Free SharePoint Admin Book, Free SharePoint Admin Tools
November 13, 2008
In case you did not see Todd Klindt’s post about this, he’ll be giving away free copies of the new Inside SharePoint Administration book he wrote together with Shane Young and Steve Caravajal. All you need is subscribe to Todd’s blog and be among the first five to congratulate him on the book availability (see details in Todd’s original post). I’d also recommend you subscribe to Shane’s and Steve’s blogs. Just in case.
Good news for those who are not that lucky is that even purchasing the book you’ll get something for free. Every copy of Inside SharePoint Administration includes a CD with additional material and free evaluation copy of Quest Site Administrator - a great tool for centralized SharePoint administration and reporting. (Usual disclosure: this is one of the products I work on as a member of Quest SharePoint product group.)
BTW, Inside SharePoint Administration is available for pre-order on Amazon if you don’t want to take chances and rather would leverage Amazon’s guaranteed pre-order discount.
[Update, 11/19: The book is available on Amazon now, and Todd's book giveaway is complete. Congrats to the winners, and free evaluation copies of the SharePoint admin tools to the rest of us who purchase the book.]
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sharepoint, Quest, sharepoint administration
Joel, welcome to the team!
November 11, 2008
One of the most influencing minds in the SharePoint world, the most well known SharePoint blogger and evangelist, Joel “SharePoint Joel” Oleson has joined Quest Software. Specifically the SharePoint Product Management team that I am a part of. I am really excited. We met with Joel earlier couple times at TechEd and SharePoint Conference, but now this is a real chance work closer and get a fresh look at the SharePoint offerings protfolio Quest has. The only thing that concerns me is it’s probably going to be quite challenging to get hold of Joel even now, considering all the traveling he is doing over last few years :) but I’ll try my best!
Well, I guess what I am really trying to say here is to repeat Adam’s words: welcome to the team, Joel, and look forward to working with you!
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Quest
Speaking at ICS SharePoint Showcase in the UK
October 15, 2008
ICS Solutions, one of the leading IT solution providers and Microsoft Gold Partner in the UK are hosting a one-day SharePoint Showcase conference tomorrow, October 16 at their location in Basingstoke, England. There are about 10 ISV partners coming to the event to talk about their products, and I will be representing Quest Software there together with our Director of Marketing for SharePoint product line.
Sorry for the last minute notice (did not want to post this until I get the UK Visa), but as far as I know ICS has planned this conference to be the first in a series of similar events. Anyway, if you are attending the event tomorrow be sure to come by and say hello, or even better - book the 30-minute one-on-one meeting so that we have a chance to talk.
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SharePoint, Quest, conferences
“Converging Paths of SQL Server and SharePoint” Webcast
September 7, 2008
When someone downloads and installs Windows SharePoint Service with the default settings, the install wizard hardly indicates that SQL engine is being used in the back end. Is this a problem for SharePoint admins? And for SQL DBA’s? What happens when SharePoint grows in size and importance for the organization? Do the SQL DBA’s need to think about SharePoint backup and restore?
These were the questions discussed in a recent webcast by David Walker, ASP .Net MVP and specialist in enterprise apps architecture, and David Gugick and Doug Davis from Quest Software, where they are leading Product Management teams for Quest’s SQL and SharePoint product lines.
I missed the webcast but the recording is available for download the recording from Quest website. Although it was primarily meant for SQL Server administrators, it really helps to understand what common problems SharePoint and SQL admins are facing and why it’s so much easier to solve them together.
Technorati Tags:
database, Quest, sharepoint, sql
Backup and Recovery Solutions: When Do You Use Which?
August 27, 2008
I just came across a recent SharePoint Backup / Recovery Solutions blog post by Babar Batla, Principal Solutions Specialist for Microsoft. In his list, Babar has both Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007 and Quest Recovery Manager for SharePoint (and that’s the product I am working on). So do these products compete? Not really, they can actually complement each other! So, when do you use which?
With a recent release of Recovery Manager 2.2 we enhanced it to read and restore data from snapshots made with DPM as well as few other backup formats (see our web site for details). Adding this on top of DPM you can use the same snapshots in more SharePoint restoration scenarios:
- Granular restore with DPM is only possible for documents and sites. Recovery Manager adds restore of any SharePoint objects, from a list item or document up to a site collection (and everything in between!) - all from the backups you already have with DPM.
- Recovery Manager also gives more flexibility when the original server farm is unavailable: you can restore SharePoint data to an alternative SharePoint location or even a file share.
- In addition, organizations where backup operations are centralized can benefit from using tools like Rcovery Manager and DPM together, because this allows to separate platform disaster recovery task from document and site restore, and the latter can be delegated to application specific administrators.
Technorati tags:
backup Data Protection Manager DPM disaster recovery granular recovery Quest restore sharepoint
Operational Reporting for SharePoint
June 5, 2008
I recently wrote a new paper on how important it is to develop processes around visibility of SharePoint environment, and on what specific areas you might want to keep an eye. No matter which version of SharePoint you run, lack of understanding what’s in your SharePoint and how users use and access it can impact both the operational costs and organization’s ability to comply with security regulations.
Curiously, the topic seems to get more attention on the blogoshpere recently: Ron Charity posted about how SharePoint can become a risk from compliance perspective, and Joel Oleson just blogged about how the recently published version 4 of Microsoft Operations Framework applies to SharePoint practices, and where reporting fits into the story.
The white paper is called Seven Questions to Ask Yourself About Your SharePoint Environment and you can download it from quest.com. As with another paper on SharePoint recovery we wrote with Adam, I would really appreciate your feedback on this!
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SharePoint, reporting, compliance, Quest
New Lotus Notes to SharePoint blog
April 24, 2008
I just learned that Steve Walch started a new Notes 2 SharePoint blog. Steve joined us here at Quest with the acquisition of Proposion (I blogged about that half year ago) and he is now the brain and the driving force of Quest Notes Migrator for SharePoint. (Even though it only has ‘Notes’ in its name, the product will actually help you in Domino and QuickPlace migration scenarios as well, not only Notes applications migration.)
Now I have to admit my knowledge of Lotus platforms is extremely limited (to say the least). So if this all sounds interesting - make sure to read Steve’s post about how this product came to existence and subscribe to his blog. Welcome to the blogosphere, Steve!
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Lotus Quest SharePoint
SharePoint Data Outside SQL - Is This Real?
April 14, 2008
It’s been over half a year since Microsoft announced WSS v3 hotfix that allows to store SharePoint data outside SQL Server with a KB article that Todd Carter called one of the worst articles he had seen. And last week Adam Woodruff also published results of his research about keeping SharePoint files outside SQL database. This hotfix basically exposes an API for anyone who cares to develop a solution themselves.
Both Todd’s and Adam’s posts make me think that SharePoint data on external storage is still only a theoretical possibility rather than something real. The API is not guaranteed to be supported, and has several challenges. I wonder if anyone actually created a provider based on the API yet, I could not find any reference.
The biggest issue from my perspective is the API does not have a built-in mechanism to guarantee consistent backups. A backup tool for such deployment would have to be smart enough and consider different parts of the same object are stored in different places (e.g., hierarchy and metadata in SQL and the file itself on external storage).
BTW, with this entry Adam started his blog finally - after I teased him in the recent post about our new SharePoint recovery white paper. Adding the link to my blogroll and hope to see more exciting stuff there!
Technorati Tags:
SharePoint, SQL, WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007
Session slides from SharePoint conference
April 11, 2008
I recently mentioned several good sessions I attended in Seattle conference in a blog post about importance of understanding the crucial role of SQL Server in the SharePoint world. Now you can download the slides for the sessions I mentioned (even if you don’t have login at www.mssharepointconference.com):
- Joel Oleson published slide decks from his governance session as well as the two SharePoint admin (fundamentals and advanced) sessions.
- And Todd Klindt shared his slides from his SQL for SharePoint admin talk (together with slides and scripts from his STSADM session - pretty cool, check this out!)
Awesome stuff. Curious to see these slides published now after the Dubai SharePoint conference, but not after the bigger event in Seattle a month ago… Thanks to the Dubai sun?..
SharePoint SharePoint Conference 2008 SQL
New SharePoint Recovery White Paper
March 24, 2008
A new white paper on enterprise SharePoint recovery by Adam Woodruff has just become available on Quest Software web site. This is an overview of things to consider and tools available natively for SharePoint backup and recovery on a high level, primarily focused on WSS v3 and MOSS 2007. Main purpose of this paper is to help with the big picture, before you proceed to more detailed technical SharePoint backup and restore tutorials or videos.
Adam Woodruff is one of the smart people here at Quest. He’s a Solutions Architect for SharePoint team, which seems to mean “the guy who spends about 25 hours a day with customers helping to implement their SharePoint strategy.” He is also a speaker at technical events like the recent SharePoint Conference in Seattle, where he gave a session about consolidating enterprise knowledge into SharePoint. I’ve been trying to force Adam into blogging for a while now, and hope we’ll see some interesting SharePoint stuff from him soon!
Yours truly also contributed to this white paper (mostly in the chapter that maps various tools to different recovery scenarios). If you have any thoughts, corrections, or comments - please leave a comment to this post, I will really appreciate this!
Technorati Tags:
SharePoint, granular recovery, backup, Quest
