Book Image

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Cookbook

By : Peter Serzo
Book Image

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Cookbook

By: Peter Serzo

Overview of this book

Collaboration and content management are the major business needs of every organization in this increasingly global and connected environment. Microsoft SharePoint is a solution to these needs that offers a software platform that facilitates collaboration and provides content management features for the effective implementation of business processes. With a vast amount of functionality available with SharePoint, it is easy to get confused in carrying out administrative tasks. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Cookbook starts off by demonstrating the various upgrading and post-upgrading tasks to be performed in SharePoint 2010. Next come recipes for managing SharePoint service-level applications and for monitoring the SharePoint environment. The book introduces one of the best new tools that should be in your arsenal, PowerShell, and the commands you will need to script your tasks with Powershell. Collaboration and content management are the most important features of SharePoint and this book contains many recipes that focus on improving them. Enterprise monitoring and reporting are also covered in detail so that you can ensure that your SharePoint implementation is up and running all the time. You will find recipes to manage and customize SharePoint Search. When you are half way through the book, you will explore more advanced and interesting topics such as customizing and securing the SharePoint environment. You will learn to extend SharePoint to include features similar to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Lastly, the book covers backup and recovery solutions for SharePoint so that you can ensure that your system is protected from data loss and virus attacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Patching (compatibility boundaries)


SharePoint 2010 brings a new story when it comes to applying updates. Typically when applying a service patch, there are two components that get updated: the web front end (WFE) and the database(s). When applying patches with WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007, an administrator had to start the process on one WFE, get it to a certain point, then start the patching on another server, and when the process got to a certain point, finish the patching process.

With SharePoint 2010, there is a new concept known as Compatibility Boundaries as it applies to patching. This will allow your WFEs to be at a different patch level than your database(s). The administrator can upgrade multiple SharePoint servers at the same time. The configuration wizard (PSConfigUI) handles this process itself without any manual intervention.

If you have large content databases, it can take some time to apply patches. This new approach means you can now patch the files on your SharePoint servers, but delay the updates to the databases until a more appropriate time. This is useful to quickly protect your environment against any newly discovered security vulnerabilities or resolve any non-database bugs.

In addition, Central Administration has several components where your patching level can be monitored. This recipe shows you the components within Central Administration where you should be checking for database schema versions, patch levels, and general monitoring of the patching process.

Getting ready

Ensure that you are a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group on the computer accessing the Central Administration site.

How to do it...

  1. 1. Open the Central Administration screen and click Upgrade and Migration.

  2. 2. Click on Check product and patch installation status. A report is pulled up showing all the product components from the farm.

  3. 3. There is a drop-down list at the top that allows you to select whether to look at the whole farm or only the components on a particular server. A part of the report looks like the following screenshot:

  4. 4. Navigate back to Upgrade and Migration and select Review database status. A report is displayed, detailing all the databases for the Farm and their status.

  5. 5. Navigate to Application management | Databases | Manage Content Databases.

  6. 6. Click on a content database. The second section is called Database Versioning and Upgrade. It details the database schema versions and looks as shown in the next screenshot:

How it works...

The recipe shows three components of the patching story. Together, these components provide a comprehensive view to the administrator of the SharePoint Farm. Utilizing this information, the administrator can make informed decisions as issues are brought up, and can decide if a new patch must be applied.

The three components are:

  • Patch Status: This shows the patch level of the servers. If there is something missing or required, it will be flagged with a hyperlink to the patch that is needed.

  • Database Status: This is a listing of all the databases in the farm including SQL instance. With SharePoint 2010, there are many databases and they can be run in a compatibility range. Under status, there will be a message letting the administrator know what is required or what is happening.

  • Database Schema Versions: This shows the current schema version and the maximum schema version that the database can be updated to.

There's more...

SharePoint 2010 monitors the health of your farm using a set of rules that are programmed against best practices. An administrator can review these rules and run them on demand or change their schedule. When a rule is broken, the issue is flagged and a red bar with a hyperlink to view the issues will appear on the Central Administration home page.

These are found under Central Administration, under a section called Monitoring. In that section is a Review rule definitions hyperlink. The rules for patch management can be found under the section Configuration. Refer to the following screenshot:

More info

PowerShell is a powerful enabler for the SharePoint Administrator. There are three commands that are applicable to this process.

  • To produce a listing of all the patches on the server:

    Get-hotfix
    
  • Return a listing of content databases and their GUIDs:

    Get-spcontentdatabase
    
  • To upgrade the database:

    Upgrade-spcontentdatabase -id <GUID>