Reza Alirezaei’s Blog

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.

In case you want to add informative comments to your CAS permission set node in your manifest.xml – for example something like the red line below:

When you wrap your code into a package and deploy it , here is what you get in the CAS configuration file (stored in ….\12\config\) without any of your IPermission nodes applied:

And here is what ULS log shows :CAS Deployment :
Added CAS Permission Set. Xml :

It seems that deployment APIs ignore applying IPermission nodes when there is a comment line in the beginning of PermissionSet. In short,  comments in CAS permission set node is NOT welcome!

In either WSS or MOSS, If you name a site prefixed with the word “com” following a single digit – for example com1,com2…com9 , SharePoint UI won’t throw a validation error, but upon browsing to the site , you will get the following nasty errors. Okay , why do I need to call a site prefixed with “com”? In our CRM product , we have this notion called “Communities”, self-standing collab sites which are derived from within CRM UI. While testing site provisioning code and the underlying site definition and for simplicity , we named the site “com1” and observed this behavior.
Action: Create a site collection or subsite and give it this title and url : com1 or com2 or com3………or com0.
Template: Whatever
Errors:”An unexpected error has occurred” [Screenshot]
Or
“The resource cannot be found” [Screenshot]
Or
A blank page is shown as default.aspx

While trying com10 , we got “The page has encountered a critical error” once [Screenshot] , but after doing IISRESET we never got that error message again. It was just a hiccup 🙂

All the other sites named with com[Double digits] (com01~com09) seem to be working just fine.

It turned out that Com1 through com9 are kind of reserved words , referring to the serial ports. You can’t create a file in the file system called com1 either.
(Thanks to Todd Klindt for pointing me at this one)

I have been head-down, full speed ahead with wrapping up my current projects and opening up a new branch for Development Horizon in US. Unfortunately, until I become Canadian Citizen (which God knows when!!) , traveling to states is just out of question so I had to come up with another solution and team up with people who can serve our customers with myself being remotely guide them through. In all honesty, this is a though way of doing business and I have gone through a lot, but for me it just seems that there is no other option! Good grief, All this has kept me away from my blog for almost a month, but I am back to my little cyber corner again!

BTW, I was just notified that Microsoft rewarded me again with the MVP award with the main competency in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 . This makes it the third time I have ever had the honor to be part of this dynamic and smart community, twice in SharePoint and once in SQL Server Reporting Services back in 2005.

I’d also like to announce that this year, Greater Toronto Area has another SharePoint MVP around, Bill Brockbank. Bill is one of the most active members of our SharePoint community and speaks at various user groups and industry events.Happy to have you joining the Canucks MVP family, Bill! Go Canada, go! 😉