14 March, 2013

What is Blob Cache? How to configure it ?

SharePoint Server 2010 provides three types of caches that help improve the speed at which Web pages load in the browser: the BLOB cache, the page output cache, and the object cache.
SharePoint Server 2010 provides a disk-based cache that stores files that are used by Web pages to help them load quickly in the browser, and reduces the load on the database server when it uses those files. These files are known as binary large objects (BLOBs), and the cache is known as the BLOB cache.
Configuring cache settings for a Web application.
You enable and configure the BLOB cache, and make configuration changes to the page output cache profiles and the object cache in the Web.config file in the Web application to which you want to apply those changes. The changes you make to the Web.config file will be applied to all site collections within the Web application
Note : Please take a backup of the web.config before you make any changes to the file

To configure BLOB cache settings

1.      Verify that you have the following administrative credentials: You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to configure the BLOB cache settings.
2.      Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
3.      In Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, in the Connections pane, click the plus sign (+) next to the server name that contains the Web application, and then click the plus sign next to Sites to view the Web application or applications that have been created.
4.      Right-click the name of the Web application for which you want to configure the disk-based cache, and then click Explore. Windows Explorer opens, with the directories for the selected Web application listed.
5.      Right-click web.config, and then click Open.
6.      If the Windows dialog box appears, select Select a program from a list of installed programs, and then click OK.
7.      In the Open With dialog box, click Notepad, and then click OK.
8.      In the web.config Notepad file, find the following line: <BlobCache location="" path="\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|jpe|jfif|bmp|dib|tif|tiff|ico|png|wdp|hdp|css|js|asf|avi|flv|m4v|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|rm|rmvb|wma|wmv)$" maxSize="10" enabled="false" />
9.      In this line, change the location attribute to specify a directory that has enough space to accommodate the cache size.
Microsoft strongly recommends that you specify a directory that is not on the same drive as where either the server operating system swap files or server log files are stored.

10.  To add or remove file types from the list of file types to be cached, for the path attribute, modify the regular expression to include or remove the appropriate file extension. If you add file extensions, make sure to separate each file type with a pipe (|)
11.    To change the size of the cache, type a new number for maxSize. The size is expressed in gigabytes (GB), and 10 GB is the default. 
It is recommended that you not set the cache size smaller than 10 GB. When you set the cache size, make sure to specify a number large enough to provide a buffer at least 20 percent bigger than the estimated size of the content that will be stored in the cache.

12.  To enable the BLOB cache, change the enabled attribute, from "false" to "true".
13.  Save the Notepad file, and then close it.
When you save a change to the web.config file, the Web application in Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 automatically recycles. This recycling can cause a brief interruption in service to sites contained in that Web application, and users can lose session state

When you enable the BLOB cache on your front-end Web server, you reduce the load on the SharePoint Server 2010 database server created by read requests from Web browsers.

13 March, 2013

SharePoint 2013 Build Numbers


This will come very handy while installing and troubleshooting 2013

Build NumberBuild NameComponentInformation LinkDownload LinkNotes
15.0.4128.1014 Beta SharePoint Foundation 2013   Download Bugs, Notes, & Regressions
15.0.4128.1014 Beta SharePoint Server 2013   Download  
15.0.4128.1014 Beta Project Server 2013   Download  
     
​15.0.4420.1017 ​RTM ​​SharePoint Foundation 2013  Download ​ Bugs, Notes, & Regressions
​​15.0.4420.1017 ​RTM ​SharePoint Server 2013  Download 
​​15.0.4420.1017 ​RTM ​Project Server 2013  Download 
     
​15.0.4433.1506 ​December 2012 Hotfix ​SharePoint Server 2013 KB2752058 Download ​ Bugs, Notes, & Regressions
​15.0.4433.1506 ​December 2012 Hotfix ​SharePoint Server 2013 (coreserver) KB2752001 Download 


Courtesy - http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=346

12 March, 2013

Forgot your Sharepoint Farm passphrase ?

This can happen to you . But no worries You can’t retrieve it, but you can reset it using PowerShell.

Make sure the account you are logged in as is
  • A farm admin and
  • local admin on server
$passphrase = ConvertTo-SecureString -asPlainText –Force
Set-SPPassPhrase -PassPhrase $passphrase –Confirm




For more info : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607568.aspx

11 March, 2013

Missing Webparts- One of the crtitical error from HEALTH ANALYZER

Missing server side dependencies- The Umbrella which covers 4 critical issues
Missing features has already been covered under this section:

Remaining ones are missing webparts, missing setup files and missing assemblies.

Let’s concentrate on Missing Webparts section:
[galaxy.SPWP.FSODataParser,
Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=fc9c10bf499fbb4b])
[WSS_Content_SP2010],
in
database
[WSS_Content_SP2010],
farm.
[EasyTabParts,
Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b15a43dfe3a17723])
[WSS_Content_SP2010],
[MC_Menu,
Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=d088e98baa178219])
[WSS_Content_SP2010],

[Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,
Culture=neutral,
[SharePoint_AdminContent],
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal,
Culture=neutral,
[SharePoint_AdminContent],

Some webparts are belongs to SharePoint_AdminContent database. While debugging further on this, we tried to find out the leaf names as well as dir names are a part of which links/URL’s exactly but we didn’t find anything. That’s strange to troubleshoot further.

The GUIDS which are belongs SharePoint_AdminContent Database are as follows:
[baf5274e-a800-8dc3-96d0-0003d9405663]
[9eba9c17-3b89-a2e7-a3cf-0ee3d7c2adb1]
[07f48b68-2e69-c86a-ebe4-16359e03ebc2]
[23091f6c-295d-4493-504c-1714a20d65a2]
[7d319bdd-d90e-7861-b7f0-2f9f4cec3004]
[c744e2b2-158c-c2f8-2f80-54bf046ff644]
[36f2680f-4855-f100-da5b-5dd1d07ae62b]
[b36f9dfe-325a-1b44-e6bb-645dcf79c770]
[0a60f514-1dea-8537-b588-64ee5e224da3]
[9f56656f-6aa3-0d55-a812-711bf65864ea]

Further research on this, we came to a conclusion that this is a known issue regarding this GUIDS belongs to AdminContent DB and we can certainly ignore that. This will gets fixed in the next CU.


Example:

Error Message:
[MissingWebPart] WebPart class [a03a7e7e-aab8-9045-8bf2-54d79ff53595] (class [PowershellWebpart.PowershellWebPart.PowershellWebPart] from assembly [PowershellWebpart, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0bf26c041eeaa3b0]) is referenced [1] times in the database [WSS_Content_Sharepoint.SP2010], but is not installed on the current farm. Please install any feature/solution which contains this web part. One or more web parts are referenced in the database [WSS_Content_Sharepoint.SP2010], but are not installed on the current farm. Please install any feature or solution which contains these web parts.

As we can see, the error gives you a “WebPart class” GUID, the name of the content database, and how many times it is referenced in the database but no site collection link.

Following SQL query will be used to find out the site ID, LEAF name and Directory name.
"SELECT * from AllDocs inner join AllWebParts on AllDocs.Id = AllWebParts.tp_PageUrlID where AllWebParts.tp_WebPartTypeID = '4575ceaf-0d5e-4174-a3a1-1a623faa919a'" | select Id, SiteId, DirName, LeafName, WebId, ListId, tp_ZoneID, tp_DisplayName | Format-List

SITE ID: we can easily find out the site collection link based on the fetched site ID details
LEAF name: this will be a page on which that faulty webparts exist
DIR name: this will be a document library in which those pages exist.

Output will be like this:
Id       : 657a472f-e51d-428c-ab98-502358d87612
Name     :
SiteId   : 337c5721-5050-46ce-b112-083ac52f7f26

To find the site collection URL using the information output from the query, type the following command:
$site = Get-SPSite -Limit all | where {$_.Id -eq "337c5721-5050-46ce-b112-083ac52f7f26"}
$site.Url

Once we have the site collection URL, we can use the relative path specified by the DirName property to find the location of the file.

To remove the web part from the page, type the page URL in the browser and add?contents=1 to the end of it.

That’s it. You will see the web part maintenance page on which faulty/corrupted webparts are listed.

If you have any questions/queries regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. Thank you.