SharePoint Dan

A few weeks ago I happened upon Dell’s support manual for the Dell Dimension E510.  I was doing a little investigative research to check out how much RAM they supported and scratched my head when I saw that they supported 8 GB of RAM.  How could this be?  My Dell Dimension E520 only supports 4 GB, or at least that’s what the Dell manual states.

After a little more investigation, and looking at Intel’s G965 Express Chipset tech documents, it appears that Dell’s documentation is lacking as the chipset will support 8 GB of RAM and will support various quad core processors as well.

So what did I do?  I upgraded from my Intel E8400 Core 2 Duo Dual Core 2.13 GHz Processor to an Intel Q6600 Core 2 Duo Quad Core 2.4 GHz Processor.  Oh, and for kicks, I upgraded from 4 GB of RAM to 8 GB of RAM and installed Windows Server 2008 x64 Standard Edition as the core operating system.  Needless to say, it’s screaming.

What’s next on the shopping list?  Samsung SpinPoint F1 750 GB 32 MB Cache SATA II hard drives… it’s time to ramp up the space that’s available to work with Virtual Machines.

Where does these lead me?  Basically it provides a decent platform to be able to actual do some real testing and code development for a few different things that have been mulling around in the back of my head for the past few months.

We’ll see how this ends up working out… I think I might prolong procurement of any Mac products for the foreseeable future.

BLUF - Attempted to load VMWare ESX 3.5i on a Lenovo T61. Failed to find device to write to in either AHCI or SATA Compatibility modes when attempting to use VMWare ESX Thin Installer.

So you’re not familiar with “BLUF”? Bottom Line Up Front…

Nonetheless, decided to attempt to pop in a spare 100 GB Seagate Momentus 7200 SATA hard drive into my Lenovo T61 Core 2 Duo laptop and attempt installation of the newly free VMWare ESX 3.5i software. Burned a copy of VMWare ESX 3.5i onto a CD and went from there, watching the ThinStaller make its way through the hardware compatibility list only to stop when it didn’t find the appropriate SCSI interface to load VMWare onto.

So lesson of the day - make sure that youv’e got a SCSI interface to allow VMWare ESX to continue its installation on your laptop if you’re hoping to use it as such. Good luck on finding a laptop with said interface

Further diving into the realm of STSADM extensions, I came across Andrew Connell’s stsadm extensions for MOSS Web Content Management, providing the ability to quickly generate site columns, generate site content types or publish all items that are currently in queue of a web content site.

If you’re interested in going above and beyond what is already out there from Andrew, Gary and others, I’d recommend reading up Tony Bierman’s blog entry on extending the stsadm command set using the ISPStsadmCommand Interface.

First off, for those of you not familiar with Gary LaPointe’s STSADM Extensions, I would recommend checking out his blog over at http://stsadm.blogspot.com and investigate what he’s got to offer.

For those of you that are familiar with stsadm for WSS and MOSS then you’re familiar with the likes of Ben Curry’s Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Administrator’s Pocket Consultant which provides a thorough reference of the STSADM command set.  Sometimes the command set can be tedious, at other times, fairly trivial, but more than likely scripting something with it is somewhat tedious.

Enter Gary LaPointe’s stsadm extensions which take stsadm to the next level.  Gary’s extensions go above and beyond where arduous scripting would more than likely lead you, allowing you to quickly step out on administrative tasks without having to get stuck in the world of windows script host.

My current favorite extension would have to be the gl-backupsites extension which allows for the quick and easy backup of all site collections within a web application or farm.  For those of you that have had to write scripts to do this in the past, you’ll find that this is far simpler.

Thanks for your contribution to the community Gary!

So I came across an article earlier today making mention of Sun’s xVM standards compliant Virtual Sandbox software and I figured, "It’s free and it looks halfway decent, plus it’s standards compliant."

So a quick visit over to Virtual Boxes web site (http://www.virtualbox.org) and a little download magic and I was off and running setting up my first Virtual Machine using Sun’s software.

Needless to say, my first impression is that while it may not have all the fancy features that VMWare Workstation has or Microsoft Virtual PC, its small footprint makes up for it as it blazes ahead.

Additionally, it’s cross platform nature allows you to quickly and easily take a virtual machine from one platform (Mac OS-X) over to another quickly (Windows XP) without the need for exporting a machine or going through a laborious process to bring it across.

I’m sure that I’ll find some bugs in it over the next few days, but I thought it would be interesting nonetheless to try it out for the sake of being vendor neutral in the realm of virtualization.

So I met Ben Curry at TechEd IT Pro Week 2008 and I must say that he’s a decent fellow that’s quite knowledgeable about SharePoint administration and provided some of the gotchas during his presentations.  But what’s better than an hour with Ben Curry?  767 pages of Ben Curry (and Bill English) goodness.

Recently their newest book "MOSS 2007 SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices" was released and I have to say that it’s put together quite well.  There are still some holes in the table of contents that need to be filled, but that’s where third party authors like myself get to come in and fill the void right?

It covers the entire life cycle of SharePoint being used in an organization from the planning phase, the design phase, the change management aspects and the deployment piece.  If you’re looking for something to hold your hand as you go through the process, definitely recommend this piece of literature to.

Now Playing - Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams - Banana Pancakes

Alright, so this is completely devoid of anything to do with SharePoint, but I was pleasantly surprised this evening when placing a call to a colleague over Skype and having him tell me that a local number in his exchange was showing on caller ID.  Sure enough, not only can my SkypeOut number show up, my mobile number can show up when using Skype.

Needless to say, "like whoa!" as Keanu would say…

Now Playing - The Crystal Method - Vegas - High Roller

So I’ve been pondering whether or not to procure a MacBook Pro for my personal use and to hopefully push myself toward greater creativity and to disconnect myself from corporate work in some sense.

Nevertheless, while watching the WWDC 2008 Keynote speech, the first video regarding the iPhone in the Enterprise using Firmware 2.0 mentions the use of SharePoint as a document management system for one of the companies participating in the beta.  Quite interesting to hear mention of the Apple iPhone accessing SharePoint through the mini-Safari browser.

Where will SharePoint pop up next?

Day 1 of TechEd 2008 was a long first day to open up the conference.  Starting off with breakfast at 7:30, heading to the keynote at 8:30 and then onward to breakout sessions, hands on labs and interactive sessions through 6:30 in the evening was quite a lot to digest - but the day didn’t end there as we headed over to the MCP/MCT/MVP Gathering in the evening and then over to the City Walk for the TechEd Groove.  Nevertheless, the core personal highlights included:

• a better understanding of Dynamics CRM 4.0 and how it integrates with other products (Microsoft and other)
• tips and tricks using PowerShell for web content management and the SharePoint object model
• an understanding of the certification path for Windows Server 2008
• hands on lab for advanced SharePoint administration - how I’ve missed working with the CLI
• how records management is improving in MOSS 2007

All in all, a great first day at TechEd 2008.

So I’m down here in Orlando, FL at the Orange County Convention center for TechEd 2008 - IT Pro Week.  The Windows 2008 pre-conference session so far is definitely eye opening and has definitely made me realize that there’s more to what is available with the W2K8 software than first perceived - have to rethink utilizing VMWare ESX for everything (not say that it won’t be used for the majority of things :-)).  Most interesting to me is probably the Server Core mode that is available - somewhat reminiscent of a shell command line interface (my favorite) that you’d find in Linux / Unix.

Funniest quote by Corey so far would probably be with regard to the “Microsoft Moment” where the status bar moves and then starts over again, again and again.