Architecting a Solution – Best Practice Web Applications Configuration for Content Deployment

Overview

Since SharePoint 2007, content deployment has been part of SharePoint.  Its not a commonly used feature in most collaboration farms, but its essential for web publishing farms.  Makes the tasks of moving data from Development to Staging to Production an automated process.

As automated processes go, its not bullet proof and the larger and more complex your site gets the more likely you will have to republish the full site to correct errors.   Depending on your infrastructure and the size of the site, this could take a long time and your site is essentially down during the process.  To keep your site up you should configure two Web Applications in production for content publishing: a Primary and a Secondary.  The Secondary should not be accessible on the internet.  Each of these Web Applications will have its own content Database and its own Site Collection.  Follow the steps below if you need to fully republish the website with quick turn around.

Steps

1.  Create a new blank site collection on the Secondary Web Application (to the Secondary Database)

2.  Pause all incremental publishing to the Primary Web Application

3.  Publish the site to the Secondary Web Application

4.  Disconnect the database from the Secondary Web Application

5.  Disconnect the database from the Primary Web Application

6.  Connect the Secondary Database to the Primary Web Application (Now the Switch is complete)

7.  Resume incremental publishing to the Primary Web Application

Remember that the site will only be down while you disconnect and reconnect the databases in step 5 and 6.  I recommend that you run a full crawl from your index server to make sure your indexes are fully up to date.

Diagnosing the Problem - Troubleshooting Search Issues

Overview

When I run into issues searching a particular site, there are a few steps that I go through every time.

Steps:

1. Go to Search Administration check the crawl log you should be able to find the url and from here you will quickly be able to diagnose most access is denied or site is unavailable type of issues.

2. If you can't find the url in the crawl log or the error is not apparent, create a new content source with only the site you are having difficulty with, monitor the results of the full crawl, if necessary turn up logging on the SharePoint.

3. If your SharePoint is heavily customized, check the osssearchresults.aspx page for modification from default. If the page is modified, copy the original back in place to test the search results. If there is not an error the fault is within the customization.

Troubleshooting the Timer Service - Resetting the Timer Service Cache

Overview

Occasionally I run into problems with the SharePoint 2007 timer service and one of the tricks I have in my bag is to reset the timer service cache on the server with the issue.

Steps:

1. Start with the server that is running the Central Administration site (complete all steps then proceed to the next server in the farm and repeat)
2. Stop the Timer service, To do this, follow these steps:

a. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
b. Right-click Windows SharePoint Services Timer, and then click Stop.
c. Close the Services console.

3. click Start, click Run, type explorer, and then press ENTER.

4. In Windows Explorer, locate and then double-click the following folder:
Drive:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID

5. Back up the Cache.ini file.

6. Delete all the XML configuration files in the GUID folder. Do this so that you can verify that the GUID folder is replaced by new XML configuration files when the cache is rebuilt.

Note When you empty the configuration cache in the GUID folder, make sure that you do not delete the GUID folder and the Cache.ini file that is located in the GUID folder.

7. Double-click the Cache.ini file.

On the Edit menu, click Select All.
On the Edit menu, click Delete.
Type 1, and then click Save on the File menu.
On the File menu, click Exit.

8. Start the Timer service. To do this, follow these steps:
a. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
b. Right-click Windows SharePoint Services Timer, and then click Start.
c. Close the Services console.

Note The file system cache is re-created after you perform this procedure. Make sure that you perform this procedure on all servers in the server farm.

9. Make sure that the Cache.ini file in the GUID folder now contains its previous value. For example, make sure that the value of the Cache.ini file is not 1.

10. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.

11. Click the Operations tab, and then click Timer job status under Global Configuration.
In the list of timer jobs, verify that the status of the Config Refresh entry is Succeeded.