Difference between SharePoint and AD Groups

Someone on the SharePoint forums asked about the difference between these two types of security groups. Here are the ones I could think of:

Domain Groups

• Normally created and maintained by the IT department

• Can be used across different SharePoint sites and site collections

• Organisations may already have good AD group structures that map well to your SharePoint implementation

• Groups can be nested - e.g. you can add another AD Group as a member to an existing AD group

• No features for users to submit a request to join a group

SharePoint Groups

• The creation of groups can be done by business users

• When a group is being created, you can define who "owns" the group

• Can allow users to submit a request to join a group

• Can determine who has permissions to see the users within groups

• Groups are created within a particular Site Collection - cannot be used in other site collections

• You cannot add a SharePoint Group as a member of another SharePoint group (no nesting)

• SharePoint Groups cannot be used in other systems (e.g. network Shares)

• The SharePoint Groups are separate from Active Directory - so you can go wild with the SharePoint Groups without upsetting your AD administrator

October Sydney User Group

"You are the Silverlight of my life" - come on down to participate in our discussion on whether Silverlight is going to rock your SharePoint world, or are we just chasing moon beams.

The October event is at Level 14, Roden Cutler House, 24 Campbell Street, Haymarket on Tuesday October 16th 2007. Kick-off from 5:30pm. Click here to register. For more information visit http://www.SharePointUsers.org.au/sydney

New User Group website

FINALLY! We have moved the SharePoint User Group site off version 2.0 of WSS and set up a version 3.0 site. I no longer have to hang my head in shame at the User Group meetings any more - well, at least not because of the website.

The new site has been implemented using the SharePoint Community Kit User Group Edition. We also have a new address so don't forget to update your favourites and/or default home page to http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/sydney. You can even sign up for the new Events RSS Feed so that you can get the details of our next meeting delivered right to your computer without having to lift a finger.

Do drop by and let us know what you think, the Discussion Board is open. You'll also find an archive of all the presentations given at the User Group.

Central Administration site - Service Unavailable

I was working on a client's environment this week when all of a sudden the Central Admin and Shared Service Provider sites stopped working. Requesting any URL from these sites returned a "Service Unavailable" message. The main content web site kept responding though.

When I checked IIS I noticed that the Application Pools for these web apps were stopping as soon as I put through a page request. I'd restart them and they would stop again straight away.

IISReset didn't do anything for me. Two Event Log errors entries being written each time the app pool was shut down. Details are below.

We executed our "Base Cotingency Plan" (i.e. we rebooted the server) and everything went back to working as expected.

I've no real insight on this one, but I thought I'd post it in case others come across it.

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: W3SVC
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1009
Date: 9/10/2007
Time: 12:33:13 PM
User: N/A
Computer: SHAREPOINT1
Description:
A process serving application pool 'SharePoint Central Administration v3' terminated unexpectedly. The process id was '11380'. The process exit code was '0x80'.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
==============================================

Event Type: Error
Event Source: W3SVC
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1002
Date: 9/10/2007
Time: 12:33:13 PM
User: N/A
Computer: SHAREPOINT1
Description:
Application pool 'SharePoint Central Administration v3' is being automatically disabled due to a series of failures in the process(es) serving that application pool.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
===========================================

MVP for another year

I just got word from Above that I have been recognized as an MVP for MOSS for a second year. My acceptance speech contains the usual thanks to all involved in making me look good (you know who you are).

I have a feeling that this is going to be an exciting year, I'm glad I don't have to hand back my MVP t-shirt just yet.