A SQL Server at every port

I'm no firewall expert, or a SQL expert, but I'm not going to let those things stop me handing out advice on how you should configure your firewall or SQL configuration! I recently ran into a problem with getting a SharePoint Server to communicate with the SQL Server on a brand new installation. I turned off the Windows Firewall on the SQL Server and everything worked fine. Now, while I did mention that I'm no expert on firewalls, I know enough to realize that keeping the firewall turned off is not the best approach.

Usually SQL Server communicates through port 1443. Looking at the server's firewall configuration I could tell that port was opened. So how come I still couldn't access the database from a remote machine? The Windows Firewall with Advanced Security management console allows you to turn on logging of dropped packets. By using this I figured out that my SharePoint server was trying to access port 61683. Well, OK, I opened up that port by creating a new Inbound Port rule for TCP traffic.

That did it, my SharePoint Server was able to chat away to my SQL Server and off I went on my merry way. But I couldn't rest easy at night. Why port 61683? My searches on the internet brought back no real references to that port number. So I searched the registry on the SQL Server for "61683" and lo-and-behold, there it was – TCPDynamicPorts buried deep under the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server hive. This led me to the MS Support article How to configure an instance of SQL Server to listen on a specific TCP port or a dynamic port.

Yes indeed, the SQL Server was using a Named Instance. It seems that the default configuration for this means that SQL searches for a free port number to make the named instance available on. This dynamic allocation of a port number is not great from a firewall configuration perspective. Luckily you can change the configuration to use a static IP address. Look up the topic How to: Configure a Server to Listen on a Specific TCP Port (SQL Server Configuration Manager) in SQL Books Online (here's the SQL 2008 link). You can then set the firewall on the SQL Server without fear that the port will change randomly the next time your SQL instance restarts.

One final note – from what I have read, your SQL firewall should also have a rule to allow access to the SQL Browser application. This is how remote computers can find out what port your named instance is on. Checking the SQL Server in my environment, there is a rule called SQL Browser that allows the application C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlbrowser.exe.

SharePoint 2010 Now Showing

Want to get a peek at what the new version of SharePoint 2010 looks like? Well then pop over to http://sharepoint.microsoft.com and view the videos.

There are three different videos - an overview, IT Pro (i.e. administrator) and Developer. All up, it is about an hour of footage.

As they stress several times in the video, this is beta so there is a good possibility that some of the details will change between now and the release. Also, Microsoft aren't saying what features will be available in the different versions of the product (WSS, SharePoint Standard, SharePoint Enterprise). They generally don't make this information available until just before the release.

Here are some of the highlights I picked up from watching the footage:

• Ability to perform an action on multiple documents at the one time (like check-out or delete)


• Many UI operations are now asynchronous, so you can get on with the next task without waiting for your last command to complete


• SharePoint gets the Ribbon - if you haven't been using Office 2007 then you are missing out on how beneficial this really is. It makes it much easier to see what you can do with whatever you are working on, such as a list item, document, text or picture. You can also turn off the Ribbon if you want to maintain the same UI as the current product


• The text formatting toolbar no longer floats AND it stays visible at the top of the page. In the current version this toolbar disappears as you scroll down through your text


• Unattached Content Database Recovery. I can't wait to try this. It should make disaster recovery a lot less of a disaster


• SharePoint Workspace - could this make Groove relevant again? It gives you the ability to take part of your site offline and sync back up when you are next connected


• Central Admin - logging to SQL AND can be extended to include your own log entries. I must admit I never did like those text files that 07 writes to. Give me SQL tables over that any day.

There's lots more of interesting content in the videos, I think the next year will be a fascinating time in the SharePoint world

WSS Service Pack 2 - installed without any problems

I have just applied Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to my test environment (x64 Windows 2003 running in HyperV). The installation took just over 10 minutes and didn't require a reboot. Everything ran smoothly and my Windows Event logs are not reporting any problems.

You can download the service packs for WSS and MOSS from the links on this blog post

Click here to see a spreadsheet of the 34 issues fixed in WSS SP2

Some of my favourites are:
SharePoint does not allow some field names to be changed to their original values.
Users are not warned when their files exceed the maximum path.
List views fail when they are grouped by calculated fields or by lookups to calculated fields.

Storage Space Allocation Reports

Did you know that you can access a report on how much space your Site Collection is using and see a list of your largest (and smallest) document libraries, documents and lists? All of this from the comfort of your web browser. The option is available from the top level site collection settings menu. It's called Storage Space Allocation. Here's a sample of what it looks like (with all the drop-down options visible):

 

But what if you don't see the Storage Space Allocation item in your site settings menu? Well, firstly this is only available to Site Collection administrators. You should ask the owner of the Site Collection whether you have that level of permissions or not. But more importantly, you need to have assigned a Quota to your Site Collection. This restricts the amount of disk space that your site collection can consume. Even if you don't need a quota, you will need to assign one to get access to this report.

Site Collection quotas are maintained within the SharePoint Central Administration web site. Generally this will be maintained by the IT department. Here are the steps that you need to go through to assign a quota to an existing site collection:

• Go to the Central Administration SharePoint site
  
• Click on Application Management in the left panel
  
• Select the Site Collection Quotas and Locks link under the SharePoint Site Management heading
  
• Make sure that the correct site collection is selected
  
• Select the checkbox beside Limit site storage to a maximum of
  
• Enter an appropriate number of megabytes for your site collection to grow
  
• Click OK
  

  
   

You will now have the Storage Space Allocation item in your site collection settings page.

April SharePoint User Group Meeting

This month's user group meeting will be held on Tuesday April 21. The venue is our usual spot at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street. Doors open at 5:30pm, pizzas and soft drinks available until they run out, so get in early.

This is going to be the first month of the Sound Bytes session, a concept suggested by Brad Saide. This is a 20 minute slot for someone to discuss a SharePoint related concept or product that they love. Tim Kremer is kicking us off with a talk on using the iPhone to access SharePoint. This is based on his experience with developing iShare

Then Peter Chapman will be discussing how to integrate SharePoint with SAP. Peter's company Sower have done quite a bit of work in this area. Come along and hear what options you have using both out of the box and third party features.

If you intend coming please send an e-mail to Sydney@sharepointusers.org.au so that we have an idea of numbers.

If you would like to get e-mail notifications about upcoming events, visit our site at http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/sydney and sign up to our e-mail list.

James Milne – Australia’s newest SharePoint MVP

I just heard from James Milne that he has been awarded an MVP (Most Valued Professional) by Microsoft! Congratulations James, well deserved.

If you haven't done so already, you can check out his blog at http://www.myriadtech.com.au/blog/James. In particular, have a look at the Content Type Toolbar web part that he has built. This is very neat.

It’s SharePoint all the way down

Big announcement from Microsoft today on the next release of SharePoint. We get our first indication of timelines – "will enter a technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and will release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010"!

We also find out what the marketing team have been up to. The acronym "MOSS" is gone, the next release of the server product will be called SharePoint Server 2010. No word yet on what the next release of WSS will be called.

You can read more about this and the Exchange 2010 announcement in the interview with Chris Capossela here

SharePoint Designer now free

You may have heard about this already, but now it is official. SharePoint Designer is now free. You can download it directly from Microsoft by going to www.Microsoft.com/SPD.

In case you don't know, this is THE tool for hacking the SharePoint interface. It is not just for creative designers. You can configure the Data View web part in SharePoint Designer to do all sorts of groovey things that are not possible just through the web interface.

Of course, you can also shoot yourself in the foot with this one, so do be careful. Also, avoid the SharePoint Designer site (one of the nodes in a site collection) backup option if your site is larger than 25 MB.

Apart from those caveats, download and have fun! If you have previously licensed SharePoint Designer under a Software Assurance (SA) agreement, then you are now entitled to install Expression Web.

If you want to read more about this, see the open letter published on the Microsoft site

SharePoint Podshow interview

I was in Seattle at the start of March, where I got a chance to catch up with two of the SharePoint Podshow hosts - Rob Foster and Nick Swan. One thing led to another, and the next thing you know we are recording an interview for the Podcast!

If you don't already subscribe to the podcast, I can highly recommend it. As far as I know, it is currently the only podcast dedicated to SharePoint. For more information, check out http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/

To listen to the interview I did with the guys, click here. It covers a range of topics including the role of a SharePoint architect, using WSS for document management and the challenges of change management.