This will be my last post on this blog as I have left Microsoft.

you can reach me at my new blog here: http://aaronsaikovski.wordpress.com

Thanks

I recently rebuilt my work laptop with the Windows 8 Release Preview (Build: 8400) and followed the same steps in the blog post by Guilherme Santos to get a slipstreamed SharePoint build installed (SharePoint 2010 +SP1 + Feb 2012 CU) onto my environment.

The same steps can be followed as per his blog post, but there are a few post installation tasks you will need to follow to get SharePoint 2010 working as expected on the Windows 8 Release Preview:

1) Update your “SharePoint 2010 Management Shell” shortcuts to add the –v 2 parameter to ensure that the PowerShell profile loads with the V2 version of PowerShell:

Before:

C:\windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\PowerShell.exe -NoExit  " & ' C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\POWERSHELL\Registration\\sharepoint.ps1 ' "

After:

C:\windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\PowerShell.exe -v 2 -NoExit  " & ' C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\POWERSHELL\Registration\\sharepoint.ps1 ' "

Once the shell loads you can check the version by typing $Host.Version. The major version should be 2, if its 3 then something went wrong.

2) By default on Windows 8 RP new sites created in IIS default to the v4 of the .Net Framework and as such aren't supported by SharePoint 2010 and simply wont work.

If you create a new web application using central admin, you will get the following error:

To get around this, you will first need to create a generic application pool in IIS and then point the new web application at this app pool in Central admin.

Luckily this is very easy to do with PowerShell: (**Make sure you are running this from a v3 version of PowerShell otherwise you will get various manifest errors when trying to perform the command - Import-Module WebAdministration **)

   1: Import-Module WebAdministration -Force

   2:  

   3: $AppPoolName = "Some App Pool Name"

   4: $AppPoolUser = "DOMAIN\User"

   5: $AppPoolPassword = "Password"

   6:  

   7: #build the app pool path

   8: $newappPool = ("IIS:\AppPools\" + $AppPoolName)

   9:  

  10: #check if the app pool exists

  11: $checkapp = get-item $newappPool -EA 0 

  12: if($checkapp -eq $null)

  13: {

  14:     #Create the new app pool

  15:     New-Item $newappPool

  16:     

  17:     #Get the app Pool

  18:     $thepool = Get-Item $newappPool

  19:     

  20:     #Set the properties

  21:     $thepool.processModel.userName = $AppPoolUser

  22:     $thepool.processModel.password = $AppPoolPassword

  23:     $thepool.processModel.identitytype = 3

  24:     $thepool.managedRuntimeVersion = "v2.0" #Important for Windows 8!

  25:     $thepool | Set-Item    

  26:  

  27:     Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "$AppPoolName - created successfully"

  28: }

  29: else

  30: {

  31:     Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "$AppPoolName - already exists"

  32:     exit 1

  33: }

Once you have created the new application pool you can simply create a new web application from central admin and point the web application creation wizard at the newly created application pool. Easy!

3) Ensure all your application pools are running under the V2.0 version of the framework, otherwise you will get various unexplained errors in your event logs.

To check this, simple go to IIS manager and check the application pools list as per the following diagram, they should all be using v2.0 of the .NET Framework.

I will add extra tips as I find them but these should be enough to get you started for now.

Email me with any questions or issues you may encounter in setting this up.

The following fix is assuming that the steps from this article have been followed. You NEED to enable SSL communications otherwise FAST WONT work

The steps to fix the error 2567 are as follows:

1) Check what account the SharePoint Server Search 14 (OSearch14) service is running under:

2) Remember the account setting from Step1 as you will need to use this when you run the following PowerShell script (wrapped for readability):

.\SecureFASTSearchConnector.ps1 –certPath "<path to cert>\FASTSearchCert.pfx"

–ssaName "FAST Content SSA" –username "<DOMAIN>\spSearch"

3) After running the script it will restart the OSearch14 service for you. I would recommend running an IISRESET after that to ensure all cached connections are reset.

4) Now you should be able to run a crawl and the 2567 error should be gone from your event logs and the crawl logs should be showing content being populated into the index.

A few other things to check:

a) Ensure you are using the correct FASTSearchCert.pfx certificate.

b) If the FAST certificate has expired you can generate a new cert using the commands:

net stop FASTSearchMonitoring
net stop FASTSearchService
cd <PATHTOFASTSearch>\installer\scripts

.\ReplaceDefaultCertificate.ps1 -generateNewCertificate $true

net start FASTSearchService
net start FASTSearchMonitoring

**Just don't forget to recopy the new cert to your central admin server and rerun the PowerShell script SecureFASTSearchConnector.ps1 with the correct certificate and correct username.**

Here is an updated Powershell script for setting the powerplan on a server in a much more efficient manner.

A big shout out to Amir Rothschild - PFE Extraordinaire & Shay Levy - PowerShell MVP – Thanks guys!

Here is the updated PowerShell script:

  1: ##############################################################################################################
  2: #
  3: #	Title: Set-Power.ps1
  4: #
  5: #	By: Aaron Saikovski (asaikov)
  6: #
  7: #	Purpose: Sets the powerplan of the current machine to one of three plan settings:
  8: #			High Performance
  9: #			Balanced
 10: #			Power Saver
 11: #
 12: #	Usage: ./Set-Power.ps1 <Plan Option>
 13: #
 14: #	Version: 2.0
 15: #
 16: #	Activation code courtesy to Amir Rothschild (amrotchi) - PFE Extraordinaire & Shay Levy - PowerShell MVP
 17: #
 18: ##############################################################################################################
 19: 
 20: ##############################################################################################################
 21: #
 22: #	Variables used in this script 
 23: #
 24: #	[string]$PreferredPlan	# Powerplan to set the machine to
 25: #
 26: ##############################################################################################################
 27: 
 28: PARAM
 29: (
 30: 	[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][ValidateSet("High performance", "Balanced", "Power saver")]
 31: 	[string]$PreferredPlan
 32: )
 33: 
 34: function SetPowerPlan([string]$PreferredPlan)
 35: {
 36: 	Write-Host "Setting Powerplan to $PreferredPlan"
 37: 	(Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PowerPlan -Namespace root\cimv2\power -Filter "ElementName='$PreferredPlan'").Activate()
 38: }
 39: 
 40: #set Preferred powerplan
 41: SetPowerPlan $PreferredPlan

Recently I was playing around with the IIS 7 PowerShell snap-in and I found a simple way of obtaining what application pool a given web application is running under.

The code is pretty simple and to do this, run from a standard PowerShell console:

##Import the IIS Admin module – you will need this!!!

Import-Module WebAdministration

##Get the Application Pool for a given website – Replace ‘Default Web Site’ with your site and you find what app pool the site is running under:

Get-Item "IIS:\Sites\Default Web Site"| Select-Object applicationPool

Although this isn't really SharePoint related, it will save you heaps of time rather than having to fire up the UI 

More details can be found here at the following links:

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/447/managing-iis-with-the-iis-powershell-snap-in/

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/430/powershell-snap-in-navigating-the-iis-snap-in-namespace/

This version includes a new threshold file for SharePoint 2010.

We look forward to your feedback and comments.

email me at Aaron.Saikovski [AT] microsoft.com

Thanks to all those who attended my session on patching at SharePoint Saturday. Here are the slides from my presentation:

Many folks from the recent Melbourne SharePoint Saturday event were asking me about version table from my patching slides so here it is:

I was recently working with one of our large enterprise customers and they were experiencing rendering and performance related issues with Office Web apps in SharePoint 2010, specifically the word and PowerPoint viewing services.

I did a bit of digging and changed some of the worker process/CPU core allocation settings and we found rendering performance improved quite significantly. We also made sure they patched the office web apps install bits as they hadn't patched with SP1 or the June CU for OWA. This made some big improvements as well.

**All of the changes listed here may very in your environment but are based on supported and documented articles**

Key TechNet references:

• Configure Word Viewing service settings: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee837420.aspx
• Configure PowerPoint service application settings: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee837424.aspx

Here are the steps to change the OWA worker process and CPU core allocation settings using trusty PowerShell:

1) Get the number of cores available to the worker processes via WMI calls:

$CPUConfig = Get-WmiObject Win32_Processor 
$NumCores = $CPUConfig.NumberOfcores

2) Calculate the Worker Process Count based on the Number of Cores multiplied by 2. (The recommendation is to have 2 worker processes per CPU Core):

$WorkerProcessCount = ($NumCores * 2)

3) Next we change the Word Viewing Service MaxActiveProcessCount parameter (by default is is set to 3 worker processes) (Apologies for the wrapping of the code)

$serviceAppId = (Get-SPServiceApplication | 
where {$_.TypeName -eq "Word Viewing Service Application"}).ID 
Set-SPWordViewingServiceApplication -Identity $serviceAppId -MaxActiveProcessCount 
$WorkerProcessCount 

4) Finally we change the PowerPoint viewing service ViewingWorkerProcessCount parameter (Apologies for the wrapping of the code)

Get-SPPowerPointServiceApplication | Set-SPPowerPointServiceApplication 
-ViewingWorkerProcessCount $WorkerProcessCount

Finally for the word viewing service, we found that changing the default setting for MaxRenderingLifetimeInSeconds from the 5 minute default had some positive effects as well. This will vary according to your environment and should be changed based on the following formula (From TechNet):

1. Divide the maximum number of pages of the largest documents by 700. This will determine the number of minutes required to render the documents.
2. Then multiply the number of minutes by 60 to determine the maximum rendering time in seconds.

Happy rendering!