Friday, July 25, 2008
Man, this issue has been kicking my butt all day. We've been working on a SharePoint 2003 upgrade (testing) and got to the final content database. Life was good up to this point. 110GB of content had upgraded and there were just a few hiccups, mostly related to size. Then, it came. The nasty, evil, dispicable:
Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
Over and Over...
Basically what's happening from what we can tell is SQL Server is choking on the large document library table copy (dbo.doc) and (dbo.docversion). The temporary database (WSSUS_) log file timesout during autogrowth. It just can't keep up with the upgrade.
I'm trying again...this time I've set the autogrowth to grow by MB instead of percentage. This is a tricky to get set simply because this database isn't created until the process starts.
UPDATE
The solution turned out to be relatively simple. I grew the transaction log for the WSSUS_ database to 70GB which effectively stoped the autogrow thrashing. After doing this, the process completed as expected. The trick is that you have to run the script:
The catch is that you have to run it after the WSSUS database has been created. I simply watched in Managment Studio until I saw the database in the list and ran the script. It took 13 minutes for my hardward to execute the query.
ALTER
DATABASE [WSSUP_Temp_675cfeec-6d15-414a-aae2-a3deabbbf01b] MODIFY FILE ( NAME = N'WSSUP_Temp_675cfeec-6d15-414a-aae2-a3deabbbf01b_log', SIZE = 73400320KB , FILEGROWTH = 10240KB )
We also changed the default file location to a local disk rather than a SAN connected volume. This may have had some impact, but did not solve the problem.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Again, maybe old news but I thought I would post something interesting that happened during a recent upgrade from SPS 2003 to MOSS. SharePoint is very finicky when it comes to database transactions and sizing during the gradual upgrade process. Here are a couple of things to note:
1. Make sure you have enough size - When upgrading a site that had about 150GB in content, we needed about 500GB in space to complete the migration.
2. Make sure you know where your _Pair DB's Are - SharePoint for some reason didn't put the _Pair db's on the default data and log file locations (C:\) and had to be moved to a larger volume. This caused the upgrade to fail with space issues.
3. Make sure to set the _Pair data and log files to AutoGrow - Now that you have the right amount of space, make sure that you configure the new databases to grow correctly. Large content databases will have large transactions when copying the sitecollections. This can also lead to things like timeouts and space issues. You should also consider setting the recovery model to "Simple" during the migration to keep things tight.
Just some things to think about.
This may be old news, but we just hit this issue the other day. If you try to upgrade an instance of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or WSS 2.0 that is running on a named instance of SQL Server called "SharePoint", the gradual upgrade option is greyed out. It turns out that this is because the installer
thinks that you are trying to upgrade an instance of MSDE. Changing the instance name to something other than "SharePoint" does the trick. Talk about hardcoding something...
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
I wanted to thank Microsoft for awarding me with an MVP award for 2008. It is such an awesome program and an honor to be included in such a great group of professionals. I really appreciate the friendships and relationships that are a part of this prestigous program. Thanks again for the recognition and congratulations to all of the MVP award receipients.
Scott Lock
Friday, April 18, 2008
I finally got a Virtual Server 2005 VM running with my clients entire intranet SPS 2003 portal running. It took a bit of time to restore all 70GB of content data. What I have now is a 120 GB VM that is a great way to test the upgrade.
Here are some lessons learned:
1. VPC 2007 to Virtual Sever 2005 Does not always work as advertised - I started off this project with a baseline Windows 2003 VPC built on my laptop. The trick is that the VPC used specific IDE controller drivers based on the hardware configuration of my Dell Latitude 820. I tried to move this over as is but got the BSOD during reboot. After several failed attempts to fix the image, I ultimately had to rebuild the image on VS 2005.
2. Size Matters - When you build a new image, make sure you size it appropriately. Dynamic disks are great, but when you need to restore a 52GB database, you need to make sure you have at least that much space to do the restore. Fixed disks do the trick here, but how do you convert a disk that was already fixed at 64 GB? Easy...you download VM Resizer, epand the disk then use DiskPart to extend the partition. Worked like champ. One thing to note, if you are extending a VHD that you plan to keep as an IDE drive, make sure to keep it under the 127GB max size.
3. It makes a "Difference" - Use Differencing disks. Repeat. Use Differencing Disks. It's not easy to use undo disks on a VHD that is 120GB in size. Even on a SAN that's a lot of disk space. By building that baseline and using VS 2005 differencing disks, you can keep that baseline pristine and make changes to a seperate vhd.
4. Know Thy Version - If you follow Jeff Holliday's Blog Entry on Restoring SharePoint Production Servers to Test Servers it is very easy to actually restore the portal. What's the catch? You ABSOLUTELY need to make sure that WSS 2.0 and SPS 2003 are up to the same version. There were a few posts and comments from folks who got this error:
'SvrAdminPortalCreate_SecurityConfigurationSection_Text' is not a valid value for attribute 'TitleLocID'. It must be of enum type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.LocStringId'
This was because there was a mismatch in version between the production source server and the test target servers. You can verify versions against this chart and install the appropriate hotfixes, patches, and service packs.
Hope that this helps someone along the way.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
I know this is bad form, but I have to try. Excella (my firm) is looking for great .Net developers in the D.C. metro area. If you are looking or know anyone else that is looking, please have them give me a shout.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
An odd thing happened to me after installing the Vista SP1 RTM. I have a laptop running Vista Ultimate. The OS was installed using my MVP Team Suite license. I use this machine as my primary development box. After installing Vista SP1 I had two interesting things show up on the desktop:
1. "Test Mode" showed up in each corner of the desktop - Run Bcdedit.exe /set TESTSIGNING OFF using an elevated prompt to turn off test for signed drivers.
2. "for testing purposes only." and build number - This one I am not sure why it has appeared in the corner. My previous version did not. The only thing I could find was a very lengthy step by step process which seemed way to complicated.
So I don't have the warm fuzzy feeling that I've been hearing everyone talk about after installing Vista SP1. I don't feel like I'm running the RTM build. The messages I see make me feel like its the RC. I hope there nothing else that I can't see broken. I didn't realize that I was signing up for the beta test!
I've been having an interesting time with the Vista SP1 install and Virtual PC 2007. After installing Vista SP1, I thought all was well. Assuming "Well" means that you now have "For testing purposes only" and the build number watermarked in the corner, but I'll save that for another post.
I was unfortunately at a client site when I went to start Virtual PC 2007 for the first time, post Vista SP1. Started okay but then as soon as I clicked on "New", all I got was an open task in the task bar but no window on the desktop. Hovering over the task bar item, I could see that the windows was blank according to the Vista thumbnail view.
I tried uninstalling Virtual PC, getting the latest bits, reinstalling...no good. I posted a message on the MVP Vista boards and got a response from Paul Adare, MVP Virtual Machines. (Thanks Paul!) He mentioned that he has heard that this was reported and suggested:
"Try deleting C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC\options.xml and then starting VPC again."
That did the trick.
This is because the configuration is set to display the window in an area which is way out of the scope of the current viewable area. This may be due to switching between multiple dual monitor configurations and sleep mode?
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Lee Thé recenctly posted an article on SOA Governance based on coverage from the Enterprise Architecture Practioners Conference held last month in San Francisco. The article is an interesting conversation on how governance, EA, and SOA either work or fail together in todays enterprise IT space.
One of my favorite qoutes from the article was from Kyle Gabhart, director of the SOA technology division at Web Age Solution. When asked about how to make governance and reusability happen:
"Gabhart joked -- sort of -- that "the most effective governance tools I know are Excel and Visio." He said you have to build a dialogue about how to adapt/change/mold SOA to navigate the political structures, the people and the resources, using wikis, whiteboards, whatever it takes to foster that discussion. He added that a lot of valuable items are not reusable, such as paper plates, paper diapers and foam cups." - (Source: SOA Governance: 'Not Much' Success, Panelists Say, Application Development Trends, Feb 14, 2008)
I go through A LOT of diapers in my house and god knows that they are the last thing that I would consider reusable. Although paper plates are one of those things where I wonder if it takes less energy to manufacture and recycle 100 paper plates or run one load in the dishwasher?
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
To continue in the traditiion of trackbacks, and since I can't seem to find an orginal post in my body, I thought that I would share this one with you. Jason Follas psted a solution on how to get SQL Client, running on Vista, to use different credentials when connecting to a SQL Server using Windows Authentication. Basically, there are a ton of posts out there, but this is the ONLY one that that I could find that had the solution. Here's the link to the full explantion: Making SQL Server Management Server work on Windows Vista
Here's the solution - Create a "runas.exe" shortcut with the following configuration:
C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:domainx\myusername
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\SqlWb.exe"
Works like a charm! Thank's Jason!