Storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration (SharePoint Server 2013)

The much anticipated, Storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration (SharePoint Server 2013) article is now live on TechNet.

The product group invested many hours of testing both SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 and SQL Server 2012 with SharePoint Server 2013. Use the resulting data in this article as a guideline to help you plan and deploy SQL Server in your SharePoint Server 2013 farm....

(more...)  http://blogs.technet.com/b/tothesharepoint/archive/2013/08/26/new-storage-and-sql-server-capacity-planning-article-for-sharepoint-server-2013.aspx

Metalogix Acquires Axcelor's ControlPoint

Source: Metalogix Press Release

At Metalogix we love to make history.  And today we have done it once again!

Today we announced the acquisition of Axceler’s SharePoint business, including the industry standard for SharePoint governance and administration, ControlPoint for SharePoint Administration. This acquisition is a game-changer for the industry and it marks a key milestone for our company in our decade-long commitment to providing the best-in-class SharePoint solutions for our customers to deploy, operate and protect their mission critical content.

The combination of our market-leading portfolio and Axceler’s successful SharePoint business firmly establishes Metalogix as the fastest-growing SharePoint-focused Independent Software Vendor (ISV) in the world with 13,000 customers in 86 countries on all 7 continents. With the addition of ControlPoint, Metalogix now offers our customers a unique value unmatched in the market – a single source delivery of a complete suite of SharePoint migration, administration, storage, optimization and replication technology that stands apart from the competition.

Today’s acquisition was made with our current and future customers in mind, as they will benefit in the following ways:

• Enhanced SharePoint migration, governance, storage management and replicator technology suite featuring the best-in-class products at every point across the SharePoint lifecycle
• Critical operations management expansion to support SharePoint growth and maturity with the addition of ControlPoint administrator and governance products
• Expanded customer resources and support that includes including our live 24x7 support program

Today we’ve changed the landscape of the SharePoint industry, but this is only the beginning for Metalogix as we warmly welcome Axceler customers and partners to the Metalogix family and continue to evolve and grow together.  If you would like to learn more about the benefits of this acquisition, please read our press release and FAQ or visit the product page on Metalogix.com.

Thank you in advance for your continued business. I greatly look forward to enhancing our relationship and continuing to making history together.

Steven Murphy
CEO
Metalogix
murphy@metalogix.net

SharePoint 2014 Conference

March 3-6, 2014 Las Vegas, Nevada

(excerpted from: http://www.sharepointconference.com/conference)

SharePoint Conference 2014 is being held March 3-6, 2014 at the Venetian Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. It is the largest Microsoft SharePoint event in the world, and has grown each year since it debuted in 2006.

The conference offers a wide variety of presentations, labs, certification testing, Q&A sessions, workshops, and networking events for attendees to build their skills and meet other SharePoint and Yammer professionals.

SPC14 is designed for our three major audiences, Developers, IT Professionals, and Executives with content ranging from overviews and introductory lessons to deep dive sessions.

We have a ton of topics from building solutions to designing architecture to maximizing ROI to increasing employee engagement and collaboration. We also drill down into areas like Search, Security, Yammer, Office, ECM, Architecture, O365, Azure, SQL Server, and many others to help our attendees get the most of SharePoint, Yammer and their related products. To learn more about what awaits you, check out the audiences page.

Along with the best new content, industry trends, and product announcements, there will be SharePoint and Yammer product managers, engineers, and industry experts answering questions, giving presentations, and hosting discussions. Access to the top SharePoint  and Yammer people has never been easier!

Keep SharePoint Farms Synchronized with Mixed Versions of SP

Metalogix releases Replicator for SharePoint..

Sync Real-time Across Multiple Farms
Replicator finds the most efficient path across your network when syncing content across multiple farms. Content follows users as they go through their workday, regardless of where they are located. Replicator scales as your organization grows, ensuring that content is in-sync with your users. Replicator can sync immediately after changes happen or on a regular schedule, boosting productivity and collaboration and reducing errors and operational risks.

Sync Across Any Version

SharePoint is constantly evolving, with organizations deploying new versions regularly. Replicator provides the ability to synchronize content between distant farms across any combination of SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013. Keep SharePoint in sync during a migration, merger, and acquisition or when sharing content with an organization outside of your network.

Control What is Replicated

Organizations now use SharePoint globally, which often means 

that you may need to provide user access to all or just some 

content for business, security and compliance reasons. Replicator 

eliminates this problem by delivering the right content to 

different divisions and locations. You manage a master content 

database at headquarters and decide what to share with remote 

farms, with granularity from entire web applications to specific 

list item.

Sync Despite Poor Connections

Synchronizing SharePoint farms in remote offices or offshore locations 

can be tricky. Spotty network bandwidth and slow connections pose 

huge hurdles. Replicator overcomes these hurdles by automatically 

adapting to changing network conditions and rerouting content where 

it needs to go.

Make Content Highly AvailableOutages happen. Yet your 

content must be “always on” for customers, partners and employees. 

Set up a safety net by replicating content across multiple SharePoint 

farms. Give users continuous access to SharePoint even if any part of 

your environment fails. Use Replicator for up time during power, system 

or network failures and planned outages.

Replicate to and from the Cloud

Want to use the Cloud to improve high availability or remote access? 

Replicate all or some of your content to Azure, Amazon or 

other cloud providers. Replicator's fast SharePoint synchronization and 

low bandwidth requirements make it the ideal SharePoint replication 

solution to extend content to the Cloud.

Extend SharePoint to Partners and Customers

Share documents with partners and customers by setting up a server 

outside your firewall and synchronizing with headquarters. Replicator 

works through firewalls and ensures security when extending your 

business to external business partners.

Prioritize Sync Based on Rules

Rank what replicates first, because your financial data is more important 

than company party pictures. Classify and prioritize content based on 

important site collections, list items or metadata such as document 

type, file size, or file name. Ensure the most important 

content is available and distributed on time.

Conflicts? What Conflicts?

Resolve document version conflicts according to rules you define, either 

manually or automatically. For example, if the date on an inbound 

item is older than the date on an existing item, specify whether to skip it,

replace it, or create a report for further review. Email team members about

 conflicts for faster resolution.

Visually Manage Your SharePoint Replication

See your overall SharePoint layout to verify you've made the right connections 

and your content arrives in time. Verify the status of all your SharePoint 

replication activity over multiple servers, across distant farms, in one 

place. Drill down to see detailed traffic information and view replication 

trends by day, week, or month. Confidently know where your documents are 

in your SharePoint landscape.

SharePoint 2013 Service Accounts

The following is the list of accounts I use when building Enterprise Production SP2013 farms. 

Account name	Role	Rights
SPSetup	Used to install SharePoint binaries	• Domain User • Local Admin all SP servers • DBCreator SQL role • SecurityAdmin SQL role
SPFarm	Farm account. Used for Windows Timer Service, Central Admin and User Profile service	• Domain User • Local Admin during UPS provisioning • Log on locally right
SPPortalAppPool	App pool id for content web apps	• Domain User
SPServicesAppPool	Service app pool id	• Domain User
SPMySitesAppPool	MySites App pool id for profile service	• Domain User
SPSearch	Search process id	• Domain User
SPContent	Account used to crawl content	• Domain User
SPProfileSync	Account used by the User Profile services to access Active Directory	Must have Replicating Change permissions to AD. Must be given in BOTH ADUC and ADSIEDIT. If domain is Windows 2003 or early, must also be a member of the "Pre-Windows 2000" built-in group.
SPCacheSuperUser	Super User Cache account	• Domain User • Web app Policy Full ControL
SPCacheSuperReader	Super Reader Cache account	• Domain User • Web app Policy Full Read
SPServices	The SPServices account is used to run several service applications	• Domain User

August 2013 Cumulative Update for the SharePoint 2013

The product group released the August 2013 Cumulative Update for SharePoint 2013 product family.

The KB articles for August CU will be available at the following locations in a couple of days:

v  KB 2817517 - SharePoint Foundation 2013 August 2013 CU
v  KB 2817616 - SharePoint Server 2013 August 2013 CU
v  KB 2817615 - SharePoint Server 2013 with Project Server August 2013 CU
v  KB 2817521 - Office Web Apps Server 2013 August 2013 CU

The Full Server Packages for August 2013 CU are available through the following links:

Ø  Download SharePoint Foundation 2013 August 2013 CU
Ø  Download SharePoint Server 2013 August 2013 CU
Ø  Download Project Server 2013 August 2013 CU
Ø  Download Office Web Apps Server 2013 August 2013 CU

After installing the fixes you need to run the SharePoint 2013 Products Configuration Wizard on each machine in the farm.

SharePoint 2013 Development Environment Configuration Best Practice

Development Environment

Development in SharePoint consists of many different types of development. SharePoint Solution development, Web Part development, workflow development, .Net development, SharePoint Apps development, etc..

Therefore, each developer in the SharePoint environment should have their own development virtual server.

A powerful single server farm, i.e. App, Web & DB all on one virtual server. This will give them the ability to create or restore development environments at will, which greatly eases the development process and can speed up delivery.

• This VM should be hosted on a development dedicated VM host server which will host the entire development environment.
• Using a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client, your developer has access to a complete environment without making any changes or installations on his local environment.
• To support each developer and maintain a consistent, known and clean environment, the Development environment will initially consist of two virtual servers. 

Domain Controller

The Domain Controller virtual server will provide AD / DNS services and have Server 2012 installed and configured with 2 cores and 4 GB ram.

SharePoint

The SharePoint virtual server will have Server 2012, SharePoint 2013, SQL 2012 Standard, SQL Server Management Tools, Office 2013, Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 and SharePoint Designer 2013. To accommodate for combining multiple server roles onto one virtual machine (SQL, .Net, SharePoint), this virtual machine will be configured with 4 cores and 24 GB ram.  

A couple of notes:

1. Do not share a sql server between development vms. SharePoint developers will need FULL control over their environment, to include SQL server. I have talked to many .Net (no SharePoint experience) developers who can not imagine needing SQL skills... but, make no mistake, SharePoint Solution developers will absolutely require access to SQL. By turning the SQL instance over to each individual developer in their own VM, will remove management of the Dev environment from SharePoint Admins to the developers....
2. Do add a domain controller for all developers to share.. this will assist with VM cloning (to replace or upgrade developer vms)

This design provides the most comprehensive solution for SharePoint Developers with the least amount of management.

Additionally, ensure the platform includes a farm for the developers to test code in an integrated environment. I call this environment "Integration". This is the next environment up in the life cycle. If possible, use TFS to move code between all life cycles (with exception of DR). QA environment follows, which will provide function, performance and user acceptance testing, therefore needs to be a mirror of production in terms of physical architecture/resources as well as data and features/solutions. Production environment is the next level up...then DR.