Merry Christmas!!!

I hope you've enjoyed reading this blog over the last year and that you've had a great year in SharePoint. 

There isn't going to be a blog post this week, due to the Christmas Holiday.

Next week I'll be back at it with instruction on putting a backup script in place.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy new year!

Cheers,

Stacy

P.S.

Check out this awesome PowerShell Reference Library on PowerShell.com: http://powershell.com/cs/media/28/default.aspx

Check out this PowerShell Code repository on http://poshcode.org/

Setting up your farm for optimal performance - Super User and Super Reader Accounts

It is important to configure the super user and super reader accounts for your SharePoint farm in order to optimize it's use of the object cache.  This is true especially if you are using the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure.

Here is a link to the detailed steps on TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758656.aspx 


Here are the high level steps:

Create or get two service accounts created, one for the Super User and one for the Super Reader
Add the Super User account to each web application with Full Control
Add the Super Reader account to each web application with Full Read
(Both of the above can be performed via central admin - Application Management > Manage Web Applications > User Policy)

Then run the following four lines in an elevated SharePoint management console

$wa = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity "<WebApplication>"

$wa.Properties["portalsuperuseraccount"] = "<SuperUser>"

$wa.Properties["portalsuperreaderaccount"] = "<SuperReader>"

$wa.Update()

Repeat this for each web application that you have.

use these values:

• <WebApplication> is the name of the web application to which the accounts will be added.
• <SuperUser> is the account to use for the Portal Super User account as you saw it displayed in the User Column field mentioned in Step 14 of the previous procedure.
• <SuperReader> is account to use for the Portal Super Reader account as you saw it displayed in the User Column field mentioned in Step 14 of the previous procedure.

For example, assuming the sp content account shown below was the Super User account, you would  type $wa.properties["portalsuperuseraccount"]="THEMANCAVE\SPContent"

on line two.  On line one, you'd type either the URL or the name of the web application, so either $wa = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity "SharePoint - 80" or $wa = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity "http://2010app1/"

 

and on line three, it would be similar to line two, just replacing the account with the reader account, assuming spreader was the reader account,

 

$wa.properties["portalsuperreaderaccount"]="THEMANCAVE\SPreader"

 

Note:  this server uses that as the search account, so you would want a different search account or a different reader account, don't use the same account for crawling and for reading the object cache.

Also, if you are working with a SharePoint 2013, you'll want to use the claims based accounts when running the powershell

$wa.properties["portalsuperreaderaccount"]="i.0#.w|THEMANCAVE\SPreader"

 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Web Application not getting created on all Web Front ends?

If you ever run into a situation where your farm suddenly fails to create the web application on all front end web servers, in other words it only gets created on the server running central admin, one good indication of that will be that the screen shown here: 

Which normally advises you that the web application was created and would you like to know more about FBA (forms based authentication) will not appear. 


 Instead you will see a screen that says the page can not be displayed by Internet explorer, similar to the one shown here:

 

This starts to occur when the process model shutdown time limit for the application pool that runs central admin is not long enough.  This is usually due to one or a combination of the farm not having enough resources, being overworked due to more than 20 web applications, or numerous extended web applications.

 

 

The detailed steps for this blog post are found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2543306

 

Here are the high level steps to resolve this issue:

 

Logon to your server that runs central admin

Open IIS Manager (inetmgr.exe)

Right click on the Central Administration application pool

Select Advanced Settings

increase the Shutdown Time Limit for the Process Model from the default of 90 seconds to something higher, e.g. 300 Seconds.

 

 

 

 

You're good to go now; but you should check and delete the web application that didn't replicate and make sure it was removed from the physical path of IIS before you attempt to recreate.  Check all servers in your farm that have SharePoint binaries installed.

 

 

Before I knew this trick, I was adding and removing servers from the farm to get the web application to replicate, adjusting the process model shutdown time limit is much faster,

 

Cheers

Exporting and Importing just a list or a library

If the goal is to import just one list or one library there are a couple ways you can accomplish this:

1. Navigate to settings for the list or library, save it as a template, navigate to the solutions gallery, right click on the newly created template, save it as Windows SharePoint Services solutions package and then deploy that solutions package to your site, activate the feature, and begin using the list or library, Or,

2. Run this PowerShell, making sure to use the actual URL of the list or the correct name of the library.  Surround this item in quotes

Export-SPweb http://mySitethathaslist/sites/ToExport -Item "Lists\Name of the list" -Path e:\PathToSaveFile\Filename.cmp -IncludeUserSecurity -IncludeVersions All

then copy that Filename.cmp to the destination server and run

Import-spweb http://anothersharepointblog.blogspot.com -Path e:\PathtoWheretheFilewasImported\FileName.cmp -includeUserSecurity -UpdateVersions Overwrite

Note:  if the url to the list was actually lists/nameList then the Item part in the Export-spWeb above would've read "Lists\nameList"  and not "Lists\Name of Lists".  Also if you are performing this for a document library, Lists\ is not needed.

Cheers,