Reza Alirezaei’s Blog

Check your Technet or MSDN subscription, SQL Server 2k8 RTM is official! Question is how to upgrade from RC0 to RTM?

Even if there was an upgrade path from RC0 to RTM (Not sure if there is any) , I’d still uninstall RC and install fresh RTM binaries. That’s mainly due to the unstable nature of CTP/RC releases and how can you verify that everything is working as expected? So , IMO there is risk associated with in-place upgrade .

Here are the steps I took on my main dev machine:

[Update Aug/08/2008] : Microsoft has just released this KB article describing the dependency of SQL Server 2008 on VS 2008 SP1. There are also some workarounds to temporarily get it installed until VS 2008 SP1 is installed.

[Update Aug/11/2008] Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is available for download here. In case you are still using .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 beta , make sure you uninstall and install the RTM bits available for download here. If you install both service packs , you should not get the following error while installing SQL Server 2008.

1) Detached admin,config and content databases that you wish to keep. You may have to drop connections if they are live.
2) Moved the file (*.mdf,*.ldf) to another folder other than SQL Server DATA folder in case uninstall delete your files.
3) Uninstalled RC0 and all its sub component.
4) Install RTM bits with the same settings as your RC0 -For example if you were using named instance , use the same installation approach, accounts and etc.

RTM bits requires .Net 3.5 SP1 and VS2008 SP1 which is not available yet. Looks like I can’t upgrade my RC0 to RTM until SP1 is released. Damn it!

5) Move the files back to the SQL Server DATA directory.
6) Attach ( or restore) your databases.
7) Add all application pool identities and the account you used to install SharePoint. In Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio , under Security folder, expand Logins folder and add the accounts.

Going from 32-bit to 64-bit direct?
You can’t! Cross platform upgrade is not supported unless you are going from 32 bit to WOW64. In case your databases are not in replication , you can also detach (or backup) from 32-bit SQL Server instance and attach( or restore) into a 64-bit sql server instance. Absolutely a supported scenario.

If you still haven’t applied three new important updates (a.k.s infrastructure rollup) to your SharePoint environment, then you should. These updates not only introduce new features , also patch several fixes to the top issues reported to Microsoft. Again , as you can see in the SharePoint team blog the order is important (highlighted section). Once you apply WSS rollup , the WSS runtime version should change to 12.0.0.6318 as follow:

For all other version numbers including the initial version and the updated version after applying SP , see this post.

Last but not least, make sure your environment & your code works as expected after applying these updates.

From the beginning of this month and mostly after work hours, I have been heads down building various *STANDALONE* VM and non-VM SharePoint development environments.  For the life of me , there is nothing more boring than dealing with all these infrastructural craps , but sometimes there is no other choice, you know!  Installation went fairly smooth on majority of the machines. I took some notes during the setup process and I thought I’d give you some bullet points in this blog post.

1) First of all, it took a good couple of hours to find out that sysprep in Windows 2k8 is located in “C:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe” (Thanks to Kit Kai). Sysprep previously was in the Support.Cab file on the CD , not part of the OS. So you would extract the support.cab to a directory located at the Root and when the process finished upon first boot, it would delete this directory.

2) WSS 3.0 is no longer shipped as part of Windows 2008 server family. So the question is, why should it be named *Windows* SharePoint Service?I’m sure you will hear an answer soon from MS.

3) WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 binary files can’t be used to install SharePoint on a Windows 2008 server. You get a compatibility warning saying that the product is not compatible with win2k8. Fine.Thankfully, there is WSS SP1 slipstream and MOSS SP1 slipstream that sort of bundles each product with its respective SP1 together. Okay, we are good to go again.

4) After installing MOSS 2007 SP1 and running the configuration wizard successfully, I browsed to Central Administration and I receive a JavaScript error on all the Central Administration pages and on multiple lines saying “object expected”. When I tried to create a web application (extendvs.aspx) , there is another JavaScript error saying “Webform_postbackoptions is undefined”. Well, without post back, my SharePoint installation is useless.Isn’t it?  I tried all the followings, but the bad boy didn’t want to work:

* Added the site to my intranet zone
* Reinstalled MOSS 2007
* Cleared Cache, did IISRESET and you name it!
* Reinstalled the page (extendvs.aspx) from another server in which the page is properly functioning

Alternatively, I created the web application using stsadm , but upon brwosing to the site and choosing the right template to provision the site from , I got an “Access Denied” error message. Now, I know there is something seriously going on because I was doing all this using the administrator account which was also used to install SharePoint.

Armed with Firefox with Firebug (Fiddler was not helpful!), I put my debugger hat on and found out that I am getting an error on all of the scripts injected by webresource.axd http handler. ASP.NET 2.0 uses this built-in HttpHandler to serve
pages by publishing JavaScripts and other resources embedded in the OOTB SharePoint assemblies to various pages. btw, just as a side note, I’m not a big fan of embedding images,scripts,style sheets or some other content in compiled assemblies and relying on this http handler. In many cases ,I have seen that the WebResource.axd finds the resource, but returns nothing! so I kissed and put it aside. Too much headache. I’d stick to my old school file system way of shipping resources (inside my WSP solution). I am not cool! Yeah right….

Back to the issue. I ended up reinstalling the Application Server role, IIS and .Net framework 3.0 in the following orders , which basically was for me the fastest way to get up-and-running again. And yes, it fixed the issue!

1. Ran SharePoint products and technologies wizard to disconnect from the farm
2. Deleted the left over databases from SQL Server 2k8
3. Uninstalled Application Server Role
4. Uninstalled Web Server role (Uninstalls .Net Framework 3.0)
5. Restarted the machine.
6. Installed Application Server role
7. Installed the Web Server role (Installs .Net Framework 3.0)
8. Registered the aspnet with IIS using the command
“aspnet_regiis –i”
9. Ran SharePoint products and technologies wizard successfully to create a new farm

We’ve completely migrated our VM infrastructure from Virtual Server 2005 to VMWare Server 2.0 RC1.  We used this tool called VMWare Converter to convert all of the virtual server images to VMWare counterparts.I love using this little gem. Basically , this tool allows you to create a VMWare virtual machine , or VMWare virtual appliance, from any of the following sources:

1. Physical machines
2. Virtual appliances
3. Virtual machines
4. Third-party backup images

The only issue we are facing using VMWare converter is that VMWare tools that is installed on the machine as part of the conversion process is somehow screwed up. Uninstalling and reinstalling it really didn’t help either. As such, we can’t use the console access to the VM machine ,so the only way to get into the VM is pretty much via RDP.Other than this , the migration went really smooth.

In case you are using differencing drives in Virtual Server 2005, no worries! Converter is smart enough to build the right image for ya. What you’ll get at the end of the process is an independent VM and not a linked clone of the base or something.

VMWare Server remote management tools are much more intuitive, lighter and more responsive comparing to the Virtual Server web console. It also seems more optimized in CPU/Memory utilization towards running multiple VMs. If you put some of the extra luxury with regards to snapshots, cloning and team functionalities aside, VMWare Server RC1 has almost everything that VMWare Workstation offers ,but it’s free :).

If the next version of ESXi, which will be released to public soon, will be available at no cost, then VMWare’s competitors are in trouble! That would be nice if there was a comparison chart of Workstation vs VMWare Server vs ESX vs ESXi to be able to compare the whole spectrum. Something like this , but covering all of them.

Via Bob Fox

The International SharePoint Professionals Association, also known as ‘ISPA’, is an independent, not-for-profit, community-driven organization dedicated to support SharePoint professionals and groups all around the world. The primary mission of ISPA is to promote the global adoption of SharePoint Technologies by providing support and guidance to the SharePoint community as a whole – by establishing connections between SharePoint professionals, groups, resources, education and information. ISPA is led and supported by volunteers across the world, and will focus on bringing the entire SharePoint community closer together.

ISPA’s first offering to the community is support to user groups around the world through free WSS v3 web sites for any group that becomes ISPA-affiliated. In addition, one of the goals of ISPA is to facilitate an exchange of ideas between user group leaders that helps increase the likelihood of their group’s success. Therefore, ISPA is providing leaders of user groups with access to collaborative spaces where they can interact with other user group leaders, sharing ideas, resources, best practices, guidance, and most importantly – support for one another.

ISPA has also established Regional Evangelists – existing community leaders who have previously exhibited a strong commitment to the promotion of the SharePoint community, and who have pledged to carry the ISPA message throughout their particular region. These evangelists are key local contacts who are available to work with local SharePoint professionals and user groups throughout their region to help promote the community and SharePoint. If you are interested in starting a user group, have an existing one, or need guidance – the ISPA Regional Evangelists are great resources who are available immediately to assist you.

Finally, as everyone knows, no community is complete without a web site, and ISPA is proud to announce the launch of its official site, http://www.sharepointpros.org. While the web site is still in the early stages of development, plans for multilingual support and exciting functionality that will assist anyone involved with SharePoint are on the horizon.

Here is a list of Regional Evangelists. I and Eli Robillard  are covering Canada. The site is in work-in-progress mode and I’ve promised Bob Fox to give him a hand on improving it (so far I have done nothing on the site;)). If you have any questions , please feel free to contact me.