Keynote

Speaker:
Bill Baer
Technical Product Manager
SharePoint Product Group
SharePoint MCM

Announcement: SharePoint Diagnostics Studio Version 2.0 (SPDiag.exe)

• Will be released as part of upcoming SharePoint Administration Toolkit in about a month
• Will supplement the SCOM and the Health Analyzer to provide advanced diagnostics
• Surfaces diagnostic data from all servers across the farm, remotely
• Reports: Base, Capacity, Performance, Availability, Usage
• Integrated search: Can report on data by Correlation ID, Date/Time, or User
• Snapshot/Export report to view offline
• Two components: SPDiag.exe (Client) and ExtendedDiagnoticProviders.exp (Farm solution)
• Will be released via the SharePoint team blog

Visio & SharePoint with a Twist of Silverlight (Developer)

Speaker:
Barb Coplen
Portal Program Manager
Server & Tools Business, Microsoft

Demo and walkthrough of how to use Visio Services, a SharePoint list, and Visio Services JavaScript API to build a dynamic view of clickable shapes and additional details in a SharePoint Web Part page.

SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Strategies & Best Practices (IT Pro)

Speaker:
Joel Oleson
SharePoint Technology Evangelist
Quest Software
http://sharepointjoel.com

• Pre-Upgrade: Verify system requirements, run STSADM -O PREUPGRADECHECK and Test-SPContentDatabase
• Database Attach is the best way to upgrade your content
• In Place is the best way to upgrade your SSP to Service Applications
• If you feel “stuck” with In Place upgrade due to hardware constraints: Take one of your WFE servers out of the farm, rebuilded it as a new SP2010 farm, use the existing SQL infrastructure, do the Database Attach upgrade to that server, then rebuild/add the other servers as part of the upgrade window
• Unless you have a lot invested in your SSP, don’t upgrade them as it is much cleaner / less trouble to just start with clean Services Applications
• Guidance for Service Application installation:
  • Don’t turn them all on initially, rather install them as you need them
  • Guidance is to roughly match the SharePoint SKUs
  • Baseline = Service Applications in Foundation
  • Next = those in Standard
  • Last = those in Enterprise
  • Example: Microsoft IT, for internal deployment, turned on only those that matched their 2007 environments, then installed the additional Service Applications incrementally over time
• Upgrades that take longer than a weekend: Either AAM redirection (not preferred) or see if your business can handle Read Only
• Items not compatible with Visual Upgrade = off
  • My Sites
  • Project Server
  • Report Web Part
• Information on upgrading Fabulous 20 templates: http://bit.ly/dhQUjd

After digging around my email for links to these training materials for download I was pleased to find that this training has now been made public, including many of the virtual lab exercises! See links below and enjoy.

SharePoint 2010 Advanced Developer Training
SharePoint 2010 Advanced IT Professional Training

This would not be a machine loaded with components with names like i7 and Radeon. I wanted to build a Hyper-V server; one that would host 4 or 5 virtual machines that I could experiment with, utilize for testing/training purposes, and do things that i just couldn’t do with my company laptop.

After a few months of shopping, giving NewEgg.com and Fry’s a bunch of money, and assembly in my spare time I now have something I am pretty happy with. (Given this is my first PC build)

I hope to use this box heavily over the next few months as I ramp up on SharePoint 2010 and try to complete my MCPD-EA.

Processor:
Intel Xeon X3440 Lynnfield 2.53GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Server Processor
Allows me to utilize the multiple cores for the multiple virtual machines and supports Hyper-V.

Motherboard:
Intel S3420GPLC LGA 1156 Intel 3420 ATX Intel Xeon 3400 series Server Motherboard
Paired with the processor and gives me plenty of SATA ports for a bunch of hard drives setup with on-board RAID.

Power Supply:
Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V version 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC “compatible with Core i7/Core i5″ Power Supply
I think this should be plenty of power given I am using on-board video.

RAM:
Kingston 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Server Memory Model KVR1066D3Q8R7S/4G (X2)
Pretty spendy but supported by the motherboard and 8GB is enough for the 4-5 virtual machines I want to run.

Hard Drives:
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive (X2)
Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000AADS 500GB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Hard Drive (X3)
Initially, setup a RAID-1 with the Blue pair and a RAID-5 with the Green set, however, had to remove the RAID-5 array when the RAID controller consistently had problems and ended up corrupting one of the drives. I don’t know if it was the RAID controller or the drive but got rid of the RAID for now at least.

Case:
Antec Two Hundred Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Got a great deal from my local Fry’s Electronics. Makes my lame-o server look like a gaming machine, which is nice.

OS:
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V

Luckily I was fooled into getting the Best Buy 2-year Product Replacement Plan (PRP) when I purchased the unit. This entitled me to an immediate full refund of the purchase price in the event of a failure rather than sending it off to Microsoft for a month.

Over 30 minutes after walking through my local Best Buy’s doors I had received my $350 refund and used it purchase a new Xbox 360 Pro at $250. I received the remaining $100 on a gift card.

The only issue was that I did not want to loose all of my data from my old Xbox so I hired the Geek Squad to work their Xbox 360 Data Transfer magic. (5 minutes of work for 1/2 hour in Geek Squad bucks, which equates to $29.99)

Today I am home playing my new Xbox 360 with all of the saved games and downloaded content (maps) in tact.

The following code demonstrates how to return the status code even if the URL in the request is not OK.

HttpStatusCode httpStatusCode;
HttpWebRequest httpWebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://invalidsitename.net/");
try
{
    using (HttpWebResponse httpWebResponse = (HttpWebResponse)httpWebRequest.GetResponse())
    {
        httpStatusCode = httpWebResponse.StatusCode; //OK
    }
}
catch (WebException webException)
{
    if (webException.Response != null)
    {
        HttpWebResponse httpWebExceptionResponse = (HttpWebResponse)webException.Response;
        httpStatusCode = httpWebExceptionResponse.StatusCode; //Something other than OK
    }
    else
    {
        throw webException; //Invalid host name
    }
}
return httpStatusCode;