Deploy DFS-N on the DCs

Domain controllers seem like a good candidate to become namespace servers, since they are usually not too busy on small environments.
Domain controllers are likely to also be running other services like DNS.
The typical distribution of domain controllers will also help with your namespace site awareness.
Having a DC nearby will also do wonders for the performance of your domain queries.
On the other hand, domain controllers are sometimes run by dedicated teams that are not too keen on adding unrelated services to their boxes.
You could argue that DFS-N and AD are closely related, since DFS-N domain namespaces use AD for storage. You might lose that argument :-).
Domain controllers are usually heavily secured (for good reasons) and getting permissions to manage a service on those boxes might be a tough one, specially on larger enterprises.
It might also be a little harder to troubleshoot root referrals when the namespace server and DC are collocated (not so easy to get a network trace).

Deploy DFS-N on the file servers

File Servers are also an easy option here. If you already have a few file servers, you could simple add the DFS-N role to a few of them.
The team that manages file servers typically will also be in charge of namespaces, so that helps.
Also, if you have consolidated your file servers, you’re probably OK consolidating your namespace service as well.
This might perpetuate the myth that the file service and the namespace service are the same thing, but that’s just a minor thing :-)
One issue is that the file servers might not be running Windows (they could be some type of NAS appliance), so you could not load DFS-N on them.
As already mentioned, a single namespace server can handle a lot of load, so you will definitely not need this service on every file server. You should aim for two (for high availability).

Two

If you couldn’t talk the owners of either the domain controllers or the file server into hosting the DFS-N service, you can have your own dedicated namespace servers.
If you do decide to install them separately, you would typically not need more than one server, from a referral performance standpoint.
However, due to high availability requirements, it’s strongly recommend to configure two of them.
If you use domain namespaces, they will naturally cover for each other.
If you use standalone namespaces, you should configure them as a failover cluster.

One per site

One reason to have more than two dedicated namespace servers is to resolve referrals within a site.
If you are using domain namespaces, clients will get their referrals from the nearest namespace server and the AD site configuration is used to determine that.
In that case, you should consider having one namespace server per site.
To further improve on that, you could have at least one domain controller per site and enable DFS-N “root scalability”. This will make the namespace server work with the nearest DC.
Keep in mind that, if you enable “root scalability” and you update the namespace root, your users might see outdated information until the site DC gets updated via AD replication.
This also provides fault tolerance, because if the namespace server on your site fails, you can still get referrals by contacting a namespace server on another site.
This is definitely not driven by the load on the server, but by the requirements for site independency and by WAN bandwidth concerns.
Have I mentioned that you could try to talk the people manage the DCs into let you run the DFS-N service on their boxes? :-)

Two per team

You might also end up with multiple namespace servers if multiple teams in an enterprise stand up their own set, typically using standalone namespaces.
Since each team will need to provide high availability by clustering their standalone namespace servers, you will end up with two namespace servers per team.
As you can imagine, this not a good way to go. Keep in mind that DFS-N servers can host multiple namespaces and you can delegate management per namespace.
This makes even less sense for domain namespaces, since by definition you would be trying to consolidate the namespaces.
Again, this would not be driven by the load on the server or any other technical requirements.
In short, if you have one or two namespace servers per team you should probably go back to the drawing board and reconsider your consolidation options.

Conclusion

I hope this helped with your DFS-N design. For additional details on DFS-N, see my other blog posts at http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/tags/DFS/default.aspx

Hotfix for SP2 issue that reverts SharePoint products to Trial Version has been released

Stefan_Gossner — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:30:00 GMT

Microsoft has released a fix for the SP2 problem that reverts the license into a Trial version after installing Service Pack 2.

More details can be found in the following KB article:

971620 - When you install the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2, the product expiration date is activated incorrectly

For your convenience here are the download links for the fix:

[Update June 26th] Additional info from SharePoint Team blog: We will be updating the existing Service Pack 2 download package with a new package that includes this fix within the next 4-6 weeks.

Joel Oleson (SharePoint Guru) coming to Australia

Code Jedi — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:15:34 GMT

Joel Oleson (ex SharePoint product team) is coming to Australia in July. He has organised two morning sessions with local SharePoint experts, one in Sydney and one in Melbourne. I will be sitting in on Joel’s session in Melbourne and will also be hanging around as a panel expert.

“Joel is a senior product manager and SharePoint evangelist at Quest where he is responsible for product direction and strategy. He is well known in the SharePoint community as an enthusiastic trainer, evangelist and architect and he maintains a popular blog. Prior to Quest, Joel worked at Microsoft and was a part of the first Microsoft global deployment of SharePoint. During his Microsoft tenure Joel helped various customers achieve the critical governance they needed to upgrade and achieve scale with SharePoint 2007. He would later design the extranet and hosted SharePoint deployments. http://www.sharepointjoel.com”

Keynote:

10 Steps to successful SharePoint Deployments, Joel Oleson
Preparing to upgrade to SharePoint 2010 today, Joel Oleson

Sydney Guest Speakers:

Email integration , storage and management in SharePoint, Kathy Hughes
TBC, Adam Cogan
Demo – SharePoint customisation and application development, John Ackery

Melbourne Guest Speakers:

Configure, Customise, Code, Elaine van Bergen
Demo – SharePoint customisation and application development, John Ackery

Plus, you can learn tips and best practices to help you overcome your most difficult SharePoint challenges during a panel discussion with SharePoint experts and bloggers.

Space is limited so reserve your seat now!

TechEd Australia 2009 - SharePoint on-premises or in the cloud?

Code Jedi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:15:01 GMT

How cold is it at the moment....brrrr! Luckily Tech Ed Australia 2009 will be on the Gold Coast this year bring on the sunshine baby.

If I can manage to get off the beach and into the auditorium, this year I will be co-presenting a session with Lee Hickin on the differences between SharePoint on-premise and SharePoint Online part of the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). During the session we hope to provide the following information;

Learn SharePoint customisation techniques that will work in BPOS or on-premise
Describe provisioning options for SharePoint – in-house, hosted, cloud
Understand pros/cons for each model
Demonstrate SharePoint designer and Office customisations to SharePoint

In order to make the session a little more interesting we would like to get some participation from the community so we are going to run a little competition. We are going to get several community members to create a highly customised and funky SharePoint Online site which will be reviewed for originality, style, design and also what features from the online platform have been utilised.

The winner of the competition will get to present their solution on stage during our session as well as getting a prize. If you are interested in getting involved please register through the call for content as described on Andrew Coate’s blog.

Lee and I will work thru the list of people who register thru the Call For Content tool and let the eligible people know how to access their SharePoint Online site to start customising. I am looking forward to seeing some really interesting sites come out of this.

Bing Maps with Silverlight

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:42:00 GMT

http://bingmapsupdates.cloudapp.net/

Bing Maps with Silverlight ... on the Azure platform .

With the launch of Bing the new decision engine from Microsoft, we've taken this opportunity to join up our mapping brands, and Microsoft Virtual Earth has changed to Bing Maps for Enterprise.

Helping Fight Cancer

arpans — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:10:44 GMT

Hello everyone! I signed up to participate & run in the Seattle LIVESTRONG Challenge later this June to help raise money for the fight against cancer. I know friends who have fought cancer & I’ve had close family who were victims of it. This year, I’m committed to do my small part to drive awareness and help raise some money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. You can find more information about the foundation at http://www.livestrong.org

I’m reaching out to folks to ask for a donation for this cause. Every dollar goes a long way! You can donate at https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=294734&supId=255217075

Thanks!

Silverlight web application explaining all STSADM commands is now live

Stefan_Gossner — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:55:00 GMT

Technet now hosts a technical reference for the available STSADM commands based on Silverlight. Beside a view that shows all the commands you can choose a view that only displays commands new in SP1 or SP2 or commands that offer operations which are not available in the UI.

You can also change the view between operations view properties view.

Check it out at

New Web Development Tutorial with VSeWSS 1.3

pandrew — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:05:00 GMT

Just came across this tutorial for doing web page development and deploying them using VSeWSS 1.3

http://geeksconnected.com/jamil/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=19

SharePoint 101: What’s a Host Header Site Collection?

99795c10c99c756bcbaf97468e327dc4 — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:56:01 GMT

Body:

I often get asked to differentiate the different ways to configure URLs for site collections—most often how Host Header (HH) Site Collections fit into the mix—so I thought I’d try to disambiguate this for everyone. In the simplest explanation, there are three types of Site Collections:

· Load-Balanced URL web application: A single root URL that is shared amongst all contained site collections. For example, you could have http://sharepoint, http://my, or http://teams. There is one root site collection (matches web application URL) and additional site collections can be created at Managed Paths under this URL (http://sharepoint/sites/zach).

· Host header web applications: Similar to a load-balanced URL web application, except the URLs all use a single host header (e.g.: http://www.foo.com).

· Host Header Site Collection: These are site collections that each have their own unique host header. For example, http://foo.com and http://bar.com. These sites are by far the easiest to rename—use STSADM –o RenameSite to change a HH Site Collection host header. These site collections must still be hosted in a web application—but the Web App URL or Host Header is ignored for these sites.

While host header site collections give the most flexibility for offering multiple unique FQDNs, there are some limitations:

· Only 1 site collection can use a unique Host Header

· Managed Paths do no work

· AAMs are not used as part of site lookup for HH Site Collections, so URL re-writing will not work

· SSL Termination at the load balancer will not work (due to lack of AAM support)

It’s important to note that Host Header Site Collections can only be created from the command line—in the STSADM command createsite, provide the Host Header for the SPSite in the URL parameter and then provide the url of the web application that will host the HH Site Collection. The good news is that for those of you familiar with previous versions of SharePoint, there is no longer a “Host Header Mode”; HH Site Collections can be created at anytime on existing web applications.

Category: SharePoint 101;Random SharePoint Knowledge;SharePoint Administration

Published: 5/27/2009 9:55 PM

Limitations of STSADM -o export/import related to publishing sites

Stefan_Gossner — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:15:00 GMT

STSADM -o export/import is often used to split site collections into multiple pieces when they reached a certain limit. Or to do the vice versa and consolidate multiple site collections into one larger one. Both of these actions work fine as long as the migrated content does not use the publishing feature.

For site collections that make use of the publishing feature it is not supported to migrate root sites into sub sites or sub sites into root sites.

The reason for this limitation is that the publishing feature stores vital information like page layouts but also various properties like information about variation, reusable content and so on in the root site of a site collection.

When migrating a root site into a subsite the imported content will link to the new location of the previous root site. E.g. the page layout URLs will afterwards point to the page layouts library in the sub site and not of the root site which does not work as the publishing feature requires these items to be in the root site. So additional actions like moving the page layouts to the root site and adjusting all page layout urls would be required. Similar things would be required for variations and reusable content.

On the other hand when migrating a sub site to a root site it gets even worse: in this situation important content which was stored in the root site of the site collection is no longer available as the sub site does not contain the necessary information as they haven't been exported in the first place. So after importing the subsite as new root site items based on the publishing feature will be non functional.

Be aware that this limitation will also affect sites with custom features which store information outside the current site.

Valid migration scenarios when using the publishing feature are the following:

export the site collection starting at the root site and import as root site into a new site collection
(using a custom application you can specify which sub sites to export if you would like to avoid to export all of them)
export sub sites of the site collection and import them as sub sites into an existing site collection that has the publishing feature enabled

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS 2003) and IE 8

Stefan_Gossner — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:40:00 GMT

We recently received a couple of questions regarding support for SPS 2003 and IE 8.

The supported browsers for SPS 2003 are listed on the following page:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/techcenter/HA011605151033.aspx?pid=CH011719821033

As mainstream support for SPS 2003 has already ended it is unlikely that support for additional browsers will be added to the product.

If support for IE 8 is required customers are asked to upgrade to MOSS 2007 with SP2 or higher.

Custom Field Controls in Data Form webpart does not save data in Database

Pavan — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:04:00 GMT

Any input control for that matter, a simple custom field control with a single text box into the DataFormWebPart. The field gets displayed well in the NewForm and EditForm. But on saving the form data is not saved.No errors thrown.

Build and deploy the project attached to this post.

Create a custom list and create a column of Custom field control added by the project. (SimpleTextFieldField)
3. Open SPD.
4. Go to File -- Open Project -- Select the URL of the site.
5. Expand the Lists tree in the Left pane and expand the List which was created in step 2
6. Double Click on NewForm.aspx of the list.
7. Switch to Split mode of NewForm.aspx in SPD.
8. Select the ListForm Webpart in NewForm.aspx page
9. After </WebPartPages:ListFormWebPart> tag hit enter.

10. Go to Insert Menu -- SharePoint Controls -- Custom List Form. If Custom List Form option is not enabled save the NewForm.aspx and try again.

11. A pop up window appear where you can select the List which we created in step 2 and let the Content Type to use for from be selected to Item, check the radio button "New item form (used to add new items to the list).

12. Right click on List Form webpart -- Webpart properties -- Layout -- Select both checkboxes "Hidden" and "Close the webpart" -- Click OK button
13. Save the NewForm.aspx page in SPD.
14. Open IE, browse to the list created -- Click on New -- Add entry for Title column and a value for the Custom field control which we have added and click OK
14. It will come back to AllItems.aspx where we can find that the value entered to the custom column is blank.

Schema of Title Field
---------------------------
<Field ID="{fa564e0f-0c70-4ab9-b863-0177e6ddd247}" Type="Text" Name="Title" DisplayName="Title" Required="TRUE" SourceID="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3" StaticName="Title" FromBaseType="TRUE" ColName="nvarchar1"/>

Schema of Custom Field control
-------------------------------------
<Field Type="SimpleTextFieldField" DisplayName="huha" Required="TRUE" ID="{9df3f794-4a49-4019-a41a-3d29ae500903}" SourceID="{e68e397e-fb36-4971-955e-904f56a57d10}" StaticName="huha" Name="huha" ColName="nvarchar3" RowOrdinal="0"/>

Schema of Field added through UI
---------------------------------------------
<Field Type="Text" DisplayName="BoomCol" Required="FALSE" MaxLength="255" ID="{ef0b772f-af19-467a-9afd-2920ba1b10d8}" SourceID="{e68e397e-fb36-4971-955e-904f56a57d10}" StaticName="BoomCol" Name="BoomCol" ColName="nvarchar4" RowOrdinal="0"/>

This behaviour was because, the TextBox we exposed is a child control, the main control is SPTextFieldFieldControl. When you convert to a DataForm webpart, these custom controls will be replaced by the SPForm controls. This control does not identify what is the original value. If you look inside the SPTextFieldFieldControl, I do have HtmlTable, LiteralControl, TextBox etc. So now we get the inner control value and set the “Text/Value” property of the main control(SPTextFieldFieldControl)

===========================================

Code changes for SimpleTextField attached below.

=======================================

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

namespace SimpleTextFieldControl
{
    // TODO: Replace, as needed, "TextField" with some other class derived from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseFieldControl.
    [CLSCompliant(false)]
    [Guid("f6fdae87-e10d-4aa6-bd80-db14d41a19d6")]
    public class SimpleTextFieldFieldControl : TextField
    {
        private HtmlTable table;
        private TextBox txtName;
        private string _textValue;
        private void RefreshValues()
        {
            if (txtName != null && this.Context != null && this.Context.Request != null)
            {
                foreach (string key in this.Context.Request.Form.Keys)
                {

                    if (key.ToLower() == txtName.UniqueID.ToLower())
                    {
                        string[] enteredValue = this.Context.Request.Form.GetValues(key);
                        textBox.Text = enteredValue[0];
                        _textValue = textBox.Text;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            base.CreateChildControls();

this.table = new HtmlTable();

HtmlTableRow row = new HtmlTableRow();
table.Rows.Add(row);

HtmlTableCell cell = null;

            if (this.ControlMode == SPControlMode.Edit ||
                this.ControlMode == SPControlMode.New)
            {
                cell = new HtmlTableCell();
                cell.ColSpan = 2;
                cell.Attributes["class"] = "ms-formdescription";
                cell.InnerText = "Enter a Text:";

row.Cells.Add(cell);

row = new HtmlTableRow();
cell = new HtmlTableCell();

                // a text field
                this.txtName = new TextBox();
                // Get the current value of the field.
                string currentValue = (string)this.ItemFieldValue;

                if (currentValue != null && currentValue != string.Empty)
                {
                    this.txtName.Text = currentValue;
                }

                cell.Controls.Add(this.txtName);
                row.Cells.Add(cell);
                table.Rows.Add(row);
            }

cell = new HtmlTableCell();

LiteralControl literalControl = new LiteralControl();

string text = null;
object textObject = this.ItemFieldValue;

            if (textObject != null)
            {
                text = (string)textObject;
            }

            if (text == null || text == string.Empty)
            {
                text = this.txtName.Text;
            }

literalControl.Text = text;

cell.Controls.Add(literalControl);
row.Cells.Add(cell);

base.Controls.Add(table);
}

        public override string Text
        {
            get
            {
                RefreshValues();
                return _textValue;
            }
            set
            {
                base.Text = value;
            }
        }

        public override void UpdateFieldValueInItem()
        {
            base.UpdateFieldValueInItem();
            try
            {
                this.Value = this.txtName.Text;
                this.ItemFieldValue = this.Value;
            }
            catch
            {
                throw new Exception("error in text field") ;
            }
        }

        protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter output)
        {
            this.table.RenderControl(output);
        }

}
}

SharePoint application pool hang on servers where Visual Studio has been installed in the past (last updated: May 27th, 2009)

Stefan_Gossner — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:09:00 GMT

We recently had a couple of SharePoint support cases where customers reported hangs. When we analyzed user dumps of the affected processes we noticed that the application pool was in the process of recycling due to an exception that has caused the application pool to fail.

Unfortunatelly the recycling never finished - instead a message box was generated by .NET framework asking if the user would like to continue (which would allow recycle to perform) or to attach a debugger.

The problem here is that the message box was not displayed on the Console but invisible as the w3wp.exe process does not interact with desktop. Even if this option would be enabled it would be an undesireable result as usually no user sits in front of the SharePoint server waiting for such a message box to appear.

After collaborating with our colleagues from the .NET framework support team we identified that the root cause for the issue was a registry key which was set when installing Visual Studio on the machine. Even if Visual Studio is uninstalled later this registry key is not removed. This registry key allows developers to attach the debugger to a failing process right before it terminates by bringing up this message box.

The details of this registry key is explained here:

Enabling JIT-attach Debugging

We also found that Microsoft has already an official guidance on how to clean up this after uninstalling Visual Studio:

After Visual Studio is installed on a server, the default behavior when an unhandled exception occurs is to show an Exception dialog that requires user intervention to either start Just-In-Time debugging or ignore the exception. This may be undesirable for unattended operation. To configure the server to no longer show a dialog when an unhandled exception occurs (the default behavior prior to installing Visual Studio), use the registry editor to delete the following registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug\Debugger
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgManagedDebugger

On a 64-bit operating system also delete the following registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug\Debugger
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgManagedDebugger

(see here for more details)

In case you ever had Visual Studio installed on one of your production servers, please be sure to check these registry keys and remove them to prevent this problem.

[Update from May 27th, 2009] I just got informed that the same registry key is created during the installation of the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK. So the same steps apply if this SDK has been installed on the server in the past.

Distributed Computing and Enterprise 2.0

arpans — Sat, 23 May 2009 04:30:32 GMT

During my college years, the Internet phenomenon took off. While computer networks was a subject taught at college for many years, it’s not until the 90s that really broad applications emerged. As late as the early 90s, only large private, public & education institutions had access to the Internet. A relatively small number of actual consumers did anything with their 1200 baud MODEMs. I was a BBS sysop back in the days, but that’s another story.

Not everyone had a computer when I went to college. It was a luxury and those who had a computer spent a lot of time playing Doom. You couldn’t walk down any hall and not find at least two people playing Doom. I was playing Doom with people in my dorm. As sad as it is, I was “networking” with others in a new, innovative way beyond simple message boards. While Doom was taking off, so was another buzz. We were all being encouraged to participate in distributed computing projects to help solve difficult problems; most of these at the time were academic or “code breaking” contests, but nevertheless, idle PCs began to participate in a well orchestrated way to solve a problem larger than anyone could solve by themselves.

Distributing computing is a fascinating concept and something that large software systems take advantage of. It breaks down a problem into multiple parts that run in parallel on multiple computers. While the outcome can be absolutely mind-boggling, it takes a lot of work to architect and orchestrate a solution. Some problems, because of their very nature, can’t even be highly distributed. These intricate and complex solutions require a lot of engineering smarts. An equally competent marketing department is required to convince people to participate in an Internet distributing computing project, especially in a world when everyone is worried about security.

So what does distributed computing have to do with Enterprise 2.0? I get to that point a little later.

I’ve been meaning to write an article on ROI & Enterprise 2.0. There are already a couple good ones out there, so instead of rehashing many of the arguments and points already made, I wanted to offer another perspective.

Unstructured & New World of Work: ROI to the Individual

It’s accepted that technology can really help foster innovation and help connect people with similar interests & ideas. It can uncover new ideas, new problems & new solutions. And there’s a certain reality that the workplace is evolving. Almost every desk worker has a computer, has email, uses Instant Messaging and has access to a productivity suite like Office. More and more information workers are on Facebook, many read blogs and a few even have their own blogs. Their personal & professional lives are blended; they are thinking of replacing their Win Mobile/Blackberry phones with an iPhone and wish they had more time to upload and share pictures. That’s the reality. And as more and more people enter the work force, the more ubiquitous this is becoming.

While not all productivity tools are called Enterprise 2.0, every company uses tools that help people connect with others resulting in greater organizational agility and productivity. Email, as archaic as it may sound, has transformed the workplace over the last decade and continues to be the number one way people communicate with their colleagues. In the last few years, more synchronous forms of technologies like instant messaging have been popular. Even more recently, Unified Communications is a category that every company is looking at; especially in this economy. There’s no argument that these set of technologies have a measurable ROI. There’s also no argument that information workers use these technologies as part of their daily jobs; that they are tools they use to communicate, interact and get something done.

Enterprise 2.0 is popularly associated with some of the newer age tools that promise to even further empower employees to connect with each other and be more productive. Common examples are wikis, blogs, search, tagging – all of which have become super popular on the Internet. And while these technologies have become popular on the Internet for individuals to connect and share information with their friends, a commonly asked question is how these tools can be leveraged in the Enterprise to provide real return on investment; really impact the bottom line?

Loosely Structured & Orchestrated: ROI to Groups and Organizations

As individuals begin to become more “productive” and are able to connect with individuals more easily, how can this be transformed into more measurable organizational/group productivity? Don’t you need a certain critical mass of users to really take advantage of these types of technologies? There are far more consumers in the world than producers. If you take a look at the Wikipedia editing frequency, a very small fraction of users actually make any edits to Wikipedia - but all of us consume Wikipedia data.

This is where some of the distributed computing background is relevant. If you take a look at Enterprise 2.0 as an opportunity to really take advantage of the people’s knowledge/ideas in a group or organization, you can really build something great. But like I said before, it doesn’t happen automatically, you need some kind of structure/orchestration to get unstructured IP; you need some guidance before it becomes part of the organizational DNA/culture.

In this case, Enterprise 2.0 tools can be used to solve a known problem. This may counter some people’s definition who think Enterprise 2.0 is about grassroots innovation and connections. However, teaching people to use the tools to proactively harness people’s knowledge can result in real measurable results. You can either attempt to encourage people to participate in a process/project voluntarily (for example, think of something like an Idea Exchange solution that is composed of wikis and tagging) or you can use the tools to be a process for real work – for example, a wiki based solution can be used in a large organization in the vision/planning process of a product or project. Instead of a few people checking out and checking in a document, dozens or hundreds of people can participate in a more transparent, participatory process. In some ways, you’re distributing the “computing” to each employee and magnifying impact; each person can participate to create a really rich knowledge base that is unstructured in the way that people can participate and edit, but the end result is very structured. Another personal favorite example I like to use is a FAQ or RFI solution. While it takes work to architect a solution and figure out exactly how to get people to participate, the outcome is measurable.

I realize that buzz phrases like Web 2.0, Social Computing & Enterprise 2.0, have a certain association with grassroots innovation and sound really new age, but with some planning, some of the same technologies can be leveraged to build enterprise solutions that get people involved and solve a big problem. Let’s face it: Doom was cool, fun and exciting and distributed computing was geeky – but they were fundamentally taking advantage of the same underlying infrastructure. And while a real solution that solves a real problem doesn’t attract the same attention that Facebook gets, just give it a cool name, post a video about it on YouTube, create a Facebook group and tweet about it. :-)

SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 sets expiry date on servers

Code Jedi — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:54:00 GMT

The SharePoint product team has posted an article on an issue found after installing SharePoint Server 2007 SP2.

We take product quality seriously and make every effort to avoid and resolve issues that adversely impact our customers. Unfortunately, we have recently discovered a bug with Service Pack 2 (SP2) that affects all customers that have deployed it for SharePoint Server 2007.

During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users.

We are working to release a hotfix to automatically fix this issue. A manual work-around is currently available and involves customers re-entering their Product ID number (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration. For more information and detailed steps please read this KB article. (The KB link is not currently active, it will be available within the next 48hrs)

We want to assure our customers that this issue does not impact data integrity or their SharePoint deployment in any other way.

For your convenience, below are some answers to questions that you may have and we will update this blog post with a link to the hotfix as soon as it’s available.

Attention: Important Information on Service Pack 2

Stefan_Gossner — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:36:00 GMT

We have recently discovered a bug with Service Pack 2 (SP2) that affects all customers that have deployed it for SharePoint Server 2007.

During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users.

We are working to release a hotfix to automatically fix this issue. A manual work-around is currently available and involves customers re-entering their Product ID number (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration. For more information and detailed steps please read this KB article. (The KB link is not currently active, it will be available within the next 48hrs)

Read more on the official SharePoint Team blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx

Important SP2 Information

arpans — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:14:00 GMT

If you have deployed SP2 or are looking to deploy SP2, please take a careful look at http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx. There's a simple work-around that involves re-entering the PID in the Central Administration License page.

Important info about SharePoint 2007 SP2

dwinter — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:46:00 GMT

If you haven't already seen this yet--please read this announcement from Jeff Teper, Corp VP of SharePoint: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx

Sudden 401.1 on my SharePoint VM

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:39:00 GMT

After a recent Windows Update I started to get challenged for credentials when trying to access several SharePoint applications. After three attempts, I am given a 401.1 error.

This now happens for sites that have host headers that don't match the machine name.

I had to add a registry entry at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0

with a multi-sting value BackConnectionHostNames that contains a list of SharePoint sites host headers

OFC204 - Sample Code and Demos I showed at TechEd Last Week

pandrew — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:17:00 GMT

At my TechEd talk last week I showed Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint 1.3 and I demo'd creating a simple web part that shows data from a SharePoint list in a grid. I also showed command line builds which is one of the features we added in VSeWSS 1.3 and I showed the SPDisposeCheck tool.

For the demos I used the WSS Developer VPC which is available here. I uninstalled the VSeWSS 1.2 that comes on that image and installed the VSeWSS 1.3 from here. I also installed SPDisposeCheck from here.

So that's my machine image to which I also created a sample Employees list and a Projects list in the default SharePoint site. Here's the code that I used in the first demo. Pretty simple stuff.

namespace WebPart1

{

[Guid("64a11214-36e3-4b1a-b8a7-fbb0ca9370c6")]

public class WebPart1 : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart

{

public WebPart1()

{

}

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

SPGridView customerGridView = new SPGridView();

SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web;

SPList list = web.Lists["Employees"];

SPQuery query = new SPQuery(list.DefaultView);

query.Query = "<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='JobTitle' /><Value Type='Text'>SDE</Value></Eq></Where>";

SPListItemCollection items = list.GetItems(query);

AutoAddColumns(customerGridView, list);

customerGridView.DataSource = items.GetDataTable();

customerGridView.DataBind();

Controls.Add(customerGridView);

base.CreateChildControls();

}

private void AutoAddColumns(SPGridView gridView, SPList list)

{

gridView.AutoGenerateColumns = false;

foreach (string fieldname in list.DefaultView.ViewFields)

{

SPField field = list.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName(fieldname);

BoundField column = new BoundField();

column.DataField = field.StaticName;

column.HeaderText = field.Title;

gridView.Columns.Add(column);

}

Windows Storage Server 2008 with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 available to MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers

josebda — Sat, 16 May 2009 13:50:00 GMT

Overview

I am glad to share that Windows Storage Server 2008 (WSS 2008) with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 is now available to all MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers. This Microsoft product is offered typically via our OEM partners, but a version for evaluation (TechNet Plus or MSDN), demonstration (MSDN), development (MSDN) or test (MSDN) is now being provided to MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers for the first time. This opens the door for a number of interesting scenarios, especially when related to Windows Server Failover Clustering and/or Hyper-V.

Usage Scenarios

Here are a few things you could do:

Setup a test environment for Hyper-V (using Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2) using iSCSI shared storage.

On a single laptop (with enough resources) create a development environment running a SQL Server cluster (two nodes, plus shared storage).

Evaluate Windows Server 2008 R2 Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and Hyper-V Live Migration, using only regular Windows Server hardware.

Test your software solution with WSS 2008 Single Instance Storage (Microsoft’s solution for file-level deduplication) without the need to acquire a WSS OEM appliance.

You are probably thinking of a few other ways to use this. If they are for evaluation (TechNet Plus or MSDN), demonstration (MSDN), development (MSDN) or test (MSDN), they are probably good scenarios as well.

Selecting an Edition

When you install Windows Storage Server, you need to select an edition: Basic, Workgroup, Standard or Enterprise. If you're an MSDN or TechNet Plus subscribers, you have access to all editions and you should select the Enterprise Edition (available only as x64), which will provide you with all the WSS features. The only exception would be if your hardware does not include an x64 capable CPU, in which case you should install the Basic Edition (available as both x64 or x86). The Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 will not install on the Basic Edition.

Find below a screenshot of the page on the MSDN or TechNet Plus site where you download the image and request the product keys:

Find below a sample of the step in Windows Storage Server 2008 Setup where you select the edition to install. This screen only shows if you install the x64 image of Windows Storage Server and if you do not provide a product key. If you provide the product key, Setup can will select the edition that matches the key. If you install the x86 image, Setup will automatically select the Basic Edition.

Files

You can download the files from MSDN or TechNet Plus right now, along with up to 10 keys for activation for each subscription.

Here are the file names and sizes:

Windows Storage Server 2008 Embedded (Basic, Standard, Enterprise, Workgroup) (x64) - DVD (English)
File Name: en_windows_storage_server_2008_embedded_basic_standard_enterprise_workgroup_dvd_x64_x15-49574.iso
File Size: 3,306.19 (MB)
Comment: x64 OS image. This is the best one to use and the only one that will let you install the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target

Windows Storage Server 2008 Embedded Language Pack (x64) - DVD (English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish)
File Name: en_fr_de_ja_es_windows_storage_server_2008_embedded_language_pack_dvd_x64_x14-18606.iso
File Size: 362.07 (MB)
Comment: Language packs for the image above

Windows Storage Server 2008 Embedded Basic (x86) - DVD (English)
File Name: en_windows_storage_server_2008_embedded_basic_dvd_x86_x15-28320.iso
File Size: 1,988.13 (MB)
Comment: x86 OS image. This one only installs as Basic and it can’t run the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target

Windows Storage Server 2008 Embedded Language Pack (x86) - DVD (English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish)
File Name: en_fr_de_ja_es_windows_storage_server_2008_embedded_language_pack_dvd_x86_x14-18619.iso
File Size: 325.14 (MB)
Comment: Language packs for the image above

Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 (x86 and x64) - CD (English)
File Name: en_windows_storage_server_2008_iscsi_cd_x64_x86_x15-49563.iso
File Size: 5.63 (MB)
Comment: Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 for the Workgroup, Standard or Enterprise editions (x64 only)

Microsoft iSCSI 3.2 Tools (x86 and x64) - CD (English)
File Name: en_windows_storage_server_2008_iscsi_tools_cd_x64_x86_x15-63368.iso
File Size: 1.92 (MB)
Comment: Optional VSS and VDS providers for the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target

Windows Storage Server 2008 Embedded Tools (x86 and x64) - CD (English)
File Name: en_windows_storage_server_2008_embedded_tools_cd_x64_x86_x15-62577.iso
File Size: 5.89 (MB)
Comment: This includes the documentation for Windows Storage Server 2008

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: I tried to install the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 on Windows Server 2008 (or Windows Server 2008 R2) and I got an error saying “Installation is not supported on this operating system”. What’s the problem?
A: The Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 can only be installed on Windows Storage Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise or Workgroup. It cannot be installed on other OS version, like Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Q: I completed the Windows Storage Server 2008 setup but I don't know what username and password should be used to logon after the installation is completed. Where can I find that information?
A: Review the Windows Storage Server 2008 Release Notes (WSS2008_RELNOTES.DOC), which can be found in the “Tools” ISO file, the last one on the file list above.

Q: Should I apply Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) to Windows Storage Server 2008 as it becomes available?
A: Yes. We also recommend enabling Automatic Updates for Windows Storage Server 2008 if you downloaded it from MSDN or TechNet Plus. If you have an OEM copy of Windows Storage Server 2008, you should contact your OEM for guidance in this area.

Q: I can’t find the x86 version of Windows Storage Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise or Workgroup. Where is it?
A: Windows Storage Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise and Workgroup are provided for x64 only.

Q: I can’t find the documentation for Windows Storage Server 2008. Where is it?
A: The documentation is in the “Tools” ISO file, the last one on the file list above. That includes the Windows Storage Server 2008 Release Notes (WSS2008_RELNOTES.DOC), the Windows Storage Server 2008 Getting Started Guide (WSS2008_GSTART.DOC), the Windows Storage Server 2008 OEM Guide (WSS2008_OEMGUIDE.DOC) and the Windows Storage Server 2008 Extensibility and Branding Developer Documentation (OEM-EXTENSIBILITY\WSS2008_EXTENSIBILITY.DOC).

Q: Can I install my MSDN or TechNet Plus version of Windows Storage Server 2008 with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 in a Hyper-V virtual machine?
A: Yes, if you downloaded it from MSDN or TechNet Plus. Make sure to install the Hyper-V Integration Components when you do so.

Q: I am not an MSDN or TechNet Plus subscriber. How can I download an evaluation version of Windows Storage Server 2008 with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2?
A: Evaluation versions of Windows Storage Server 2008 with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 are only being offered to MSDN or TechNet Plus subscribers.

Q: How can I subscribe to MSDN or TechNet Plus?
A: You can learn how to subscribe using http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions for MSDN and http://www.microsoft.com/technet/subscription for TechNet Plus.

Q: Can I use the MSDN or TechNet Plus version of Windows Storage Server 2008 with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 in my production environment?
A: No. As with any software you download from MSDN and TechNet Plus, they can only be used for evaluation (TechNet Plus or MSDN), demonstration (MSDN), development (MSDN) or test (MSDN). Review the details at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/cc150618.aspx for MSDN and at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/cc294422.aspx for TechNet Plus.

Q: I am an MSDN or TechNet Plus subscriber. Can I share this MSDN or TechNet Plus software with other people in my company that are not MSDN or TechNet Plus subscribers?
A: No. Each person that needs to install or access the software needs his or her own subscription. Review the details at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/cc150618.aspx for MSDN and at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/cc294422.aspx for TechNet Plus.

Q: How can I obtain a copy of Windows Storage Server 2008 with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 for my production environment?
A: You need to acquire an OEM solution that comes pre-installed with Windows Storage Server 2008 with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2. To find a list of OEM partners, see the links section below.

Q: Can I license just the Windows Storage Server 2008 software (or the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 software) for production use without an OEM hardware?
A: No. This software is only licensed for production use as part of an OEM solution.

Additional Links

Additional information about Windows Storage Server 2008 and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 can be found at:

Official product web site: http://www.microsoft.com/storageserver

Details on Single Instance Storage (SIS): http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/WSS08/SIS.aspx

Details on the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/WSS08/iSCSI.aspx

Windows Storage Server 2008 partners: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/wss08/partners.aspx

Windows Storage Server blog: http://blogs.technet.com/storageserver

Other posts on this subject in this blog:

Step-by-step: Using the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target with Hyper-V (Standalone, Full, VHD)

Configuring the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target

RAID configuration options for WUDSS and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target

High Availability Scenarios for Windows Storage Server

Installing the VSS Hardware Provider for the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target

Installing the VDS Hardware Provider for the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target

The Basics of Single Instance Storage (SIS)

TechEd 2009 session today on Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI)

josebda — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:07:00 GMT

If you are attending the Microsoft TechEd 2009 conference in Los Angeles and you're looking forward to a deep dive into the new File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) in Windows Server 2008 R2, there will be a session today including a walkthrough of FCI with never-before-seen demos of partner solutions and how you can use PowerShell to extend FCI. Don't miss it!

Session	WSV329
Title	Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure: Managing Cost and Mitigating Risk on File Servers
Date/Time	5/14/2009 4:30PM-5:45PM
Location	Petree Hall D

For the basics on FCI, check
http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2009/05/11/windows-server-2008-r2-file-classification-infrastructure-fci-at-teched-2009.aspx

Uber packages for April CU for MOSS 2007 has been released yesterday

Stefan_Gossner — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:39:00 GMT

Finally also the Uber package for MOSS has been released which simplifies the patching process for MOSS 2007 to April CU.

More details on the SharePoint Team blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/13/april-cumulative-update-packages-ready-for-download.aspx

Office 2010 Technical Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Mark) — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:57:00 GMT

http://www.office2010themovie.com/

Sign up for the Office 2010 Technical Preview

Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview announced at Tech Ed North America 2009

Code Jedi — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:36:53 GMT

Tech Ed North America 2009 kicked off today, where Microsoft extended its first invitations into the Office 2010 Technical Preview and demoed Office 2010 onstage at the first major event since PDC.

Registrations began for the Office 2010 Technical Preview program. Attendees will get the first opportunity to opt-in at Teched to the invitation-only Office 2010 Technical Preview program which will launch in July. (Office client only)
IT Professional Community viral site launched. IT Pros, and others, can sign up to be on a “waiting list” for the Technical Preview program at www.office2010themovie.com.
System Requirements announced. Preliminary system requirements for Office 2010 were shared today and can be found here.
Outlook 2010 demoed for the first time onstage! Bill Veghte, SVP of Windows, got the conference underway with a message to IT Pros and developers including a demo that featured Outlook 2010 working with Exchange 2010. Click here to see the keynote.

“Office 2010 will help you do more with less, stay competitive, and prepare for the future by providing IT with a flexible platform and end users with tools to more effectively work together to bring ideas to life across the PC, phone, and browser. We’ve barely just begun to share the upcoming innovation with the world, but every step we take to prepare our customers for this game-changing release is an important one.”, Takeshi Numoto, CVP Microsoft Office

Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) at TechEd 2009

josebda — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

I wanted to call your attention to four new blog posts this morning from Nir Ben Zvi (Senior Program Manager Lead, Microsoft File Server Team) and Matthias Wollnik (Program Manager, Microsoft File Server Team) introducing the Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI). This new Windows feature, highlighted in today's keynote during TechEd 2009, allows you to define classification properties, automatically classify files, automate file management tasks (like file expiration) and generate reports that show the distribution of these properties on the file server. The File Classification Infrastructure also provides a great opportunity for partners to extend these out-of-the-box abilities, including the possibility of seamless integration of multiple partner solutions.

Check all the details at:

Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure – Managing data based on business value
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2009/05/11/windows-server-2008-r2-file-classification-infrastructure-managing-data-based-on-business-value.aspx
Classifying files based on location and content using the File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) in Windows Server 2008 R2
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2009/05/11/classifying-files-based-on-location-and-content-using-the-file-classification-infrastructure-fci-in-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx
Dealing with stale data on File Servers
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2009/05/11/dealing-with-stale-data-on-file-servers.aspx
Customizing File Management Tasks
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2009/05/11/customizing-file-management-tasks.aspx

If you are attending TechEd 2009, be sure to pay Nir and Matthias a visit in the File Services booth, attend the session "WSV329 - Managing Cost and Mitigating Risk on File Servers" on Thursday at 4:30 PM and check the hands-on lab "WSV13-HOL - How to Reduce Cost and Risk on File Servers Using the New File Classification Infrastructure".

If you are not attending TechEd 2009, you can still review the keynote by visiting http://www.msteched.com/online.

At TechEd 2009 - SharePoint Overview and Roadmap

thomriz — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:41:06 GMT

If folks are at Teched, stop by and say hello. I'm doing 2 exciting sessions: SharePoint Server 2007 Overview and Roadmap and Records Management and Compliance in SharePoint 2007. We're not doing SharePoint 2010 sessions at the show except for my roadmap session where I can't say a lot about the new release. We're saving a bunch of information for the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas in October. This is my 13th or so Teched and it's amazing to see how far things have come. Back then we were talking about SMS 1.0, Windows 95, WinNT 4.0 and VB6. We were just getting Exchange out the door and SharePoint wasn't even a project yet (it grew out of a number of other initiatives and was spearheaded by Jeff Teper who has been in the team for over 10 years).

Exciting times!

Preliminary system requirements for SharePoint 2010

arpans — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:14:58 GMT

We just announced SharePoint 2010 preliminary system requirements at http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx.

To summarize:

- You should start planning for 64-bit SQL 2005/2008 and 64-bit SharePoint 2010. While this isn’t new news, it’s important to start planning for it now.

- SharePoint 2010 will require Windows Server 2008. In fact, for those of you who have installed SP2 and run the upgrade checker tool, you will have noticed this requirement.

- Browser support. SharePoint 2010 will support a wide set of standards based browsers. We will, however, be dropping support for IE 6.0. The team blog has some good Q&As that go into more detail.

Christophe Fiessinger recently reminded me of some good related content. Specifically the following TechNet articles:

Advantages of 64-bit hardware and software (Office SharePoint Server 2007) This planning article describes the many advantages of using 64-bit hardware and software when setting up SharePoint servers.

Migrate an existing server farm to a 64-bit environment (Office SharePoint Server 2007) This article provides best practice guidance and detailed instructions for moving an existing server farm to a 64-bit environment.

INFO: Recent Technical Articles

echarran — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:33:14 GMT

Here are some of my most recent technical articles that I wrote (and helped write) as part of the VSTS Ranger program as well as the SharePoint Ranger program. As you may know, the ranger programs are essentially field extensions of the product team that provide customers with expert guidance and prescriptive guidance while sending valuable feedback that improves our products to the product groups. In this instance, we worked with Bijan Javidi, Paul Andrew, Chris Keyser and the PnP team to crystallize our ALM guidance for SharePoint custom application development. In many instances, we consumed the PnP SharePoint guidance and attempted to model “good development behavior :)”

Here are the resources:

Solution and Authored Artifact Development Models for SharePoint
Learn to reconcile differences between artifact development and assembly development by combining components into a single version control repository, such as Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server.

Using Team Foundation Server to Develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies Applications
Use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server to support SharePoint application development, and provide an integrated development environment and single source code repository for process activities, integrated progress reporting, and team roles.

SharePoint Server Custom Application Development: Document Workflow Management Project
Read about the real-world design, construction, and deployment of a custom SharePoint Server 2007 application to a mid-market enterprise customer using Team Foundation Server as an ALM platform.

This is from the VSTS Ranger section of the SharePoint ALM Page found here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cc990283.aspx

INFO: SharePoint 2007 VM’s NLTM Authentication Failure

echarran — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:05:47 GMT

I usually build a Virtual Machine that consists of the following for SharePoint development:

Windows Server 2008
SQL Server 2008 SP1
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 with Team Explorer (and VSeWSS 1.3)
Office 2007 SP2
Domain Controller and DNS Services

I use host headers to allow the web applications I create on the VM to run on port 80. However, recently, the ability for me to visit a web application suddenly stopped inexplicably. What happened was that any web application seemed to prompt me for NTLM credentials three consecutive times, but then deny me each time with a blank page. SharePoint’s access denied page was not even rendered. Furthermore, any HTML files (images, txt, html) could not be served from the virtual directory of the web application. I found that I could visit http://localhost:portnumber sites, but no sites that used host headers.

It turns out that a recent security patch delivered through Windows Update caused the issue. There is a security update that causes any “excessive” traffic on the loopback adapter to be shut down. This means that unless you either turn off the loopback adapter security check, or place all DNS names you want to use for web application host headers under a specific registry key, host headers won’t work and you will be denied access. See the KB here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

And the recommended steps below:

Method 1: Specify host names

Note We recommend that you use this method.
To specify the host names that are mapped to the loopback address and can connect to Web sites on your computer, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0
Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
Type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER.
Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type the host name or the host names for the sites that are on the local computer, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the IISAdmin service.

Method 2: Disable the loopback check

Follow these steps:

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

FAQ concerning WSS 3.0 and MOSS SP2 and the April 2009 Cumulative Updates

Stefan_Gossner — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:46:00 GMT

Many of our customers have questions on the relationship between the set of hotfixes released in the Cumulative Updates (CU) for April 2009 and Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Office servers. This post from the Office Sustained Engineering Team will aim at answering those questions.

TechEd in Los Angeles Next Week

pandrew — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:21:00 GMT

I'm presenting at TechEd in Los Angeles next week. If you're at the event I hope you'll come to my talk. It is "OFC204 Easy SharePoint Development with VSeWSS 1.3".

The talk is suitable for developers who currently don't work on SharePoint. I will demo the coding of building a simple SharePoint web parts that accesses SharePoint data lists. I will also talk about the types of applications people build on SharePoint, how you can integrate SharePoint development with application lifecycle management tools and about the first SharePoint development best practices you need to know and tools to help you with them.

Find my talk here: http://www.msteched.com/sessionlist/default.aspx

Or find it here: Mon 5/11 | 2:45 PM-4:00 PM | Room 153

Save up to 80% off the price of exams for MCPs

Code Jedi — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:27:33 GMT

MS Learning is taking up to 80 per cent off the exam price for Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCP) who have not attained a new Microsoft Certification Credential since 1 July, 2007. Until 30 June, MCPs are eligible for a Microsoft Certification exam at the reduced price of US$25. So it is time to up-skill with new Microsoft technologies and stay ahead in today’s market! Check out the website for terms, conditions and more information.

Where to look for information about Updates for SharePoint?

Stefan_Gossner — Wed, 06 May 2009 07:52:00 GMT

We often receive questions about how to install Service Packs or patches, about which patches are available, what they include and so on.

Microsoft has a central page available that covers all kind of Updates topics:

Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologies

Windows Storage Server 2008 and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2

josebda — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:25:00 GMT

I am glad to share that Windows Storage Server 2008 (WSS 2008) and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 have been released to the Microsoft OEM partners.

This is the successor to Windows Storage Server 2003 (WSS 2003) and Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 (WUDSS 2003). I have been working closely with some of the OEM partners for the last few quarters and they will be announcing their Windows Storage Server 2008 appliances over the next several weeks.

In this release, a number of important improvements were introduced including (but not limited to):

Benefits from using Windows Server 2008 as a platform, like the improvements in the TCP/IP stack, SMB2 protocol, Failover Clustering and Server Manager.
New version of Single Instance Store (SIS) file-level deduplication, including support for up to 128 volumes, the ability to un-SIS and improved Failover Clustering support.
New version of the Microsoft iSCSI Software target (3.2), including support for IPv6, updated VSS/VDS providers and improved Failover Cluster support

To learn more, please join the TechNet webcast “Introducing Windows Storage Server 2008” at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032410705, live on May 7th at 8AM PST or on-demand shortly after that.

For additional information, check these web sites:

Official product web site: http://www.microsoft.com/storageserver
Details on Single Instance Storage (SIS): http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/WSS08/SIS.aspx
Details on the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/WSS08/iSCSI.aspx
Windows Storage Server 2008 partners: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/wss08/partners.aspx
Windows Server blog: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/05/05/windows-storage-server-2008-is-here.aspx
Windows Storage Server blog: http://blogs.technet.com/storageserver/archive/2009/05/06/announcing-windows-storage-server-2008.aspx
Jason Buffington's blog: http://blogs.technet.com/jbuff/archive/2009/05/05/announcing-windows-storage-server-2008-waa-hoo.aspx

How to customize the Item Form pages for the SharePoint Lists such as NewForm.aspx, DispForm.aspx and EditForm.aspx

Pavan — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:43:21 GMT

Item form pages are the pages created based on the "Forms.aspx" as the setup page
which is available under 12/Templates/Pages folder.

1. All the templates for the NewForm, EditForm and DispForm (Item Form pages) are
defined in the defaulttemplates.ascx

2. This templates are associated with the List through content type

3. The FormTemplates of the NewForm, EditForm and DispForm are definied in the
content type as folows

<ContentType ID="0x01"
Name="$Resources:Item"
Group="$Resources:List_Content_Types"
Description="$Resources:ItemCTDesc"
Version="0">
<FieldRefs>
<FieldRef ID="{fa564e0f-0c70-4ab9-b863-0177e6ddd247}" Name="Title"
Required="TRUE" ShowInNewForm="TRUE" ShowInEditForm="TRUE"/> 
</FieldRefs>
<XmlDocuments>
<XmlDocument
NamespaceURI="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3/contenttype/forms">
<FormTemplates
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3/contenttype/forms">
<Display>ListForm</Display>
<Edit>ListForm</Edit>
<New>ListForm</New>
</FormTemplates>
</XmlDocument>
</XmlDocuments>
</ContentType>

4. The "ListForm" template which have been in the above Content Type you can find
it in the DefaultTemplates.ascx control

5. Create a custom Defaulttemplates.ascx and create the custom rendering template
based on the ListForm and make ur changes (Including or Excluding control) Note :
ListFieldIteratorControl is the one which renders the Fields for the List in the
item form pages

6. Following are the steps to create custom defaulttemplates.ascx

1. Create a new custom Template: say name: CustDefaultTemplates.ascx and save it
in the folder: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server
extensions\12\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES

a. Open DefaultTemplates.ascx file (located at the same path mentioned above). Copy
the following lines from the file and add to the CustDefaultTemplate.ascx

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="false" %>
<%@Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@Register TagPrefix="SharePoint" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint,
Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls"%>
<%@Register TagPrefix="SPHttpUtility" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint,
Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities"%>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" TagName="ToolBar"
src="~/_controltemplates/ToolBar.ascx" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" TagName="ToolBarButton"
src="~/_controltemplates/ToolBarButton.ascx" %>

b. Now, in DefaultTemplates.ascx look for line:
<SharePoint:RenderingTemplate ID="ListForm" runat="server">

c. Copy this complete node and paste in the CustDefaultTemplate.ascx below the
lines added above.

d. Now, change the ID="ListForm" to any other ID; example: ID="CustListForm" in
CustDefaultTemplate.ascx

e. Save the File CustDefaultTemplate.ascx

7. Create a custom content type and render the "CustomListForm" as the template for
the New, Edit and Display form.

8. Attache the custom content type with the List.

9. Now whenever you create new, Edit and Dispform for this List it will render your
custom template instead of OOb template.

Happy Star Wars Day – May the Fourth be with you!

Code Jedi — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:14:35 GMT

How we demo…

chjohn — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:56:33 GMT

I get a bunch of questions at events etc… on how our team do demos. I don't mean the content of the demos, i mean the actual setup and execution.

You might think this is a simple question to answer, but it is more complex than you think.

First up there is no single answer to this, but it basically boils down to what type of event you are demoing/presenting at.

Here is how we break then down:

Tier A: Big high profile keynotes demos, usually done by or for an executive. Think of TechEd keynotes, PDC keynotes etc… These are demos you never ever want to mess up in :)

Tier B: These are still important demos, but usually a smaller crowd (less than 300). Sometimes for an exec or in front of a bunch of execs.

Tier C: Everything else.

Demo Tip: Don’t tell the owner of the event which bucket you have categorized their event in. They sometimes don't like you telling them they are a Tier B event :)

Physical Hardware:

Tier A & B events usually require a complete set of backup demo gear. This sometimes will save your day & or may never get used at all. Trust me, when the s**t hits the fan you will be counting you self lucky you have it on hand.

For Tier A events we usually get in server grade machines to ensure total stability and performance. Most of the time they just run Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V.

For other event types we tend to need to be more portable & we run most demos on a grunty laptop. Currently we are using HP 8530w machines with Quad core extreme processors, 2 SATA 7200 RPM disks (important to have the 2nd drive for Virtual Machine performance) & 8GB RAM.

If you need 2 machines in the set up then a crossover cable between them for networking is ideal. Not using a hub/switch is good because that is one more single point of failure you want to rule out. Most gigabit network cards can just use a regular network cable, you don't need a cross over cable as they auto detect.

Remember what i said earlier about backup gear. For Tier A & B events we usually run two identical sets of gear.

Software Setup:

For SharePoint demos this usually requires 1x Server with SharePoint, AD, Exchange, OCS etc… on it. We have a library of ready to go Virtual Machines (Hyper-V) that we spin up when needed. We run this image on one of the HP laptops spec’d above & give it 6GB RAM.

For Tier A & B events we sometimes we also need to add another machine, or two, for the Client machine(s). This is usually a Windows 7 machine with Office and IE on it. Joined to the same domain as the server virtual machine. It is usually a physical machine so we get Aero effects etc… working.

Fail over:

If the worst happens you want to fail over to your backup kit quickly. This means it needs to be in exactly the same state your primary kit was in when you flip the video switch over.

How do you do this i hear you ask? … easy … you have someone on the backup kit back stage following mouse and keyboard strokes click for click.

When you switch to back up the other person (we call them our shadow) takes hands off keyboard and mouse and the presenter is back in control.

To make all this work you need some pretty sophisticated KVM technology. This allows two sets of screens, keyboards & mice to be plugged in and working on the same machine at the same time. One set up front on stage … and another back stage.

Demo Prep:

They say preparation is the key. IT IS. When prepping for a Tier A & B event we script every mouse click and movement in a demo script & then learn it. On stage we have a shortened version that you can follow along with in case you get lost.

They key here is that your shadow will have also learnt the script and will be following along. They will be watching you screen and following along … but it is much easier if they know what should be coming next.

Remember, every time you deviate from the script you potentially run into something you were not expecting :)

Demo Tip: Have an automated way to get back to the starting state of your demo. For us this usually means a snapshot in Hyper-V. You must be able to roll back to a good known state time after time. This bit me during my PDC session when my machine was not quite in the right state to begin with & my demo didn't work right.

Demo Tip: For Tier C events where you don’t have a shadow backstage you can use Hyper-V snapshots very effectively. Snapshot the major areas of your demo after you have completed them. In the event of demo meltdown you can simply roll forward to the next snapshot and move on. This is really important if a latter part of your demo relies on a previous part working!

Summary:

I hope this has given you some insight into what goes into some of the demos we give & how seriously we take them.

Final note: For Tier A events it is usually a 500:1 ratio of prep time to demo time. So if you have a 15min demo on stage plan on spending 125 hours in prep. That includes working out what you are going to demo, building it, scripting it, debugging anything, setting up the hardware & software etc… i.e. LOTS of work. For Tier B & C events the ratio drops significantly.

Technet article on how to troubleshoot Content Deployment has been released

Stefan_Gossner — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:36:00 GMT

Many of you might know the Content Deployment - Best Practices article I have written a while ago. Together with the product group I have been working on releasing the troubleshooting tips I have given in this blog article on Technet. I'm proud to anounce that this has now been completed.

You can now find official guidance on this in the following new and updated articles:

MOSS 2007 SP2 - a must have for everyone who uses Variations on his site

Stefan_Gossner — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:04:00 GMT

The Variations feature uses one specific list to link items in the different labels together: the Relationships List.

The caveat is that as soon as an inconsistency exists in this list Variations will no longer work correctly. The problems that can occur can vary. Sometimes it is no longer possible to create a new variation for a page in a label. Sometimes the autospawn feature will fail to create variations of new sites.

As soon as you have a certain amount of sites and pages in your variation system this list becomes more or less unmanagable through the UI as everything is stored in this list in a flat format without folders.

In the past I have worked on several support cases where customers reported issue with Variations which ended up as inconsistencies in the Relationsships List.

Long awaited and finally shipped in SP2 is now a new STSADM command which allows to analyze and fix the Relationships List:

stsadm -o variationsfixuptool -url <source variation site URL> [-scan] [-recurse] [-label] [-fix] [-spawn] [-showrunningjobs]

The granularity of what can be done is pretty good. E.g. it is possible to fix issues just for one specific site in the source variation label. Or for a specific site and all it's subsites.

You can find more details about this tool and all it's parameters in the following Technet article:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd789658.aspx

MOSS 2007 Blob caching and it's limitations

Stefan_Gossner — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:53:00 GMT

A really nice new feature coming with MOSS 2007 is blob caching. A similar feature existed in MCMS 2002 was a predecessor of the WCM layer in MOSS 2007.

Blob caching allows caching of binary objects like images, style sheets and documents on the MOSS front end server machine which heavily reduces the traffic to the SQL backend server as each file has to be downloaded only once to the blob cache per frontend server.

The benefit is that although the items are now retrieved from the MOSS 2007 frontend server the same security and versioning capabilities exist as if the file would only live in the SQL backend database. The blob cache mechanism also ensures that an item in the cache is invalided as soon as the file changes in the backend database. So that is different from other file caches like proxy servers and browser caches.

To enable blob caching you need to modify only one line in the web.config file:

<BlobCache location="C:\blobCache" path="\.(gif|jpg|png|css|js)$" maxSize="10" enabled="false"/>

Just change the false in the enabled attribute to true and update the location attribute to point to a location where sufficient disk space is available. For best performance ensure to set the maxSize attribute to a value that is at least as big as all binary objects in your Web Application.

You can control which file types are cached by modifying the file extension list in the path attribute.

Responsible for the processing of the disk caching logic is the following entry in HttpModules section of the web.config file:

<add name="PublishingHttpModule" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingHttpModule, Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />

This HttpModule implements the required logic that decides whether a file can be served from the disk cache or if it has to be retrieved from the backend database.

Important to know is that even that this HttpModule is located in the WCM Publishing namespace you its functionality is not limited to publishing sites. Other site collection types like team sites can also use this functionality.

Limitations of Blob Caching

1) Blob caching does not support web gardening

One major limitation is that blob caching should not be used with web gardening. The reason is that each process requires exclusive access to it's instance of the blob cache. That means that only one worker process can access a single instance of the blob cache. Web Gardening means that multiple worker processes serve content for the same application pool. Only the first process of a web garden will then benefit from blob caching which would mean that web gardening would cause negative impact on the overall performance.

2) Blob caching cannot be used with host named site collections

The blob caching engine uses the server relative path to decide if an item in the cache belongs to a URL or not. With host named site collections an additional criteria come into play: the "host" http header. The blob cache engine on the other hand is not aware about host named site collections. That means if you have two site collections with items that have the same server relative URL (e.g. items in the style library) but are different the item that was first hit gets cached and served for all other host named site collections as well.

3) A cached item is only available in one frontend server

The blob cache is a per server cache. That means if an item has been cached on server 1 and the next request for the same item hits server 2 then the item has to downloaded again to the second frontend server. That means the load on a SQL backend server can be higher in the startup phase if multiple frontend servers exist as the same item might have to be downloaded multiple times to the different frontend servers.

Windows 7 RC Installed

pandrew — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:43:00 GMT

I updated my primary machine to Windows 7 RC yesterday. One thing I had to search for and update was Messenger settings so it would minimize to the tool tray instead of the task bar. Here's the tip.

On Twitter Now

Toddca — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:17:00 GMT

After being push and prodded by my friends I have decided to join the Twitter community @Toddca. I am still a bit confused on how to follow a thread/conversation but I am sure that is just me. :-)

Now lets see how dumb I can make myself look in 140 characters or less!

SharePoint SDK 1.5 (April 2009) Released!

randalli — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:28:00 GMT

Greetings, SharePoint Developers!

We are excited to announce the availability of the latest updates to the online MSDN Library + the downloadable SDKs for both MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0!

The April 2009 (1.5) Update is available both online and as a download.

> Download the MOSS SDK 1.5 <

> View the MOSS SDK 1.5 Documentation on MSDN <

> Download the WSS SDK 1.5 <

> View the WSS SDK 1.5 Documentation on MSDN <

Which SDK do I need to download?

If you are only writing code that utilizes the Windows SharePoint Services platform, you can download the WSS SDK. However, if you want the superset of all documentation and samples, you should install the MOSS SDK, and then you’ll get all the platform information as well. You don’t need to download both, but you will need to uninstall all previous versions before installing.

Note The SDK 1.5 downloads are full releases that include all previous tools and documentation.

What’s New in this release?

The SDK updates in 1.5 include:

New version of the Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor tool

Bug fixes for field truncation issues and parameter limits.

· Updated documentation files:
What’s New in the MOSS SDK 1.5 Documentation
What’s New in the WSS SDK 1.5 Documentation

While you’re updating your SharePoint development tools…

You can also update the Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint Services. Here is the link to the latest CTP: Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, v1.3 - Mar 2009 CTP. The extensions were updated on 3/17/2009.

Don’t forget to download the user’s guide: version 1.1

Please keep sending us feedback!

We want to make sure you have all the information you expect to find in the SDK. Please reply to this blog entry with comments if you have a request. And don't forget to use the Community Content Wiki on MSDN to annotate the SDK documentation online with your own insights or additional code samples, remarks, etc. Just look toward the bottom of each page online or click the Add Content... button in the top-level menu on MSDN Library pages.

Using the Windows Server 2008 DFSUTIL.EXE command line to manage DFS-Namespaces

josebda — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:24:00 GMT

The most common administration activities related to DFS-Namespaces can be performed using the “DFS Management” MMC. This will show up under “Administrative Tools” after you add the DFS role service in Server Manager. You can also add just the MMC for remote management of a DFS namespace server. You will find that in Server Manager, under Add Feature, Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT), Role Administration Tools, File Services Tools.

Another way to manage DFS-N is to use DFSUTIL.EXE, which is a command line tool. There are plenty of options and you can perform pretty much any DFS-related activity, from creating a namespace to adding links to exporting the entire configuration to troubleshooting. This can be very handy for automating tasks by writing scripts or batch files. DFSUTIL.EXE is an in-box tool in Windows Server 2008 (as with the MMC, it is loaded with the DFS-Namespaces role service or with the RSAT for File Services Tools).

Please find below a table with a comprehensive list of the parameters and options available in DFSUTIL.EXE for Windows Server 2008. Please note that DFSUTIL.EXE had a different format for parameters in Windows Server 2003, but that old syntax still works in Windows Server 2008. The old syntax is listed in the last column, prefixed by “OLD:”. There is also an old DFSCMD.EXE, which still works, which is also mentioned prefixed by “OLD:”.

Parameters	Description	Usage and Exampes	Subcommands, notes and old syntax
<None>	Manages DFS Namespaces, servers and clients	Dfsutil Dfsutil /oldcli Dfsutil /?	SUBCOMMANDS: Root - Displays,creates,removes,imports,exports namespace roots. Link - Displays, creates, removes, or moves folders (links). Target - Displays,creates,modifies folder targets (link targets). Property - Displays or modifies a folder target or namespace server. Client - Displays or modifies client information or registry keys. Server - Displays or modifies namespace configuration on the server. Diag - Perform diagnostics or view dfsdirs/dfspath. Domain - Displays all domain-based namespaces in a domain. Cache - Displays or flushes the client cache. NOTES: * Use the Dfsutil /oldcli command to view the original Dfsutil syntax. * Use the /? parameter after any command to display help for the command. * Dfsutil commands use the original Distributed File System terminology, with updated DFS Namespaces terminology provided as explanation for most commands. * If you specify at the end of a command an object (such as a namespace server) about which you want information, most commands will display the information without requiring further parameters or commands. For example, when using the Dfsutil Root command, you can append a namespace root to the command to view information about the root.
Root	Displays information about the namespace root. Dfsutil Root commands support creating, removing, importing or exporting namespace roots.	dfsutil root <\\server\share> [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <\\server\share>: UNC path to the namespace. Verbose: Show additional information while the tool is executing. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 dfsutil root \\srv1\StandaloneNameSpace2	SUBCOMMANDS: AddDom - Creates a new domain-based namespace. AddStd - Creates a new stand-alone namespace. Remove - Removes the namespace. Export - Exports the namespace configuration to a file. Import - Imports the namespace from another namespace or a file. ForceSync - Perform a Forced sync on the target of a namespace. OLD: dfsutil /Root:<DfsName> /View [/Verbose]
Root AddDom	Creates a new domain based DFS namespace.	dfsutil root adddom <\\server\share> [<Version>] [<Comment>] PARAMETERS: <\\server\share>: UNC path to the namespace. <Comment>: Specifies an adminstrator comment for the namespace. <Version>: Version of the namespace, possible values are V1 or V2. V1 - Creates a Windows 2000 Server mode namespace. V2 - Creates a Windows Server 2008 mode namespace. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root addDom \\srv1\DomainNameSpace1 "This is V2 namespace" dfsutil root addDom \\srv2\DomainNameSpace2 dfsutil root addDom \\srv3\DomainNameSpace3 V1 "This is V1 Root"	NOTES: 1. To add new root targets, use "dfsutil target add" command. 2. Default setting for creation of new namespace is V2. OLD: dfsutil /AddFtRoot /Server:<ServerName> /Share:<ShareName> /Comment:<Comment>
Root AddStd	Creates a new stand-alone namespace.	dfsutil root addstd <\\server\share> [<Comment>] PARAMETERS: <\\server\share>: UNC Path to the namespace on the namespace server. <Comment>: Specifies an adminstrator comment for the namespace. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root addstd \\srv1\StandaloneNamesapce1 "Standalone Root" dfsutil root addstd \\srv2\StandaloneNamesapce2	OLD: dfsutil /AddStdRoot /Server:<ServerName> /Share:<ShareName> /Comment:<Comment>
Root Remove	Deletes the namespace root.	dfsutil root remove <\\server\share> PARAMETERS: <\\server\share>: UNC path to the namespace on the namespace server. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root remove \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 dfsutil root remove \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace2	OLD: dfsutil /RemStdRoot /Server:<ServerName> /Share:<ShareName> OLD: dfsutil /RemFtRoot /Server:<ServerName> /Share:<ShareName> OLD: dfsutil /RemFtRoot:<RootName> /Server:<ServerName> /Share:<ShareName>
Root Export	Exports the namespace configuration information to a file.	dfsutil root export <\\server\share> <filename> [Verbose] [DownLevel] PARAMETERS: <\\server\share>: UNC path to the namespace on the namespace server. <filename>: Name of the file that will store the namespace configuration in XML file format. Verbose: Displays detailed status of the export process. Downlevel: Saves the export file as a text file that is compatible with the version of Dfsutil that is included with the Windows Server 2003 Support Tools. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root export \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 C:\dir1\a.txt downlevel dfsutil root export \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1 C:\dir1\docroot.xml	OLD: dfsutil /Root:<DfsName> /Export:<File> [/Verbose]
Root Import	Imports folders, folder targets and configuration information for a namespace from a file or another namespace.	dfsutil root import	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Imports and overwrites the existing namespace. Merge - Imports and merges with the existing namespace. Compare - Compares the namespace with another namespace. BlobSize - Displays the approximate AD DS blob size.
Root Import Set	Imports folders, folder targets and configuration information for a namespace from a file or another namespace and overwrites existing folders and folder targets.	dfsutil root import set <\\srcserver\share>\|<filename> <\\destserver\share> [NoBackup] [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <\\srcserver\share>: UNC path to the namespace from which you want to import the configuration. <\\destserver\share> UNC path to the namespace to which you want to import the configuration. <filename>: Name of the xml file from which you want to import the namespace configuration. NoBackup: Does not create backup file to restore overwritten folders and folder targets. Verbose: Displays detailed status of the import process. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root import set \\contoso.com\Namespace1\\contoso.com\Namespace2 NoBackup dfsutil root import set C:\dir1\docroot.txt \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1	OLD: dfsutil /Root:<DfsName> /Import:<File> /Set\|Merge\|Compare [/Verbose] [/NoBackup]
Root Import Merge	Imports folders, folder targets and configuration information for a namespace from a file and merges existing folders and folder targets.	dfsutil root import merge <filename> <\\destserver\share> [NoBackup] [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <\\destserver\share> : UNC path to the namespace to which you want to import the configuration. <filename> : Name of the xml file from which you want to import the namespace configuration. NoBackup : Does not create backup file to restore overwritten folders and folder targets. Verbose : Displays detailed status of the import process. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root import Merge C:\dir1\docroot.txt \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1	OLD: dfsutil /Root:<DfsName> /Import:<File> /Set\|Merge\|Compare [/Verbose] [/NoBackup]
Root Import Compare	Compares a namespace on one server with the namespace configuration on another server or in a file.	dfsutil root import compare <\\srcserver\share>\|<filename> <\\destserver\share> [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <\\srcserver\share> : UNC path to the namespace on the first namespace server that you want to compare. <\\destserver\share>: UNC path to the namespace on the second namespace server that you want to compare. <filename> : Name of the XML file that contains the namespace configuration that you want to compare. Verbose : Displays detailed status of the import process. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root import compare \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace2 dfsutil root import compare C:\dir1\docroot.txt \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1	OLD: dfsutil /Root:<DfsName> /ImportRoot:<MasterDfsName> /Mirror\|Compare [/Verbose] [/NoBackup]
Root Import BlobSize	Displays the approximate size of Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Blob for the specified namespace import file.	dfsutil root import blobsize <filename> PARAMETERS: <filename> : Name of the XML file that stores the configuration of the namespace you want to analyze. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root import blobsize docroot.xml	OLD: dfsutil /Root:<DfsName> /Import:<File> /BlobSize
Root ForceSync	To initiate a forced DFS metadata resync operation on the DFS root target of a specified domain-based namespace using the Windows Server 2008 mode or standalone DFS namespace ForceSync command can be used .This is not supported on Windows Server 2003 based Namespaces.	dfsutil root forcesync <\\server\share> PARAMETERS: <\\server\share>: Server - Target of the namespace Forcesync will be performed on this target. share - Target share. EXAMPLES: dfsutil root forcesync \\standaloneserver\StandaloneNamespace1 dfsutil root forcesync \\domainnamespaceserver\DomainNamespace2	NOTES: Do not specify <\\domain\root>, use <\\roottarget\share>.
Link	Displays the information about the link(folder) and link(folder) targets. Link commands are used to create a new link, delete a link or move the links.	dfsutil link <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC Path of DFS link. EXAMPLES: dfsutil link \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1\link1 dfsutil link \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1\link1	SUBCOMMANDS: Add - Creates a new folder. Remove - Removes the specified folder. Move - Moves the folder to another location in the namespace.
Link Add	Adds a folder (link) to the specified namespace.	dfsutil link add <DfsPath> <\\server\sharepath> [Restore] [<Comment>] PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC Path of DFS link to be created. <\\server\sharepath>: UNC Path to the share on the Target Server. Restore: Option to restore a DFS link. [<Comment>]: Comment for the Link EXAMPLES: dfsutil link add \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1\link1 \\server\share "This is a new Link" dfsutil link add \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1\dir\link1 \\server\share	NOTES: 1. Folders can be created with the restore option . In this case, the folder target does not need to be a SMB path. Use this for namespace paths ( \\domain\namespace ), NFS shares or any folder target that you do not want to verify. 2. To add another folder target to an existing folder, use the command "Dfsutil Target Add". OLD: dfsutil /AddLink /Path:<DfsPath> /Server:<LinkTargetServer> /Share:<TargetShare> /Comment:<Comment> OLD: Dfscmd /add \\dfsname\dfsshare\path \\server\share\path [/restore]
Link Remove	Deletes the folder (link) and any associated folder targets (link targets).	dfsutil link remove <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC Path of DFS link to remove. EXAMPLES: dfsutil link remove \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1\link1	OLD: dfsutil /RemoveLink /Path:<DfsPath> /Server:<LinkTargetServer> /Share:<TargetShare> OLD: Dfscmd /remove \\dfsname\dfsshare\path \\server\share\path
Link Move	Moves a folder (link) to another location in the namespace. When you specify a folder that contains other folder, all subfolders are moved as well. If a folder already exists in the new location, you can use the Replace option to delete the existing folder and replace it with the folder you want to move. You cannot move folders between namespaces.	dfsutil link move <OldDfsPath> <NewDfsPath> [Replace] PARAMETERS: <OldDfsPath>: The UNC path of the folder to move. <NewDfsPath>: The UNC path of the new location in the namespace for the folder. Replace: Replaces an existing folder with the folder that you are moving. EXAMPLES: Dfsutil Link Move \\contoso.com/namespace1/programs \\contoso.com\namespace1\tools Dfsutil Link Move \\srv1\namespace1\docs \\srv1\namespace1/public/docs	OLD: Dfscmd /move \\dfsname\dfsshare\path1 \\dfsname\dfsshare\path2 [/force]
Target	Displays information about the folder target (link target) or namespace server (root target). Target commands are used to add, remove or modify the properties of a folder target or namespace server.	dfsutil target [<DfsPath>] <\\server\sharepath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC Path of DFS link. <\\server\sharepath>: UNC Path to the share on the Target Server. EXAMPLES: dfsutil target \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1\link1 \\mytargetserver\LinkTarget dfsutil target \\mytargetserver\RootTarget	SUBCOMMANDS: Add - Adds a new folder target. Remove - Removes the folder target. NOTES: To view properties of root target do not specify <DfsPath>. OLD: Dfscmd /view \\dfsname\dfsshare [/partial \| /full \| /batch \|\| /batchrestore]
Target Add	Adds a folder target (link target) to an existing folder (link), or a namespace server (root target) to an existing namespace root.	dfsutil target add [<DfsPath>] <\\server\sharepath> [Restore] PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC Path of DFS Link. <\\server\sharepath>: UNC Path to the share on the Target Server. Restore: Restore option is used when link target is non-SMB path. EXAMPLES: dfsutil target add \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1\link1 \\mytargetserver\LinkTarget dfsutil target add \\mytargetserver\RootTarget	NOTES: 1. To add new namespace servers to an existing namespace root, omit <DfsPath>. 2. To create new namespace, use the "Dfsutil Root" command with the Adddom or Addstd parameters. 3. Folder targets can be created with the restore option. In this case,the folder target does not need to be a SMB path. Use this for namespace paths ( \\domain\namespace ), NFS shares or any folder target that you do not want to verify. OLD: Dfscmd /map \\dfsname\dfsshare\path \\server\share\path [comment] [/restore]
Target Remove	Deletes a folder target (link target) from a folder (link), or a namespace server (root target) from a namespace.	dfsutil target remove [<DfsPath>] <\\server\sharepath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: DfsPath of a LinkTarget. <\\server\sharepath>: server is Link or Root Target Server and share is Target Share EXAMPLES: Dfsutil Target Remove \\contoso.com\namespace1\programs \\srv2\apps Dfsutil Target Remove \\srv1\namespaceshare	NOTES: 1. To delete a root target (namespace server) do not specify <DfsPath>. If the namespace server is the only namespace server in the namespace, then the namespace will be deleted. 2. To remove all the namespace servers, use the "Dfsutil Root Remove" command. OLD: Dfscmd /unmap \\dfsname\dfsshare\path
Property	Displays or modifies the properties of a folder target (link target) or namespace server (root target).	dfsutil property	SUBCOMMANDS: Sitecosting - Displays or modifies site costing for a namespace. RootScalability - Displays or modifies the namsespace polling mode. ABDE - Enable/Disable/View ABDE property of a Namespace. Insite - Displays or modifies the in-site property. TargetfailBack - Displays or modifies client fail back. ACL - Set/Get Security Information on the folder. State - Displays or modifies a folder target or namespace server. TTL - Displays or changes client referral caching. PriorityRank - Displays or changes the ordering method (priority rank). PriorityClass - Displays or changes the target priority. Comment - Set/View the comment for DFS namesapace or DFS link.
Property Sitecosting	Displays whether site costing is enabled, and enables or disables it on the specified namespace. Enable site costing to force clients to evaluate inter-site link costs and choose the lowest cost folder target. Site costing is disabled by default.	dfsutil property sitecosting <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: Displays whether site costing is enabled on the specified namespace. EXAMPLES: dfsutil property sitecosting enable \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 dfsutil property sitecosting enable \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Enable - Enable this property on the namespace. Disable - Disable this property on the namespace. NOTES: 1) The path specified must be a namespace root, not a folder. 2) This feature is only supported on servers Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008. 3) Domain Controller (DC) site costing is controlled separately on each DC using the following registry key:HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dfs\Parameters\SiteCostedReferrals DWORD 1 or 0 OLD: dfsutil /Root:<DfsName> /SiteCosting /Enable\|Disable\|Display [/Verbose]
Property RootScalability	RootScalability is an expert-only command to increase performance of large deployments of DFS namespaces. When set, network traffic among DFS root servers is kept to a minimum. In addition, there will be less traffic between the primary DC and DFS servers.The drawback is that users may see outdated information from dfs servers at times.	dfsutil property rootscalability <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: Path of a root. EXAMPLES: dfsutil property RootScalability \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Enable - Enable this property on the namespace. Disable - Disable this property on the namespace. NOTES: 1) The path specified must be a root, not a link. 2) This has no effect on standalone roots. 3) This feature is only supported on Windows Server 2003 and higher. 4) When RootScalability is enabled, it is not uncommon to see an event log message such as, "DFS could not access its private data from the DS...". While this error may still indicate a problem in DS connectivity, typically this occurs because the nearest DC has outdated DFS information (expected behavior when RootScalability is enabled). OLD: dfsutil /Root:<DfsName> /RootScalability /Enable\|Disable\|Display [/Verbose]
Property ABDE	ABDE command is a quick way to check if Access Based Directory Enumeration is enabled or disabled on the NameSpace. This is the property of domain-based namespace using the Windows Server 2008 mode or Standalone Namespaces in Windows Server 2008.	dfsutil property abde <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC path to the DFS namesapace. EXAMPLES: dfsutil property ABDE \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 dfsutil property ABDE \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Enable - Enable this property on the namespace. Disable - Disable this property on the namespace. NOTES: When Access Based Directory Enumeration is enabled, the users can view their directories only if they have permissions. Links will have Security Descriptors associated with them. The users can view the links only for which they have permissions in the Security Descriptor.
Property Insite	Insite can be used to make sure clients access only those replicas that are in the same site as the client. It can also be used to disable such behavior.	dfsutil property insite <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC path of a DFS namespace or DFS link. EXAMPLES: dfsutil property Insite \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 dfsutil property Insite \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Enable - Enable this property on the namespace or link. Disable - Disable this property on the namespace or link. NOTES: 1) The path specified may be a root or a link. 2) Access of Domain Controllers may be site-sensitive as well. That, however, is a DC specific property that must be enabled/disabled in the registry of relevant DC(s): HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dfs\Parameters\InsiteReferrals: DWORD 1 or 0 OLD: dfsutil /Path:<DfsPath> /InSite /Enable\|Disable\|Display [/Verbose]
Property TargetfailBack	Displays TargetfailBack property of root or link TargetFailback is an expert-only command to make sure clients failback to target servers that are closer to them after having failed over to a target that's potentially out of site.	dfsutil property targetfailback <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC path of a DFS namesapace or DFS link. EXAMPLES: dfsutil property TargetfailBack \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 dfsutil property TargetfailBack \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Enable - Enable this property on the namespace or link. Disable - Disable this property on the namespace or link. NOTES: 1) The path specified may be a root or a link. 2) This feature is only supported on Windows Server 2003 SP1 and higher. 3) The clients must be running a newer operating system to take advantage of this feature. 4) You may also enable/disable TargetFailback on SYSVOL/NETLOGON paths. That, however, is a DC specific property that must be set/reset in the registry of relevant DC(s): HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dfs\Parameters\SysvolNetlogonTargetFailback: DWORD 1 or 0 OLD: dfsutil /Path:<DfsPath> /TargetFailback /Enable\|Disable\|Display [/Verbose]
Property ACL	ACL command is a quick way to set or get the ACLs on the link.	dfsutil property acl <DfsPath> [ShowSDDL] PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC Path of DFS link. ShowSddl: Option to display SDDL. EXAMPLES: dfsutil property ACL \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1\link1 dfsutil property ACL \\standaloneserver\Namespace1\link1 showsddl	SUBCOMMANDS: Grant - Grant permissions for a user or group(trustee). Deny - Deny Permissions for user or group(trustee). Revoke - Revoke granted permissions for user or group. Set - Set Security Information on the folder from SDDL input. Reset - Remove the Security Descriptor associated with the folder. Control - Set Security control Information on the folder.
Property State	Displays State of Root/RootTarget or Link/Link target	dfsutil property state <DfsPath> [<\\server\share>] PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC path of a DFS namesapace or DFS link. <\\server\share>: server is Target Server and share is share on Target Server. EXAMPLES: dfsutil property State \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1\link1 \\server\share dfsutil property State \\namespaceserver\Namespace2	SUBCOMMANDS: Online - Set state of root target or folder target to Online. Offline - Set state of root target or folder target to Offline. NOTES: 1. In case of the Windows Server 2003, the state of the DFS namespace root or root target can not be changed to online or offline. But the state of the link and the link targets can be changed. 2. In Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2008 the state of the DFS namespace root and root target can be changed to offline or online. OLD: dfsutil /Path:<DfsPath> /State /Server:<RootOrLinkTargetServer> /Share:<TargetShare>
Property TTL	Displays the Timeout value of root or link.	dfsutil property ttl <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC path of a DFS namesapace or DFS link. EXAMPLES: dfsutil property ttl \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set this property of DFS namesapace or DFS link. OLD: dfsutil /Enable\|Disable\|Display [/Verbose] /Path:<DfsPath> {/TTL:<Timeout> /Set}\|{/TTL /Display} [/Verbose]
Property PriorityRank	TargetPriorityRank is a useful way to control client accesses to dfs target servers.	dfsutil property priorityrank <DfsPath> <\\server\share> [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC path of a DFS namesapace or DFS link. <\\server\share>: server is Target Server and share is share on Target Server. Verbose: Show additional information while the tool is executing EXAMPLES: dfsutil property PriorityRank \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 \\srv1\DomainNameSpace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set this property of the root or link target. OLD: dfsutil /Path:<DfsPath> /TargetPriority /Server:<TargetServerName> /Share:<TargetShare> [/Display] [/Set] [/PriorityRank:<Rank> [/PriorityClass:<SiteCostNormal\|GlobalHigh\|SiteCostHigh\|Site CostLow\|GlobalLow>] [/Verbose]
Property PriorityClass	TargetPriorityClass is a useful way to control client accesses to DFS target servers.	dfsutil property priorityclass <DfsPath> <\\server\share> [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC path of a DFS namesapace or DFS link. <\\server\share>: server is Target Server and share is share on Target Server. Verbose: Show additional information while the tool is executing EXAMPLES: dfsutil property PriorityClass \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1 \\srv1\DomainNameSpace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set this property of the root or link target. NOTES: 1) The Path can be a Domain based or a Standalone DFS path. It must lead to a root or a link. 2) TargetPriority can be used in conjuction with site costing, insite and the like. 3) GlobalPriorityClass will take precedence over the site cost. The default behavior is SiteCostNormalPriorityClass. OLD: dfsutil /Path:<DfsPath> /TargetPriority /Server:<TargetServerName> /Share:<TargetShare> [/Display] [/Set] [/PriorityRank:<Rank> [/PriorityClass:<SiteCostNormal\|GlobalHigh\|SiteCostHigh\|Site CostLow\|GlobalLow>] [/Verbose]
Property Comment	Sets or displays the administrator comment for a namespace or link (folder).	dfsutil property comment <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: UNC Path of DFS Root or DFS link EXAMPLES: dfsutil property comment \\contoso.com\DomainNamespace1\link1 dfsutil property comment \\srv1\StandaloneNamespace1	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set this property for DFS namesapace or DFS link.
Client	Client commands are used to modify or view the client registry keys or display the siteinformation.	dfsutil client	SUBCOMMANDS: Registry - Set/Reset/View registry keys. SiteInfo - View the Siteinformation. Property - Displays or modifies local machine's cache information.
Client Registry	Registry commands can modify or display client registry keys or display siteinformation.	dfsutil client registry	SUBCOMMANDS: ProviderCacheTimeout - Set/View the ProviderCacheTimeoutInMinutes key. DfsDcNameDelay - Set/Reset/View the DfsDcNameDelay key.
Client Registry ProviderCacheTimeout	ProviderCacheTimeout specifies the length of time that a multiple UNC provider (MUP) cache entry is held until it is reevaluated.	dfsutil client registry providercachetimeout <Client> PARAMETERS: <Client> : client whose registry key ProviderCacheTimeoutInMinutes has to be displayed.	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set the ProviderCacheTimeoutInMinutes key. OLD: dfsutil /ProviderCacheTimeoutInMinutes[:<Value>] /Server:<Name> /Display\|/Set
Client Registry DfsDcNameDelay	Display or modify the registry key DfsDcNameDelay in the client.	dfsutil client registry dfsdcnamedelay <Client> PARAMETERS: <Client> : client whose registry key DfsDcNameDelay has to be displayed.	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set the DfsDcNameDelay key. Reset - Reset the DfsDcNameDelay key. OLD: dfsutil /DfsDcNameDelay[:<Value>] /Server:<Name> /Display\|/Set
Client SiteInfo	Display the site information assosciated with the client.	dfsutil client siteinfo <MachineName>\|<IpAddress> PARAMETERS: <MachineName>: Machine Name of the client whose site information has to be displayed. <IpAddress>: IpAddress of the client whose site information has to be displayed.	OLD: dfsutil /SiteName:<MachineName or IpAddress>
Client Property	Displays or modifies local machine's cached information.	dfsutil client property	SUBCOMMANDS: State - Set/View state of target for the dfs namespace or link.
Client Property State	Displays or modifies target state of a dfs namespace or link. Only the local machine's cached information is displayed or modified.	dfsutil client property state <dfspath>	SUBCOMMANDS: Active - Set active target for the dfs namespace or link.
Server	Displays all the roots hosted on the server. Server command can also be used to modify the registry keys in the server.	dfsutil server <Server> PARAMETERS: <Server>: Server on which the roots are hosted.	SUBCOMMANDS: Registry Set/Reset/View registry keys of server. OLD: dfsutil /Server:<MachineName> /View
Server Registry	Registry commands can modify or display the registry keys on the server.	dfsutil server registry	SUBCOMMANDS: DfsDnsConfig Set/Reset/View DfsDnsConfig key in server registry. LdapTimeoutValue Set/View LdapTimeoutValueInSeconds key in the registry. SyncInterval Set/View SyncIntervalinSeconds key in server registry. SiteCostedReferrals Set/Reset/View SiteCostedReferrals key in the registry. InsiteReferrals Set/Reset/View InsiteReferrals key in server registry. PreferLogonDC Set/Reset/View PreferLogonDC key in server registry.
Server Registry DfsDnsConfig	Modifies or displays the registry key DfsDnsConfig in the server.	dfsutil server registry dfsdnsconfig <Server> PARAMETERS: <Server> : The server whose registry key DfsDnsConfig has to be displayed.	SUBCOMMANDS: Set Set DfsDnsConfig key in server registry. Reset Reset DfsDnsConfig key in server registry. NOTE: DfsDnsConfig when set to 1, specifies that this server will use fully qualified domain names (FQDN) in referrals. When set to 0 (the default), specifies that this server will use NetBIOS names in referrals. OLD: dfsutil /DfsDnsConfig[:<Value>] /Server:<Name> /Display\|/Set
Server Registry LdapTimeoutValue	Modifies or displays the registry key LdapTimeoutValueInSeconds in the server. This is the time-out value (in seconds) for DFS LDAP calls.	dfsutil server registry ldaptimeoutvalue <Server> PARAMETERS: <Server> : The server whose registry key LdapTimeoutValueInSeconds has to be displayed. <value> : The default value is 30 seconds, the minimum value is 3 seconds and the maximum value is 300 seconds (5 minutes).	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set LdapTimeoutValueInSeconds key in server registry. OLD: dfsutil /LdapTimeoutValueInSeconds[:<Value>] /Server:<Name> /Display\|/Set
Server Registry SyncInterval	This key specifies how often domain-based root servers and domain controllers poll the primary domain controller (PDC) emulator master to obtain updated DFS metadata.	dfsutil server registry syncinterval <Server> PARAMETERS: <Server> : The server whose registry key SyncIntervalinSeconds has to be displayed.	SUBCOMMANDS: Set Set SyncIntervalinSeconds key in server registry. OLD: dfsutil /SyncIntervalinSeconds[:<Value>] /Server:<Name> /Display\|/Set
Server Registry SiteCostedReferrals	When set to 0 (the default), SYSVOL and NETLOGON referrals contain domain controllers in the client’s site listed first in random order, followed by a random list of domain controllers. When set to 1, SYSVOL and NETLOGON referrals sort domain controllers in order of lowest cost. Domain controllers in the clients site are at the top of the referral list, followed by domain controllers sorted by lowest cost.	dfsutil server registry sitecostedreferrals <Server> PARAMETERS: <Server> : The server whose registry key SiteCostedReferrals has to be displayed.	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set SiteCostedReferrals key in server registry. Reset - Reset SiteCostedReferrals key in server registry. OLD: dfsutil /SiteCostedReferrals[:<Value>] /Server:<Name> /Display\|/Set
Server Registry InsiteReferrals	If this registry key is set, the server the provides referrals which are in the same site as that of the client.	dfsutil server registry insitereferrals <Server>	SUBCOMMANDS: Set - Set InsiteReferrals key in server registry. Reset - Reset InsiteReferrals key in server registry. OLD: dfsutil /InsiteReferrals[:<Value>] /Server:<Name> /Display\|/Set
Server Registry PreferLogonDC	When PreferLogonDc registry key is set, the logon server will be put on the top of the referral list.	dfsutil server registry preferlogondc <Server>	SUBCOMMANDS: Set Set PreferLogonDC key in server registry. Reset Reset PreferLogonDC key in server registry. OLD: dfsutil /PreferLogonDC[:<Value>] /Server:<Name> /Display\|/Set
Diag	Diag is used to perform diagnostics on DFS Namespace.	dfsutil diag	SUBCOMMANDS: UnMapDomRoot - Delete obsolete references to Domain based root target. Clean - Remove reference to obsolete root from host machine. Viewdfsdirs - List/Remove all DFS reparse directories in a volume. Viewdfspath - Resolve a DfsPath to a destination UNC path.
Diag UnMapDomRoot	UnMapDomRoot deletes DFS references to an obsolete domain based root target. This is a special problem repair command.	dfsutil diag unmapdomroot <\\domain\root> <\\rootreplica/share> [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <\\domain\root>: DfsName containing domain name and root name. <\\roottargetserver\RootTargetShare>: RootTargetServer - Name of the root target server to unmap. Should be exactly as it appears in DFS target info. RootTargetShare - Name of the root Target share to unmap Verbose: Show additional information while the tool is executing EXAMPLES: dfsutil diag unmapdomroot \\contoso.com\RootName \\myroottarget\RootTargetShare
Diag Clean	Clean is a special problem repair command to remove a reference to an obsolete root from a host machine. These changes will be done in the given system's registry.	dfsutil diag clean <\\server\share> [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <\\server\share>: server - Name of the system hosting the root to be cleaned share - Name of the Domain based or Standalone root to remove. Verbose: Show additional information while the tool is executing EXAMPLES: dfsutil diag clean \\mytargetserver\ShareName	OLD: dfsutil /Clean /Server:<ServerName> /Share:<ShareName>
Diag Viewdfsdirs	ViewDfsDirs lists all existing DFS reparse directories in a volume. Those directories can also be deleted using the optional argument RemoveReparse.	dfsutil diag viewdfsdirs <drive> [removereparse] [Verbose] PARAMETERS: <drive>: Drive letter of the volume to scan (with colon at the end). RemoveReparse: Remove all reparse directories as they are listed. Verbose: Show additional information while the tool is executing	NOTES: 1 - The volume drive letter must contain a colon at the end. 2 - This command will always enumerate dfs reparse points starting at the root of the volume. It is not possible to specify a directory below the root of the volume as a starting point OLD: dfsutil /ViewDfsDirs:<VolumeName> [/RemoveReparse] [/Verbose]
Diag Viewdfspath	ViewDfsPath can be used to resolve a DfsPath to a destination UNC path. The DfsPath can be a domain based/standalone DFS Namespace or even path to the link. This command is supported only in Windows Vista or above.	dfsutil diag viewdfspath <DfsPath> PARAMETERS: <DfsPath>: Path of DFS root or link to be resolved. EXAMPLES: dfsutil diag ViewDfsPath \\domain\docs (will be resolved as \\servername\share) dfsutil diag ViewDfsPath \\domain\docs\link1 (will be resolved as \\linktarget\share)	OLD: dfsutil /DisplayDfsPath:<DfsPath>
Domain	Domain command is a quick way to view all namespaces in the domain.	dfsutil domain <domain>	OLD: dfsutil /Domain:<DomainName> /View
Cache	Cache commands are used to display or flush the client cache.	dfsutil cache	SUBCOMMANDS: Domain - View/Flush the Domain cache. Referral - View/Flush the Referral cache. Provider - View/Flush the Provider cache.
Cache Domain	Domain commands are used to display or flush the domain cache.	dfsutil cache domain	SUBCOMMANDS: Flush - Flush the Domain cache. OLD: dfsutil /SpcInfo OLD: dfsutil /SpcFlush
Cache Referral	Referral commands are used to display or flush the Referral cache.	dfsutil cache referral [<Level>]	SUBCOMMANDS: Flush - Flush the Referral cache. OLD: dfsutil /PktInfo OLD: dfsutil /PktFlush
Cache Provider	Provider commands are used to display or flush the provider cache.	dfsutil cache provider	SUBCOMMANDS: Flush - Flush the Provider cache. OLD: dfsutil /PurgeMupCache OLD: dfsutil /DisplayMupCache