Install SharePoint 2010 Beta using local computer accounts

Are you looking to Configure SharePoint 2010 and you would like to use your full SQL 2008/R2 instead of SQL Express? If you select the Complete install option for your build and you are trying to use your local computer account instead of a Domain account, you will have to use PowerShell to complete this step.

When installing SharePoint 2010 the main install will complete no problem. Issue comes when you run SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard and try and use your local account to create the farm.

Configuration Wizard with local account.

Results in the following error:

When you install SharePoint 2010 you will also have a SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (PowerShell Cmdlets) installed and located under Start All Programs in the SharePoint 2010 folder.

Launch the SharePoint 2010 management shell, we will use the “New-SPConfigurationDatabase” command to allow us to specify a none domain credential for the farm while configuring the base setup. Type the command at the cursor and press enter.

Fill in each when you are prompted, after you complete these steps (will take a few min to provision) you will be able to validate the farm has been created by look at SQL, you will find a new configuration database and an admin content database (you will see that the new DB includes the GUID).

Next start SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard to complete the installation, you will be prompted to Modify the server farm settings, select do not disconnect from the farm and next through the wizard.

Configuration successfully completed.

Clicking Finish will launch central admin website, after agreeing to report back customer experiences to Microsoft you get your first look at SharePoint 2010 central admin. Prompted to login and with the local account I am in.

SharePoint 2010 is now installed, you will now be prompted by CA asking you how you want to finish configuring your farm, you can use the wizard or select to manually configure later? I'll select the wizard so Walk me through the settings for this example.

With this being my Demo,tual I will also use the local admin account that I am using for the farm account (MS2010-BETA\Administrator).

I am also selecting all Services so I have them available to me.

Next - Processing as it configures all services (and creates the DB) for each.

So the processing ran into errors.

I read these as we are not within a Domain and do not have AD? Not sure but proceeding.

Select next.

Now you are asked to create you first site collection.

I will use a Team site for my first site collection. Select Ok

Complete, view What's been configured. Select finish.

Complete, you are now in CA. As a note, during this process I have been using Firefox 3.5 web browser, pretty cool.

My new Team site.

Up and running! Good luck.

Microsoft Office 2010 “Beta” Products available to the Public!

The Beta release of Office 2010 Product stack marks the closing of the Technical Preview program. Going forward, please visit http://office.com/beta for product downloads, articles, product information and links to forums related to Office 2010. There, you can download and install the latest pre-release version of Office 2010 client software and experience the exciting new features we have added to server products such as SharePoint Server 2010 and Project Server 2010.

You can also visit TechNet Forums, where you can post questions, comments, and thoughts about your experience with Office 2010 Beta products, at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums

The complete list of Office Beta bits available and the URL to the downloads:

• Office SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 Beta (formerly WSS)
• Office SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 Beta
• Office Business Contact Manager 2010 Beta
• FAST Search Server SharePoint 2010 Beta
• Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
  • Microsoft Office 2010 (Beta) Filter Packs
  • Access 2010 (Beta) Download: Access Runtime
  • Office 2010 (Beta) Administrative Templates and OCT
• Office Project Server 2010 Beta
• Office Project Professional 2010 Beta - x86, x64
  • Project 2010 Reference: Software Development Kit
• Office Search Server Express 2010
• Office SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta – x86, x64
• Office Web Applications 2010 Beta
• Office Visio Premium 2010 Beta – x86, x64
  • Visio 2010 (Beta) Viewer
  • Visio 2010 (Beta): Software Development Kit
• Microsoft® Silverlight™ 4 Software Development Kit Beta
• Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1

Thank you Microsoft Office 2010 Team!

October 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

The server-packages of October 2009 Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download. October 2009 Cumulative Updates introduce more rules on Pre-Upgrade Checker, which can help customers to prepare the upgrade of their SharePoint farm to SharePoint 2010.

Download

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
  http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974989
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
  http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974988

Description

• Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974989
• Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974988

Installation Recommendation

1. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and language packs
2. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and language packs
3. October 2009 Cumulative Update package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
4. October 2009 Cumulative Update package for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Please note: Start from April 2009 Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.

The version of content databases should be “12.0.6520.5000” after successfully applying these updates.

SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 released to TechNet & MSDN subscribers 11/16/09

Well today Microsoft has released Office SharePoint Foundation Server and Office SharePoint Server 2010 along with the remaining 2010 Product stack all available for download to TechNet & MSDN subscribers. 

 

Keep in mind that these are all 64-bit only: The rest of the system requirements can be found here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx). 

Visit the SharePoint 2010 TechCenter on Technet for all the documentation you need.

These are a few installation notes that you will want to be aware of.

1. Use the prerequisites installer to install the prerequisites.  Don’t try to set things up manually, as you will forget a step, install a wrong version, forget to install a particular prerequisite, or otherwise mess up the installation.
   • Server 2008 R2 Prerequisites
   • 
2. SQL must be running the the following:
   1. Cumulative update package 3 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 or
   2. Cumulative update package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1
3. Setup will not run unless you have previously installed the following Server 2008 hotfix
   1. For Windows Server 2008 with SP2, see FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=160770).
   2. For Windows Server 2008 R2, see FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231) (Not yet available)
4. If you plan on running Access Web Services, it requires SQL Reporting Services to be installed, and it is MUCH easier to set up SQL Reporting Services integration with SharePoint if you install it BEFORE installing SharePoint (otherwise you’ll have to run through some manual configuration)

Final note:  This is a beta and it is NOT the RTM version.  Use it in a lab, use it in a test environment, do not use it in production.  It is very unlikely that you will be able to upgrade it to the RTM version once it is released next year.

The complete list of Office Beta bits available:

• Office SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 Beta (formerly WSS)
• Office SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 Beta
• Office Business Contact Manager 2010 Beta
• FAST Search Server SharePoint 2010 Beta
• Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
• Office Project Server 2010 Beta
• Office Project Professional 2010 Beta - x86, x64
• Office Search Server Express 2010
• Office SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta – x86, x64
• Office Web Applications 2010 Beta
• Office Visio Premium 2010 Beta – x86, x64

Lots to learn, get started.

File upload issue with SharePoint and Server 2008..

A few months ago I built out a new SharePoint 2007 SP2 environment for a client on Server 2008 SP2. We then migrated their content DB’s from their x86 32bit environment to this new x64 bit environment, this process went as advertised. The new environment was put in production and was working like a charm.

The issue reported was with uploading files.

First thing looked at was any size limitations on the files they were trying to upload. Looking at the base configurations for file upload it was set at the default of 50mb. This was tested by uploading a simple text file, worked fine. After working with the end users on the issue it was identified that they were uploading files over 30mb, seemed like anything under that size worked fine but over that it acted like the file was overly large and would time out..

Very frustrating, all configurations were fine, even increased timeout session through IIS and that did not fix the issue.

After making that frustrating call to MS and working through these same troubleshooting attempts the issue was identified.

It appears that Windows Server 2008 is the culprit.. MS has a Knowledgebase Article ID: 944981 that resolved this issue, lets go through these steps.

Here is the KB articles on this subject:

• KB 944981 - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/944981 
• KB 925083 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925083/
• KB 942074 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942074/

The change required are all manual.

Make the change to the web.config here: “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\(for each web app)”.  
Do this on all WFE’s, also make sure to increase the size accordingly in Central admin.

Thanks to Todd for his input to this post.

Steps for Setting up a Local SQL Alias on a SharePoint Farm

Problem
If you have an old SQL database server and you want to change the server that the farm points to for all databases including the config database. All you have to do is install the SQL client tools on each server (Should already be there). Setup Alias's with cliconfg.exe and create an aliases that says the old server name = the new server name.

If you are using named instances this works as well. Just create an additional Alias with the \instance name included. You have to create two aliases when you have instance names involve because some SharePoint functions operate directly with the SQL server (Central Admin Functions), and some need the instance name specified.

Solution
By using an alias, we can keep the application configuration the same, but tell the operating system to look somewhere else for the database. One proviso is that once an alias is created, it is set at the operating system level. That means if we have two applications which connect to MySQLServer on that computer, once the alias is created, both will be re-pointed based on the alias. You can create an alias using one of two utilities:

1. SQL Server Client Network Utility
2. SQL Server Configuration Manager

Steps to setup a local SQL Alias on your SharePoint Environment

Perform following steps before creating your alias or moving the SharePoint databases to new SQL server instance.

• Quiesce the SharePoint farm
• Stsadm -o quiescefarm -maxduration 15 <15 = duration in min that you need to have DB unavailable>
• This locks the Farm DB’s for a set period of time. for users who are accessing it, and will not allow any more to connect to the sites in the farm.
• Backup all the database on old SQL server (OldServerA\i1) (i1=instance name)
• Restore all the databases on new SQL server (NewServerB\i1)
• Stop all the web sites in IIS Manager (Start/Stop each site that is related to this SharePoint farm)
• If this is the entire farm, from a cmd use iisreset /stop
• Stop the services on all the Web Front Ends (WFEs) and Application Servers (Start>Run > services.msc)
  • Note, this is all services that can be used in your farm, note what state each of the following is in before disabling, this will be needed when you restart the services.
  • Microsoft Single Sign-On service
  • Office Document Conversions Launcher service
  • Office Document Conversions Load Balancer service
  • Office SharePoint Server Search service
  • Windows SharePoint Services Administration service
  • Windows SharePoint Services Search service
  • Windows SharePoint Services Timer service
  • Windows SharePoint Services Tracing service
  • Windows SharePoint Services VSS Writer service

Next create the alias on all the SharePoint WFEs and Application servers

• Start > Run > cliconfg.exe
• Note: you need to have admin rights to run SQL configuration manager command line tool

First enable what protocols you need:

Select TCP/IP Enable>>

Select Named Pipes Enable>>

Next, Click on Alias Tab>Click Add

For Server Alias: This is old Server Name

Network Libraries need to select TCP\IP

Connection Parameters: Server Name: This is new Server Name

Uncheck the Dynamically determine port

Click OK

Next, Click Add again

If you use Instance add a Second Entry

For Server Alias: This is old Server Name \ Old Instance Name

Network Libraries need to select TCP\IP

Connection Parameters: Server Name: This is new Server Name \ New Instance Name

Uncheck the dynamically determine port

Click OK

Final results will look similar to this.

Click Apply and OK

Restart the services (Start>Run>services.msc)

• Remember what you had documented above and enable those that apply

Start the web sites (Start>intemgr>Start each site that related to SharePoint)

• If you used the iisreset /stop above, now use iisreset /start

Make sure all Application Pools are up and running.

• Look at the sites in IIS

Open Central Admin

• Validate access to CA

Open Home Site

• Validate access to all your sites.

Alias has been created.

One note, you can open SQL Server Configuration Manager and see your new alias.

Hope this helps.

Office SharePoint Server Event ID:6102 Launcher Service

If you have Install Windows SharePoint Server and have a problem with LoadBalancer.RegisterLauncher Failed like below:

Event ID: 6102

Source: Office SharePoint Server

Type: Error

Description: LoadBalancer.RegisterLauncher failed: Unable to connect to the remote server.

 

Resolution:

• Changing the service account of the Document Conversions Load Balancer Service
  • Go to Central Administration/Operations/Security Configuration
  • Select “Service Accounts"
  • 
  • Select Component to update
    • Windows service dropdown
    • Select Document Conversion Load balancer Service
  • Next, Select an account for this component
    • Predefined
      • Select Network Service
  • 
  • Select ok

You should be good, follow up by checking your events.

Hope this helps.