Sharepoint Foundation 2010 - Part 3 Farm Configuration

Part 3 explains how to configure the Farm

Use the Wizard

When you open Central Administration you are offered to configure Sharepoint with the wizard or manually, I am choosing to use the wizard.

Service Account

You will need to create a service account for the farm to use, I have created a standard domain account and then assigned this with the create new managed account

Did you create the domain account?

If you have not created your domain account then you will see this error.

Create a default site

The wizard will offer to create the first default site, you can choose the Title, Description and Template.

Complete Farm Configuration

The Farm Configuration is complete. Part 4 will discuss Central Administration

Sharepoint Foundation 2010 - Part 2 Configuration

Part 2 describes how to configure Sharepoint 2010 Foundation including the databases

Sharepoint Products Configuration Wizard

Start the wizard to allow you to configure the Sharepoint Farm.

Warning

Note the services that need to restart.

Server Farm

Choose the option to Create a new server farm

Specify the database

You can now specifiy where the Sharepoint databases will be stored, enter the SQL Server under Database Server , keep the name of the database as suggested. You will need a SQL Server service account for the database to be created, this needs to only be a domain account as the wizard will elevate the privileges for you.

Farm Passphrase

The Farm Passphrase is used each time a server joins the farm, use a secure passphrase.

Central Administration

Configure the Central Administration web site, this is installed on the first Sharepoint Server by default, choose an easy to remember port. Keep the authentication settings to the default NTLM

Complete the wizard

Note the Advanced Settings button, this is only available in a Foundation installation.

Active Directory Account Creation Mode

You have the ability to create Active Directory accounts when you create users in Sharepoint, however note that you cannot use existing Active Directory accounts if you choose this option and so your existing users would need a second account and lets face it, no users need a second account!

Product Configuration

The wizard will now configure the server

New Databases

If you now check your SQL Server you can see the new databases that have been created.

Completion

The configuration wizard is complete. Part 3 will discuss the Farm Configuration.

Sharepoint Foundation 2010 - Part 1 Pre Requisites and Installation

Part 1 will explain the necessary pre requisites for Sharepoint Foundation 2010 and then the installation process.

Are you using SQL Server Express or SQL Server?

You can choose to host the databases on the free SQL Server 2008 Express of an existing SQL Server 2005, 2008 or 2012. SQL Server Express has a limit for the database of 4GB or in R2 10GB so if you are planning on a permanent Sharepoint Farm then I would consider this limit for the content database.

If you intend to use SQL Server you can check here the necessary version that is required.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/cc288751(en-us).aspx

Download Sharepoint Foundation 2010

Download Sharepoint Foundation 2010 from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5970

Run As Administrator

Don't forget to elevate the installer privileges

Sharepoint Foundation 2010 Installer

The frist step is to install the pre requisites for Sharepoint.

Pre Requisites

Run the Products Preparation Tool, this will install multiple applications and hotfixes that are required.

Agree to Licence

Agree to the licence.

Products Preparation Tool

The Products Preparation Tool will not install all the applications and hotfixes.

Reboot Required

Although the Products Preparation Tool does not require a reboot, the server will require a reboot for the Sharepoint Foundation install to complete, so now is a good time for a reboot.

Install Sharepoint Foundation 2010

Choose Install Sharepoint Foundation

Agree to Licence

Agree to the Licence

Make your choice

You now get to choose whether to install a Standalone or Server Farm version of Sharepoint. There are multiple reasons why you should not use the Standalone version, the most significant being that a Standalone installation cannot have other servers added later, you are limited to one server for good.

Standalone tries to get you again

The install wizard will try to get you to install a Standalone version again, watch out for this and choose the Complete option.

Data Location

The data location is not one you need to change, this is only where Sharepoint stores some of its key files, but these are generally around 1GB in size so there is not need to change this.

Install

The installer begins.

Install Complete

Once the installer has completed you are now ready to start the Configuration, read about this in Sharepoint Foundation 2010 - Part 2 Configuration.

How to use Join.me to share your Desktop with another person

If you need to share your Desktop with another person for a training session for example, you can do so easily and quickly with Join.me

Go to https://join.me

Open Internet Explorer and then go to the site https://join.me from here you can see the Join Me page. Click on the basic option in the share section. Then click the orange arrow.

Install Join.me

To be able to share your desktop you need to run the Join.me application, this is a one time install. Click run.

Installing

The Join.me application will now install.

Up and running

Once installed you will see a message to tell you that can now share your desktop. Note the 9 digit code at the top of the screen in the format xxx-xxx-xxx

At the screen of the person who you want to share with

Contact the person you want to share with and ask them to visit https://join.me and enter your 9 digit code into the Join section and then click the green arrow.

Vistor joins

You will now see a message to say the other person has joined, they can now see your desktop but they cannot interact with you until you give them permission.

Give the visitor access

Click on the Person icon and below a small window opens, click on the icon of the mouse and you can share your desktop with the visitor.

Visitor has access

You have now given the visitor access to your desktop and then are able to move your mouse and interact.

Complete session

When you have finished your session and you want to take control of your desktop back, click on the Mouse icon with the X

Revoke access

Choose yes to disconnect the visitor.

Finish Join.me session

Finally to close your session, click on the X to close the application and remember to remove the check for keeping Join.me on the desktop.

XenApp Server 6.5 - a usable server cannot be found on which to launch the application

Error launching a published application on a XenApp 6.5 Server

XenApp 6.5 Event Log

I spent several hours on a new XenApp 6.5 installation trying to work this out, I had published Adobe Reader X and everytime I launched it from the web interface I had this error that a reidrection error had occured. I checked the event logs on the XenApp Server and the message above was shown in the event log. I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out with it being my first XenApp installation so these are the points to check.

• Confirm you have created a Worker Group for the XenApp Server and added your server to this group
• When publishing the application, publish it to the Worker Group
• Check your ACL on any routing between VLANS, I was building a hosted environment so I had ACL between my XenApp Server and my WI Server and I had missed 1494 and 2598 going from my XenApp Server back to my WI Server.

This solution may be due for more updates as this is a learning curve but as there is a lot of information our there on this issue that was not relevant I thought I would get out there what I did.

Windows 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services - The task you are trying to do can't be completed because Remote Desktop Services is currently busy

A user cannot logon to a Windows 2008 R2 Server, other users may be connected and be able to reconnect.

Error Message

This issue is recorded in a Microsoft KB Article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2661332 and it is caused by an issue with Csrss.exe and Microsoft Excel or Visio.

Microsoft KB Article

There is a hotfix for this issue, request and install the hotfix. I did this while the server was in production, not best practice but I had little choice as my customer would not tolerate a reboot at that time.

Restart Services

To enable the hotfix I restarted the Remote Desktop Services Service, often this is all the reboot does when it is requested.

Powershell - Number of Mailboxes per Database

A quick Powershell that is worth sharing is this command to display the number of mailboxes per database.

Get-MailboxDatabase | Select Server, StorageGroupName, Name, @{Name="Number Of Mailboxes";expression={(Get-Mailbox -Database $_.Identity | Measure-Object).Count}} | Format-Table -AutoSize


Thanks to Teknologist for this http://bit.ly/Nv1KIB