Designing a SharePoint Infrastructure for The Cloud “Windows Azure” —  ITP227

·         Way Way too intro, great if you didn’t know about Azure.

·         Check this out  https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=642 Learn it, know it!!!

Managing the Very Large Database: Best practices for administrators managing 1TB or more — DBA424

·         GREAT!!!!

·         Just did a bang up job. Went into the weeds and showed you what was going on.

·         Something I didn’t know: He spend a bit of time to explain Standard vs. enterprise edition, and made a statement, if you have a 1TB DB get enterprise. Since “he” says, Microsoft might not admit it, but it seems like the standard code is throttled. P.S. I’m sure I’m taking this out of context or didn’t remember it right, but the take away from this is to do more research on standard and enterprise.

·         To many indexes can hurt performance

·         Heaps load faster than clustered indexes

·         Index maintenance is a must and should be done regularly

·         SQL RAM guidance: 4gb per core, quad core = 16gb

·         “Quest Light Speed” http://www.quest.com/litespeed-for-sql-server/ for table level Backup and Restore

·         Lots of details into indexes and partitioning of databases. I can almost a guarantee this information will be used in the future.

·         I will do a follow-up posting with the good slides.

·         Randy THANK YOU!!!

Performance Monitoring Best Practices for SQL Server — DBA331

·         At Aspenware I do a lot of performance monitoring / testing reviews for our customers. And after this meet up, our customers are only going to get even more value for their money. I say this only because Andrew has more than 20+ years of SQL work, and it shows!!!!

·         Did lots of talking on how and where to store trace/perf mon statics. Use of a binary file a must.

·         Never load trace or perf data into tables when doing SQL performance monitoring

·         PAL – Codeplex

·         Log parser –MS

·         Relog & Logman – MS

·         Did you know?? SQL profiler will cause SQL to throttle back and may even drop events if it cannot get the information to the client. Meaning if you were to run SQL Profiler form a client computer to a SQL server and you had a slow network connection, you could actually cause the SQL server to preform worse than it would if you weren’t connected. This is also a caution to 3^rd party apps for perf mon.

·         Also went into Wait Stats vs. File Stats. Great detail and Visual.

·         Xevents to replace profiler in 2010…

·         I will do a follow-up posting with the good slides.

·         Andrew THANK YOU!!!

SQL Server Consolidation and Virtualization Recommendations and Best Practices —  DBA336

·         WOW!!

·         Biggest thing I left with was SQL in a virtual environment. May acutely become a viable option in production!!

·         Next Generation HyperV processors with SLAT (Second Level Address Translation) technology. Going to be expensive cause latest tech, but will be very much worth the investment. And as always the prices will drop..

·         The following applies to Server 2008 R2 with HyperV:

o   %Processor Time – no longer works use HyperV Logical Processor in virtual server instance

o   Can now hot swap data devices. Ex: hard drives from one server to another.

o   Microsoft has a use case that says 6 to 1. 6 physical servers to every one physical virtual host. I always said 4 physical per virtual host, cause I thought MS Virtual Server software was not in the same league as VMware ESX. But looks like the hardware and their software has improved!!

o   If your application needs more than 4 processors, virtualization is not an option, since currently only 4 processors can be assigned to any one virtual instance.

·         I will do a follow-up posting with the good slides.

·         Lindsey THANK YOU!!!

Storage Best Practices for SharePoint Server – Part 1 —  ITP248

Storage Best Practices for SharePoint Server – Part 2 — ITP255

·         Never meet just a DISK guy before. And man he knows his stuff…. I think… Don’t have anything to compare to…

·         Highlights

o   SATA-3 coming soon 6 GBits

o   Super Speed USB coming 5 GBits

§  This technology is all to drive SSD stuff hitting the market.

·         The real benefits to his talk were his slides, he did a great job, and will post them soon.

·         He also spoke about  http://www.storagepoint.com/ And I can tell you right now, I’m going to be blogging more about this so hold on!!!

·         Just a ton of information about where the SSD market is going and how it effects the enterprise.

·         Know the difference between SSD: NAND-Flash SLC or MLC

·         Fastest performance at the moment is SSD: DRAM, but if it loses power you lose all your data. So many of these drives have batteries. Batteries fail so some even have SATA drives or Spinning drives of some sort to handle backup.

·         Some really interesting stuff about TEMPDB in SQL. He recommends moving just this DB to SSD, will help overall performance of SQL server.

·         The SAN market is about to change, so if you’re about to purchase one you may hold off bit. Many companies say they will be support all SSD drives but currently no one does, mainly the HD controllers are too slow. The manufactures are rushing to resolve issue. At the moment you can only find mix scenarios Ex: SSD, SAS or SSD, SAS, SATA.

·         Also look into FCoE.

Arpan Shah http://blogs.msdn.com/arpans/ was the key note presenter at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in DC. I think he did a great job, but I have never seen him in action before. Very clear and easy to understand.

Anyway, he went over a number of things. Past and future versions was one part. It was interesting to hear the history. I knew most of it up to SharePoint 2003, but before that was all unknown.

The most meat and potatoes are the SharePoint 2010 stuff!!! **(new punch line) The Business Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise and the Web

·         BDC (business data catalog) now called BCS (business continuity services)

o   Giving the ability to Read and now Write!!

·         Use SharePoint designer to added external data sources

o   This allows for external lists or data sources to be edited with all the normal functions of a custom list within SharePoint, and its live!!

·         Groove server is now called SP Workspaces

o   Looks like this had come a long way, he didn’t go into too much detail, but I would actually recommend this now.

·         There are new services like Excel services in SharePoint 2007.

o   Access services

o   Visio Services

o   I think even a PowerPoint services

·         Direct Uploading of content to pages.

o   EX: upload pictures directly from the desktop to a content page. There are third party web parts and features out there to do this in SP 2007, but now it’s built in!!

·         Intellisense comes to SharePoint for linking to content within your sharepoint site.

·         Multiple selecting in document library’s

o   EX: multiple checkout and check in

·         Some really fancy built in developer tools

o   In application / browser “dashboard” debug information

o   Direct access to data without having to call the SharePoint web services

o   WSP – standards

·         Some really fancy built in infrastructure

o   Personally I wish he spent more time, but it seems like more reporting and logging, that was very much lacking in out of box SP.

·         Oh and the pie chart changed: Composites and insights, game changers!

Other observations

I attended half and half of talks  Welcome to PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint – IW105 and  Users, Profiles, and MySites: Best Practices for Managing a Changing SharePoint User population –  ITP206

They seemed a bit basic, but each presenter mentioned proceeding meetings going a bit more in depth. I have to say very good speakers, and presentation. Most of you who know me are thinking, oh he’s going to give up on these people, but I actually liked both presenters, and would go seem more from them later this week and will!!!

Still feeling excited and very excited about this presentation at 3pm  Building SharePoint CmdLets, – Tips and Best Practices – ITP313.

More to come…..

Ben did a great job, however I believe if you didn’t know these things you shouldn’t be consulting in SharePoint. Now he did ask what the break out was as far as people in the meeting, and it was developers and CIO’s, BA / PM. I’m sure they benefited from this speech. And as I said yesterday, very smart man. He was able to respond with a wealth of information when asked.

As far as the Exhibit Hall, Three things to note H3 Solutions and NINTEX, and Black Blade.

http://www.mobileentree.com

·         Out-of-the-box support for SharePoint Lists, Document Libraries and Search

·         Out-of-the-box support for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Palm Pre browsers

·         Customizable interface elements through simple CSS alterations

·         Developer’s API for building custom mobile applications to support your business

·         Complete framework for extending your enterprise to your mobile workforce

Seems like an easy sell…. Most of our customers say they want some sort of mobile functions. Now out of box SharePoint has the “/m” option, but for most list information and or general navigation it’s kind of crappy. H3 Solutions out of box app is only $199.99 per WFE, and allows for targeted mobile information by views and it looks real good on the phone. And fast!! So for anyone who wants more mobile integration without having to customize the “/m” look no further. Now who knows SharePoint 2010 may have this beat, since it seems like so much that was missing the first time is on its way in 2010.

http://www.nintex.com/

·         Extends Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to provide advanced workflow capabilities via a graphical web based interface embedded within SharePoint.

In this market there are many workflow products. Here at Aspenware we have generally work in the Windows Workflow Foundation, and plug K2 in where  appropriate. And on the K2 side a really great product for very complicated workflows. But NINTEX’s in SharePoint site, GUI workflow generated makes it so easy a child could use it. Now I haven’t personally used this product but the live demo was very persuading. And its seem to support parallel and tiered workflow steps, but without using it myself, who knows. It’s licensed on the farm level and I believe standard is $9,000 and the enterprise version is $18,000. So may be a better choice if on a budget.

http://www.blackbladeinc.com

docBlock Ascend was their product that was basically debuted here.

·         The power to allow multiple authors to work on one document in parallel,

·         Virtual document capabilities seamlessly integrated into the standard SharePoint document features,

·         Automatic configuration within your SharePoint farm, after answering only a few simple questions about your environment.

Now at 50K an appliance this is a large chunk to swallow, however if you need it. Get it… Now I did think the user interface was a bit cheesy. All dark colors, like there website, blue and black. Seemed goofy. I believe training will be a must for some of the features, since not every user is a power user. Interacting with the document is just as it would be in SharePoint, but setting up the slices and remerging it could need a smarter person and some governance.

Day 2 coming!!!! WOOO!!!!