Get Ready for Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Certification Path for IT professionals

• 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Will cover configuration of SharePoint 2010 including deployment, upgrade, management and operation on a server farm.

• 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Will cover advanced SharePoint 2010 topics including capacity planning, topology designing and performance tuning.

Certification Path for Developers

• 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Five-day instructor-led course designed for developers with six months or more of.NET development experience. Course covers what you need to know to be an effective member of a SharePoint development team using Visual Studio 2010.

• 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Five-day instructor-led training course designed for development team leads who have already passed the Developing on SharePoint 2010 technical specialist exam. The course covers choosing technologies for and scoping a SharePoint project, best practices for SharePoint development, configuring a SharePoint development environment, advanced use of SharePoint developer features and debugging of code in a SharePoint project.

https://partner.microsoft.com/40121316?msp_id=sharepoint2010ready

SharePoint 2010: Getting Started with Development on SharePoint 2010 Hands-on Labs in C# and Visual Basic

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C010FC68-B47F-4DB6-B8A8-AD4BA33A35C5&displaylang=en#filelist

SharePoint 2010 for Project Management Success

SharePoint 2010 for Project Management Success from Dux Raymond Sy on Vimeo.

Determine hardware and software requirements (SharePoint Server 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx

Install SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2

From: Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog

Starting from Service Pack 2, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 support Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2. When you try to install SharePoint bits on Windows Server 2008 R2 directly, you may see the following dialogue:

This is because Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 bits without SP2 slipstreamed are not supported on Windows Server 2008 R2. The KB article 962935 is not live on the web site yet.

To install on Windows Server 2008 R2, for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 you can download the slipstream builds here:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP2 (x86)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EF93E453-75F1-45DF-8C6F-4565E8549C2A&displaylang=en

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP2 (x64)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9FB41E51-CB03-4B47-B89A-396786492CBA&displaylang=en

For SharePoint Server 2007, you can follow Create an installation source that includes software updates (Office SharePoint Server 2007) to create one. Or you can also read on, we will go through the complete steps to create a new slipstream build for SharePoint Server 2007.

Installation Steps

1. Copy the content of SharePoint Server 2007 setup files from the installation media to a folder on your hard drive.

2. Delete everything inside Updates folder.

3. Download Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 to a folder.

Make sure your Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 is downloaded after July 29^th.

4. Open a command prompt,  change directory to the folder you put the downloaded patches, and run the following two commands:

wssv3sp2-kb953338-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:[Path to installation bits]\Updates /quiet

officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract: [Path to installation bits]\Updates /quiet

Change [Path to installation bits] to where you put the bits. These will extract all the content from the two packages to Updates folder. SharePoint installation program will automatically read this folder to apply the patches.

5. Delete wsssetup.dll. This is a very important step so please don’t miss it.

6. If you also need the Cumulative Updates to be applied when install SharePoint, download the latest Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 Cumulative Update packages and extract them into Updates folder like step 4.

7. Your slipstream build of SharePoint Server 2007 is done!

8. Go and install it on your Windows Server 2008 R2 box, after the installation, the site version will show 12.0.0.6421 or possibly a higher version if you added additional cumulative update files.

Web Application, Site Collection and Sub-Site

SharePoint Terminologies and Hierarchy

Following diagram illustrates the SharePoint hierarchy:

Web Application, Site Collection and Sub-Site

The following points are to be considered when deciding on an extranet site structure and usage of SharePoint Components.

· Administration Overhead

· Scalability

· Upgrade Scope

· Backup/Restore

· Security

· Search Settings

· Audit/IRM Settings

· Feature Scope

· Recycle Bin

· Usage Reporting

· Branding

· Navigation

· Content Rollup and Aggregation

· Content Type / Site Column Scope

Backup and Restore

· Full fidelity backups are only possible at the site collection level

· If a sub-site needs to be restored then the entire site collection must be restored

· 3rd party solutions offer full fidelity recovery at more granular levels

Security

· Site Collections allow security groups and permissions to be isolated from other site collections

· Management is more complex with site collections

· Difficult to see what access a user has across site collections

· No OOTB way to synchronize settings across site collections

· Usage of Site collections can reduce the need to break security inheritance

· Site Collections can be used to overcome SharePoint group limitations (Cannot go over 2000 users or AD groups in a single ACL)

Feature Scope

· Features can be scoped to a Site Collection or Web (or Farm or Web Application)

· You can prevent access to certain functionality by using site collections

o Some Features must be scoped to a site collection

o You might have to activate a Feature thereby (potentially) making functionality available to all users/contributors/designers of a site

Search

· Search Scopes are defined at the site collection level (You can create shared scopes via the SSP but they must be “activated” at each site collection)

· Best bets and keywords are site collection scoped (Use a single search centre)

· Settings must be manually (or programmatically) synchronized across site collections

Scalability

The single most critical reason for using multiple site collections is scalability

· Limit content databases to 100GB (50GB recommended, 100GB maximum)

· If you must go over 100GB then use only 1 site collection in the content database

· You will encounter performance issues and possibly deadlock conditions (if over 100GB)

· Split content approaching 100GB in a site collection into a new site collection in a separate content database (STSADM)

· Site collections cannot live across content databases

· Web applications can have multiple content databases attached to them

Reporting

· Usage reports are scoped at the site collection

· There is no out of the box mechanism to get cross site collection usage reports

o SSP administrators can get search query reports which span site collections

· Many 3rd party products produce much more useful/sophisticated reports for cross site collection reporting

Branding

· Master pages and CSS can be used to enforce a consistent branding experience

· Use Themes for as much as possible so that the application/system pages will be branded

· Use Feature Stapling to automatically apply the branding. This provides a seamless experience for the end-user

Content Types / Site Columns

• Features could be used to deploy to consistent Content Type and Site Columns across multiple Site Collections
• It is important that the Content Type ID remains the same – creation via the browser does not allow setting the ID across site collections

Cross Site Configuration

• Solution Accelerator from MSFT (http://www.codeplex.com/SPConfigurator)
• The tool automates the process of deploying site settings in all or selected sites in a server farm:
  • Applying Master Pages across a SharePoint server farm
  • Setting up Web Titles for all or selected site collections across the farm
  • Applying audit control settings to all or selected sites
  • Adding advanced settings such as “Allow content type management” to all types of lists
  • Adding a new Expiration Policy at the site collection level
  • Adding a new Expiration Policy to content types, lists, and documents

Useful TechNet links for Planning, Designing; Securing an Extranet (SharePoint Server 2007)

 

Plan authentication methods (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262350.aspx

Design extranet farm topology (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263513.aspx

Downloadable book: Planning an Extranet Environment for Office SharePoint Server

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262400.aspx

Planning, Designing; Securing an Extranet and Internet Facing WSSv3 and SharePoint Server 2007 Environments

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/08/08/planning-designing-amp-securing-an-extranet-and-internet-facing-wssv3-and-sharepoint-server-2007-environments.aspx

External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc268155.aspx