Well, a lot of information from a keynote and a couple tracks, so much so my head's going to explode.  But check out what I believe is going to be big news...

1. SharePoint 2010 Public Beta: November! (11/1 or 11/30, who knows, I'm hoping earlier)
2. Development on Windows 7 (or Vista...64-bit client needed but no longer do you need a local server for development!)
3. RBS: Remote Blob Storage: Basically allowing you to store content in a place other than SQL.  This is huge for media streaming
4. Access Services! Note just putting your .MDB up but converting forms and all of the other assets to SP ones...the possibilities of this one are pretty huge, given how prevalent Access is used is many enterprises

More details/info to come as the conference goes on!

- M

Hey folks, fresh off of some much needed vaca and back in the swing of things.  And, on that note, I'll be speaking at the SharePoint Saturday - Philly event on November 7th.  This is a great opportunity for those that are looking to get into SharePoint, as well as be the place to be for all things SharePoint Server 2010 (well, after the SP Conference that is).  It's 8 hours (including breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack) of all SharePoint goodness, including...

- Lots of SharePoint 2010 discussions!
- 8 hours
- Information Architect, Developer and Administration tracks
- 250 seats with tables (laptops welcome)
- Free breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack  
- Raffles and prizes at 5:00
- Easy parking
- After hours party at the Shanachie pub in Ambler (network with speakers and attendees)

My talk will be entitled Web Content Management with SharePoint Server 2010 and it's from 10-11.  Check out the list of Speakers and Sessions.

Registration's wide open, and word has it it's already half full.  So have at it folks!

- M

Woo hoo!  I'll be there for this excellent conference in Vegas from October 19 - 23.  This is the premier conference for all things SharePoint (and Office dev as well) and will be all about the upcoming 2010 version of SharePoint.

This is the conference to be at, due to all of the information coming out, so if you can, I'd make every attempt to attend (register here).  I'll also attempt to do a daily blog from the conference to share as much info as possible to the masses.

Look for the good stuff in the coming weeks..it'll be awesome! - M

MS recently posted here that SP2 has a bug that incorrectly activates the Product Expiration Date within MOSS.  Basically this means that 180 days after applying SP2 SharePoint will expire, as if it was a Trial Installation.  They're working on a resolution to this fix and hope to have it out PDQ.

They've posted a manual workaround here but this link appears to be "broken" for now, but should be up within 48 hours.

Note the affected products: SharePoint Server 2007, Project Server 2007, Form Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.

Stay tuned as more info comes out...

- M

Hot off the presses at the MS SharePoint Team Blog is the preliminary requirements for SharePoint 2010.  As most of you probably have known, MS has been saying for a while that, going forward, 64-bit is the path and 32-bit is going the way of the dodo.  On top of that, you will also need to either be running 64-bit SQL Server 2005 or 2008.

More and more tidbits of information are coming to light...stay tuned...

-M

As reported on the SharePoint Team Blog, SP2 will be out on April 28th.  Plan all your patch windows accordigly, as well as spin up your new virtuals with it.  I'll be playing with it to see if updating the instructions for the clonable environment change. - M

Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 due to ship April 28th

Just caught this today...check it out!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42&goback=.hom

I came across this in my wanderings, and found it in the SharePoint Server TechCenter.  This CHM file, available for download here, is a copy of content in the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 technical library.  Head on over to the SharePoint Server TechCenter for the latest information.

- M

I've been seeing lots of questions around this on the boards, and when I do I refer them to Chris Hernandez' awesome post (see below) on taking MOSS from a standalone setup to a farm one.  The steps apply for both WSS and MOSS, just for WSS you don't have the Shared Services stuff.  In a nutshell...

1. Set up your target environment farm (remember, Advanced/Complete!)
2. Use your SQL tools to backup the databases on the source server, and restore them to the target one
3. Use the STSADM Command Line utility to attach the restored databases to the relevant areas

Even though his post is from '07, it's still valid, and has helped out a lot.  Check out his detailed steps in the link below...enjoy! - M

Migrating Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) from Standalone to Farm Install

Well, I hope all had a great holiday, and welcome to the first serving of the Coffee House for 2009.

After having a number of SharePoint projects under my belt I decided to look into creating a cloneable development environment for myself.  The following is based on information and scripts from Ben Curry's blog entry on SharePoint Installation Scripts and Paul Horsfall's blog entry on SharePoint, Sysprep and SQL.  Both entries were invaluable in helping me create the process (and my scripts) below.

First off, below find the software used to accomplish this:

1. Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (installed on your local machine)
2. Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2
3. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP2
4. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007
5. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
6. Visual Studio Extensions for WSS 1.2
7. WSS SDK 1.4
8. SharePoint Server 2007 SDK 1.4
9. Sysprep for Win2K3 SP2

Now, let's create the necessary image:

1. Create a new Virtual Machine, name it something sensical (in this case I called it MOSSDEV)
2. During image creation, point to the Windows 2003 Server files and install the OS
3. Name the machine the same as the image name (again, in this case, MOSSDEV)
4. Upon completion give the machine the Application Server role, setting up IIS and ASP.NET
5. Run Windows Update
6. Install .NET Frameworks 2.x and 3.x
7. Run Windows Update
8. Create the necessary local machine IDs if you wish to run the various SharePoint services under them and not all under 'Administrator' (I do this out of habit instead of using the admin ID)
9. Install SQL Server in its default installation (Install SP2 afterwards)
10. Run Windows Update
11. Install SharePoint Server 2007 but do not run the Configuration Wizard (Remember Advanced/Complete)
12. Install Visual Studio 2008
13. Install the SharePoint development assets (Extensions, WSS and Office SDKs)
14. Run Windows Update 
15. Install Sysprep for Win2K3 SP2
16. Shut down the virtual machine, then copy/backup the VM's files (This is necessary as you can then spin this back up to do patches and the like, then back it up)

At this point you should now have a working MOSS machine/image that's ready for Sysprep.  Sysprep requires an .INF file to run and I've attached the one I use to create my images.  Note that you'll need to open it up and enter your correct Product Key for use.  Also note the ComputerName entry and how it's valued with an asterisk (*).  This tells the system to wait for user input before it can continue.  What this allows you to do is give the machine a name during creation.  Both of these attributes are in the [UserData] section of the Sysprep.inf file.

Sysprep also allows you to run scripts after the spinning up of the machine.  In this instance I run 2 scripts: one to set up the SQL Server correctly (startsql.bat) and one to configure MOSS (mossconfig.bat).

startsql.bat does two things: it renames the SQL Server instance from the original (MOSSDEV) to the name that you gave the machine during spin up, and then it gives the relevant DB related rights to the ID to be used for MOSS configuration (note I use a different ID for this than 'Administrator', see Step 8 above).  You'll need to change the ID in this file if you use a different one.

mossconfig.bat basically does what it says: it configures MOSS.  It creates the Farm database, sets up the necessary services, creates 3 Web Applications (SSP Web Admin, My Sites and a Portal), creates the Shared Services Provider and configures it with those Web Applications, and then creates a Site Collection on the Portal Web Application.

To Sysprep the machine:

1. Start the image back up, logging on as Administrator
2. Make sure your Sysprep.inf contains the correct and relevant information (Product Key, scripts to run, scripts in their correct location, etc)
3. Run Sysprep (the system will shut down when complete)
4. The resultant .VHD is now ready for use as a base image for creating differencing disks in Virtual Server.  Make sure you set the properties of the .VHD to Read Only before you use this.

This newly created .VHD is what will be used as the parent when creating new Differencing .VHDs.  The advantage here is that you can now create as many Differencing .VHDs as you want, all using the parent we created, and upon spinning it up you'll have a new MOSS environment to work in.  Note: when you spin up your development image for the first time, and it asks you for your machine name, it'll finish up its configuration of the machine, and then restart.  When it asks you to log on, you must log on with the ID you set up to be the MOSS setup ID (in my files I use the ID 'adminmoss' for this).  This is important as this ID will then be used to configure MOSS.

Now, when you want to create a new MOSS development environment, you create a new Differencing .VHD, use the above as the parent, and then create a new Virtual Machine using that new Differencing .VHD.  Quick and easy from that point on.

Attached in this post is a .ZIP file (CloneableAssets.zip) containing the 3 files above.

Thanks! - M

CloneableAssets.zip (2.29 kb)