09 January, 2011

ULS not enough free disk space - Event 6457(SharePoint 2010)

Alert Name: ULS not enough free disk space

Event ID: 6457

The Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Tracing (SPTracev4) service is used by Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 to manage trace message output. When trace logging is turned on,administrators can specify the path that is to be used to store the trace logs. This log file is used by many applications that are built on top of SharePoint Foundation. The trace log contains information that is useful for diagnosing server problems. SharePoint Foundation 2010 could not write to the trace
log. This event occurs when not enough free space is available for logging.

The following symptoms might appear:
• The trace log shows no new data.
• This event appears in the event log: Event ID: 6457 Description: Not enough free disk space available. The tracing service has temporarily stopped outputting trace messages to the log file. Tracing will resume when more than <# of MBs needed to resume logging> MB of disk space
becomes available.

Possible Cause:
The configured log location does not have sufficient free disk space for logging.

Troubleshooting steps:

Free up disk space
1. Use Disk Cleanup to free up disk space where the trace logs are stored.
2. Verify that the trace log has enough disk space to run properly.
3. If the trace log does not have enough disk space, clean up the Temp folders on the drive.
4. If this procedure does not solve the problem, it is also possible to relocate the trace log file to a partition that has more drive space.

Relocate the log file
1. On the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, click Monitoring and in the Reporting section, click Configure diagnostic logging.
2. On the Diagnostic Logging page, in the Trace Log section, type the new location for the trace log files in the Path text box.
3. Click OK.

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

E-mail service cannot deliver e-mail - Event6873 (SharePoint 2010)

Alert Name: E-mail service cannot deliver e-mail

Event ID: 6873

The Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products e-mail service processes e-mail destined for insertion into SharePoint lists. The service processes mail that the Windows Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service added to a drop folder.

One or more of the following symptoms might appear:
• SharePoint lists do not receive e-mail.
• This event appears in the event log: Event ID: 6599 Description: an error occurred while processing incoming email

One or more of the following might be the cause:
• There is no corresponding SharePoint list for the recipient of an e-mail.
• The sender does not have sufficient permissions to add content to the SharePoint list.

Troubleshooting Steps:

Verify that the list is configured to receive e-mail:
1. In the list provided in the event details, on the List menu, click List Settings.

2. On the List Settings page, under Communications, click Incoming e-mail settings.

3. Verify the following:
• The correct e-mail address is entered in the E-mail address box.
• The Yes option is selected under Allow this document library to receive e-mail?

Grant the sender the appropriate permissions to the recipient list:
1. In the list provided in the event details, on the List menu, click List Settings.
2. On the List Settings page, under Permissions and Management, click Permissions for this list.
3. Verify that the user account provided in the event details has at least Contributor permissions to the list.

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

07 January, 2011

SharePoint 2010:Remote BLOB Cache

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

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

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

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

SharePoint 2010: Central Administration Improvements

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



Backup and Restore

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

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

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



SharePoint 2010 Health and Monitoring

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

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

27 December, 2010

Office Web Apps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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