Installation Procedure for SharePoint 2010 SP1

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 is a welcome relief to resolve a number of issues as well as add a number of new features. Office Web Apps SP1 also looks to bring enhancements and stability.

The real nightmare behind SP1 was a very quick release of June 2011 Cumulative Update to resolve FIM issues in SP1, and there were bugs in the update that required it to be re-released – all but making the SP1 deployment process something from a Stephen King novel.

I have done a fair amount of reading online, both from Microsoft and SharePoint MVPs, I have also done my own amount of testing on replica environments of our live system. Taking in to account my own experience with SharePoint, I will be following this process to update my 3 tier farm (1 Web Front End Server, 1 Application Server, 3 SQL Server in a mirror with a witness):

Create backups and test their restore to a test farm

• Run a full SharePoint 2010 backup
• Run a full SQL Server backup of all databases

Stop any services that could interrupt the install process:

• Disable SQL Server Maintenance plan that runs every 30 minutes to backup the transaction log for all databases
• Stop the Search Service Incremental Index crawler

Run the installs on the Application Server:

• Install SharePoint 2010 Foundation SP1
• Install SharePoint 2010 Server SP1
• Install Office Web Apps SP1
• Reboot the Server

We need to ensure all the databases are updated to the same version as the installed binaries:

• Run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Application Server
• Run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Web Front End Server

Run the installs on the Application Server:

• Install SharePoint 2010 Foundation June 2011 Cumulative Update
• Install SharePoint 2010 Server June 2011 Cumulative Update
• Reboot the Server

We need to ensure all the databases are updated to the same version as the installed binaries:

• Run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Application Server
• Run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Web Front End Server

Final Reboot

• I found that I needed to do a reboot on my second set of testing as the UPS wouldn’t run as it thought it the server was in a shutting down state
• It did have to do this a few days on the first set of testing I did

If you have the User Profile Service running, I think I read somewhere that you need to restart it:

• Open Central Administration, and go to Manage Services on this Server
• If the User Profile Synchronization Service is running, select Stop
• Start the User Profile Synchronization Service, providing your Farm Admin credentials
• Close Central Administration
• Run IISReset from a Command Prompt

Assuming all the installs and wizards have run successfully, I would recommend rerunning your backups:

• Run a full SharePoint 2010 backup
• Run a full SQL Server backup of all databases

With successful backups, you can re-enable your services:

• Enable SQL Server Maintenance plan that runs every 30 minutes to backup the transaction log for all databases
• Start the Search Service Incremental Index crawler

Run a UPS full sync:

• Run a UPS full sync, as I started to get Event ID 5555 errors. This blog post refers to some stsadm commands to run, however I found that a full sync cleaned up the errors for me

Check Upgrade status:

• I won’t print out all the checks to run, as you can verify your update success via this Microsoft Technet article.

UPDATE: When you run the installs, somewhere along the line (probably SP1), the CEIP Data Collection Timer Job is enabled. This can kick up errors if it wasn’t previosuly enabled due to DCOM permissions. You will need to go to Central Administration, then under Monitoring and select Job Definitions to find CEIP Data Collection, and to Disable it if you continue in not wanting to send SharePoint reports off to Microsoft. I found that CEIP had been enabled on the SharePoint Central Administration Web Application, so under Manage Web Applications in Central Administration, select the Central Administration Web Application and select General Settings and at very bottom of the list, you can turn off CEIP without having to disable the Timer job. I also noticed that I hadn’t set the Time Zone and was wondering why (all of a sudden), the UPS log file showed the import results 2 hours behind the current time here in Cape Town.

UPDATE: I wouldn’t run any backups after the SP1 installations if you intend to apply the Cumulative Updates straight after – it seems to cause a little mess with the UPS (as the backups stop the UPS services and restarts them and the backup failed).

UPDATE: According to this blog post, the user runs the updates on the Web Front End first and then the Application servers – I was going to do it the other way round, but have updated by order above to conform with theirs.

UPDATE: This Microsoft Technet article also recommends upgrading your Web Front End servers first. It also confirms that you should run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Application Servers first, then the Web Front End servers.

The above blog post also provides at the very least a base checklist of items to test after SP1 and the Cumulative Update are applied:

1. Edit and View Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents in the browser
2. View My Sites
3. Test User Profile Synchronization
4. Tag Pages and check for tags in Newsfeed
5. View a Visio Web Access Drawing in the Browser
6. Work in an Access Web Database site
7. Add an obscure word to a page or document, do an incremental search crawl, and search for the word
8. Add terms and/or term sets to the Managed Metadata store
9. View Reporting Services Reports (or Access Web Database Reports)

Depending on how successful the above went, how clean your Event Logs are, and generally how brave you are, you can now install the June 2011 Cumulative Update following the same process as above – backup, install the Foundation update followed by the Server update, reboot, run PSConfig, re-provision the User Profile Service, backup and then re-enabled disabled services.

Microsoft seem to recommend installing the SP1 and Cumulative Update at the same time – I would prefer to get a stable backup in between the installation of the updates so if something fails, you only have to go back halfway and not end up starting from the very beginning.

My advice is do this on a weekend, preferably a Saturday if you can, then you have an extra day in case something goes wrong. Secondly. you won’t be rushed if doing this on a weekday. I will be doing mine next weekend as long as no mishaps show up between now and then. I will let you know if I go with the Cumulative Update.

UPDATE: Since applying the updates, SharePoint does seem snappier and more stable - I havent tested Google Chrome support but I have played with Sub Site Recycle Bin restores and that works aplomb!

SharePoint is…

I have been catching up on my blog reading, and came across this post with had the image below – and it is far too engaging to not share!

Replacing Custom Intranets & Extranets with SharePoint

Although residing in Cape Town, I am the IT Manager for Special Ambulance Transfer Service (SATS). The website will give a better synopsis of what they do:

Special Ambulance Transfer Service Ltd (SATS) provide a comprehensive critical care service to both the public and private health sectors. We can provide fully equipped mobile “ITU” units, with highly trained and appropriate staff, 24 hours a day, to anywhere in the UK mainland and Europe.

Since day one, I have provided all their IT needs, from the logo design to the office network. I have developed two hosted systems for SATS, a website and an extranet. Both systems are custom ASP applications, built on the .NET 2.0 Framework. The website fulfils the usual business criteria, but it makes use of AJAX to provide dynamic forms for transfer and event booking with NHS hospitals and private clients; it even has a fancy recruitment application form which I am very proud of.

The Extranet was a much bigger project and was also a real nightmare at times. It offers User Profile accounts to each staff member, as well as access to all company policies, forms, and training documents. It allows management to post Staff Announcements via email to all staff members as well as write Company News articles for the website.

The advanced part of the Extranet is the online management of the transfer and event bookings. As bookings are made, managers can dynamically update the status and details of each booking, i.e. time of crew dispatch, arrivals and finishes. This information is then able to give managers a daily/weekly/monthly assessment of the jobs and their types that the company does. This level of reporting can then be passed back to the individual hospitals that SATS work with, so that they can review the jobs being done.

The Extranet does have a social aspect with a simple custom Message Board, however it is quite primitive and not of much use.

The Extranet is one of those projects that just will never end and the cost of custom work is always an issue when reviewing the list of the latest changes, additions and bug fixes.

The past six months has seen me work extensively on SharePoint 2010 Enterprise, and I have been able to work on a number of its features that are beginning to make me wonder whether it is time to scrap the Extranet and rather migrate it to a SharePoint farm.

The idea would be to create an Intranet, and extend it to an Extranet. SATS do not currently make use of SharePoint internally for their document management, which is something I have always wanted to get round to doing, as it would allow us to scrap endless duplicate files and structured spread sheets that can be turned in to lists. It would also allow the company to allow document access to off site workers without the need to send out emails with attachments (and running the risk of increasing document duplication).

The Extranet does a lot of document management that is duplicated from the office network (files exported to PDF and uploaded to the Extranet), so by extending the Intranet online, it would allow office workers to publish documents instead of waiting for me to do it (which involves creating the PDFs, uploading them to the web server and manually inserting HTML). The permissions on the Extranet are not as granular as I would like, so tying in AD user accounts would enable a much finer permissions structure, which can be managed by the office workers themselves.

By utilising the Business Connectivity Service (BCS) in SharePoint, I can use InfoPath forms and lists to allow the managers to work on the Transfer booking data, and then use PerformancePoint to create dashboards based on the data and publish them to managers and clients.

The Portal may need to remain around for some tasks such as Staff Announcements, however I could use the site Announcements and Alert Me feature to get around this. I can integrate the updating of Company News in SharePoint too.

I think the most important point to consider here, is cost. Extranet development is a costly exercise both financially and in time. Developing new features requires my time to design and build them. They are also limited by budget constraints. Time is also an issue by the amount of manual work I currently do updating the data on the Extranet; work which can be automated or done by office workers. By migrating to SharePoint, we would essentially be able to offload the development time and cost on to Microsoft, and that would allow me to apply my time to more useful projects over repetitive exercises.

The more I think about it, the more I really want to get cracking on my current SharePoint project so that I can learn as much as possible and take this information back to SATS. SharePoint is a user-managed tool and that’s exactly what SATS need. I have Lync 2010 on my project roadmap as well, and this will be something I really want to see how I can integrate at SATS as communication is a big part of their business.

SharePoint 2010: Enable Access Services Application

• Open SharePoint Central Admin
• Select Security
• Select Configure managed accounts
• Add the IIS application pool account and password (CORP\SP-AppPoolAccess)

• Open SharePoint Central Admin
• Select Application Management
• Select New, and select Access Services

Name: Access Services Application

Create new application pool: SharePoint – Access Services

Application Pool account: CORP\SP-AppPoolAccess

• Open SharePoint Central Admin
• Select Application Management
• Select Access Services and select Permissions

Type CORP\SP-AppPoolAccess and select Add

Select CORP\SP-AppPoolAccess and enable Full Control

On the SQL Server, you need to select CORP\SP-AppPool and enable DBOwner permissions on all the WSS Content databases that the Access Services Application will be associated with. I tried setting just public permissions, but I received an error, and found on a few forums that you need DBOwner set.

Now that the permissions are set, we can start the Access Services Application service on the SharePoint server:

• Open SharePoint Central Admin
• Select Application Management
• Select Manage services on server

Select the Server you want to run the service on (ideally an Application Server)

Select Access Database Service and select Start

That should be everything. Previous instructions I have seen mention that you need to have the State Service enabled also. I will show how to do that in a new post with a simple bit of PowerShell.