SharePoint Interface

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for some time, but I’m only now getting around to it. It’s a quick one, and it’s intended to share a couple of observations and a script that may be of use to those of you who are SharePoint 2010 administrators.

Mirroring and SharePoint

The use of SQL Server mirroring isn’t something that’s unique to SharePoint, and it was possible to leverage mirroring with SharePoint 2007 … though I tended to steer people away from trying it unless they had a very specific reason for doing so and no other approach would work. There were simply too many hoops you needed to jump through in order to get mirroring to work with SharePoint 2007, primarily because SharePoint 2007 wasn’t mirroring-aware. Even if you got it working, it was … finicky.

SharePoint 2010, on the other hand, is fully mirroring-aware through the use of the Failover Partner keyword in connection strings used by SharePoint to connect to its databases.

(Side note: if you aren’t familiar with the Failover Partner keyword, here’s an excellent breakdown by Michael Aspengren on how the SQL Server Native Provider leverages it in mirroring configurations.)

There are plenty of blog posts, articles (like this one from TechNet), and books (like the SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide that John Ferringer and I wrote) that talk about how to configure mirroring. It’s not particularly tough to do, and it can really help you in situations where you need a SQL Server-based high availability and/or remote redundancy solution for SharePoint databases.

This isn’t a blog post about setting up mirroring; rather, it’s a post to share some of what I’ve learned (or think I’ve learned) and related “ah-ha” moments when it comes to mirroring.

What Are You Pointing At?

This all started when Jay Strickland (one of the Quality Assurance (QA) folks on my team at Idera) ran into some problems with one of our SharePoint 2010 farms that was used for QA purposes. The farm contained two SQL Server instances, and the database instances were setup such that the databases on the second instance mirrored the databases on the first (principal) instance. Jay had configured SharePoint’s service applications and Web applications for mirroring, so all was good.

But not really. The farm had been running properly for quite some time, but something had gone wrong with the farm’s mirroring configuration – or so it seemed. That’s when Jay pinged me on Skype one day with a question (which I’m paraphrasing here):

Is there any way to tell (from within SharePoint) which SQL Server instance is in-use by SharePoint at any given time for a database that is being mirrored?

It seemed like a simple question that should have a simple answer, but I was at a loss to give Jay anything usable off the top of my head. I told Jay that I’d get back to him and started doing some digging.

The SPDatabase Type

Putting on my developer hat for a second, I recalled that all SharePoint databases are represented by an instance of the SPDatabase type (Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Database specifically) or one of the other classes that derive from it, such as SPContentDatabase. Running down the available members for the SPDatabase type, I came up with the following properties and methods that were tied to mirroring in some way:

• FailoverServer
• FailoverServiceInstance
• AddFailoverServiceInstance()

What I thought I would find (but didn’t) was one or more properties and/or methods that would allow me to determine which SQL Server instance was serving as the active connection point for SharePoint requests.

In fact, the more digging that I did, the more that it appeared that SharePoint had no real knowledge of where it was actually connecting to for data in mirrored setups. It was easy enough to specify which database instances should be used for mirroring configurations, but there didn’t appear to be any way to determine (from within SharePoint) if the principal was in-use or if failover to the mirrored instance had taken place.

The Key Takeaway

If you’re familiar with SQL Server mirroring and how it’s implemented, then the following diagram (which I put together for discussion) probably looks familiar:

This diagram illustrates a couple of key points:

1. SharePoint connects to SQL Server databases using the SQL Server Native Client
2. SharePoint supplies a connection string that tells the native client which SQL Server instances (as Data Source and Failover Partner) should be used as part of a mirroring configuration.
3. It’s the SQL Server Native Client that actually determines where connections are made, and the results of the Client’s decisions don’t directly surface through SharePoint.

Number 3 was the point that I kept getting stuck on. I knew that it was possible to go into SQL Server Management Studio or use SQL Server’s Management Objects (SMO) directly to gain more insight around a mirroring configuration and what was happening in real-time, but I thought that SharePoint must surely surface that information in some form.

Apparently not.

Checking with the Experts

I hate when I can’t nail down a definitive answer. Despite all my reading, I wanted to bounce the conclusions I was drawing off of a few people to make sure I wasn’t missing something obvious (or hidden) with my interpretation.

• I shot Bill Baer (Senior Technical Product Manager for SharePoint and an MCM) a note with my question about information surfacing through SharePoint. If anyone could have given me a definitive answer, it would have been him. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear back from him. In his defense, he’s pretty doggone busy.
• I put a shout out on Twitter, and I did hear back from my good friend Todd Klindt. While he couldn’t claim with absolute certainty that my understanding was on the mark, he did indicate that my understanding was in-line with everything he’d read and conclusions he had drawn.
• I turned to Enrique Lima, another good friend and SQL Server MCM, with my question. Enrique confirmed that SQL SMO would provide some answers, but he didn’t have additional thoughts on how that information might surface through SharePoint.

Long and short: I didn’t receive rock-solid confirmation on my conclusions, but my understanding appeared to be on-the-mark. If anyone knows otherwise, though, I’d love to hear about it (and share the information here – with proper recognition for the source, of course!)

Back to the Farm

In the end, I wasn’t really able to give Jay much help with the QA farm that he was trying to diagnose. Since I couldn’t determine where SharePoint was pointing from within SharePoint itself, I did the next best thing: I threw together a PowerShell script that would dump the (mirroring) configuration for each database in the SharePoint farm.

<#
.SYNOPSIS
   SPDBMirrorInfo.ps1
.DESCRIPTION
   Examines each of the databases in the SharePoint environment to identify which have failover partners and which don't.
.NOTES
   Author: Sean McDonough
   Last Revision: 19-August-2011
#>
function DumpMirroringInfo ()
{
	# Make sure we have the required SharePoint snap-in loaded.
	$spCmdlets = Get-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction silentlycontinue
	if ($spCmdlets -eq $Null)
	{ Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell }

	# Grab databases and determine which have failover support (and which don't)
	$allDatabases = Get-SPDatabase
	$dbsWithoutFailover = $allDatabases | Where-Object {$_.FailoverServer -eq $null} | Sort-Object -Property Name
	$dbsWithFailover = $allDatabases | Where-Object {$_.FailoverServer -ne $null} | Sort-Object -Property Name
	
	# Write out unmirrored databases
	if ($dbsWithoutFailover -eq $null)
	{ Write-Host "`n`nNo databases are configured without a mirroring partner." }
	else
	{ 
		Write-Host ("`n`nDatabases without a mirroring partner: {0}" -f $dbsWithoutFailover.Count) 
		$dbsWithoutFailover | Format-Table -Property Name, Server -AutoSize 
	}

	# Dump results for mirrored databases
	if ($dbsWithFailover -eq $null)
	{ Write-Host "`nNo databases are configured with a mirroring partner." }
	else
	{ 
		Write-Host ("`nDatabases with a mirroring partner: {0}" -f $dbsWithFailover.Count) 
		$dbsWithFailover | Format-Table -Property Name, Server, FailoverServer -AutoSize
	}
	
	# For ease of reading
	Write-Host ("`n`n")
}
DumpMirroringInfo

The script itself isn’t rocket science, but it did actually prove helpful in identifying some databases that had apparently “lost” their failover partners.

Additional Reading and Resources

1. MSDN: Using Database Mirroring
2. Whitepaper: Using database mirroring (Office SharePoint Server)
3. Blog Post: Clarification on the Failover Partner in the connectionstring in Database Mirror setup
4. TechNet: Configure availability by using SQL Server database mirroring (SharePoint Server 2010)
5. Book: The SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide
6. Blog: John Ferringer’s “My Central Admin”
7. Blog: Jay Strickland’s “Slinger’s Thoughts
8. Company: Idera
9. MSDN: SPDatabase members
10. MSDN: SQL Server Management Objects (SMO)
11. Blog: Bill Baer
12. Blog: Todd Klindt’s SharePoint Admin Blog
13. Blog: Enrique Lima’s Intentional Thinking

After much anticipation, Microsoft finally released service pack 1 (SP1) for SharePoint 2010 earlier last week. Like so many other SharePoint professionals, I headed out to Microsoft’s site and pulled down everything I needed to patch-up my servers and virtual machines (VMs).

I’ve patched about four different server and VM environments with SP1 thus far, and although my experience with SP1 has been relatively positive, I did run into one particular snag that I thought I’d blog about. It was a weird one. I don’t claim to have good answers, but (at a minimum) I wanted to share my experience and observations.

What Happened?

My primary development environment is a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, SharePoint Server 2010, and the Office Web Apps. I don’t have any cumulative updates (CUs) or hotfixes installed, and everything is patched-up via Windows Update. Generally speaking, life is pretty happy in my little VM bubble. I sometimes have a hiccup or two due to the VM’s role as a domain controller (DC), but I can usually resolve those problems without too much trouble.

The relative peace and tranquility I normally experience was interrupted by none other than SP1. Like a bull in a china shop, SP1 announced that it had arrived on the scene with the dialog seen on the right. What struck me as weird is that all I had done up until the point when the dialog started appearing was the following:

1. Install SharePoint Foundation 2010 SP1
2. Reboot (as prompted by the SPF 2010 SP1 installer)
3. Install SharePoint Server 2010 SP1.

I hadn’t even run PSCONFIG or gone through the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard, and suddenly I started getting unhandled exceptions. I still had the Office Web Apps SP1 package to install and wasn’t planning to run PSCONFIG until all the binaries had been laid down. My first reaction was “huh, that’s weird. I’ll just reboot.” That didn’t make the problem go away. Neither did running PSCONFIG and upgrading the farm. Shortly after rebooting, the dialog shown above would start appearing. If I’d clear it out by saying clicking “No,” I’d have another one waiting for me in about a minute.

My “Ostrich Maneuver” wasn’t cutting the mustard, so I had to dig in and figure out what I needed to do in order to get my environment back in order.

Reluctant Analysis

The Visual Studio Just-In-Time Debugger dialog was popping up about every minute, so I figured that it was as good a place to start as any.  The only thing the dialog really told me was the following:

• the problem was with OWSTIMER.EXE (i.e., the SharePoint Timer Service)
• a System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotFoundException was being thrown

Since this was my development environment and Visual Studio 2010 was installed, I decided to attach the VS debugger to the SharePoint Timer Service process and see if I could learn anything more. The dialog on the left was the result.

Although the dialog didn’t contain a substantial amount of new information, it did include a few tidbits I needed to continue my hunt for the culprit behind my constant timer service crashes:

• The exception was being generated by the metadata exchange (MEX) endpoint for a service that resided on the ResourceManagementService path. Since the connection was being actively refused, there was a decent chance that the service simply wasn’t running
• The service in question was apparently running (or expected to be running) on TCP port 5725

A web search for “SharePoint” and “5725” quickly brought me to the Plan security hardening (SharePoint Server 2010) page on TechNet. On that page, I found the following under the User Profile service hardening requirements section:

TCP port 5725 must be open on the server that runs the Forefront Identity Management agent and is set up to crawl a directory store.

The revelation that I was dealing with Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) and the SharePoint 2010 User Profile Service (UPS) immediately kicked-off a round of cursing and forehead slapping that took a couple of minutes to rein in.

User Profile Service Investigation

I’m sure that the ResourceManagementService path and port 5725 is obvious to many of you, but I’ll come clean and tell you that I try to stay as far away from the User Profile Service as I possibly can. Unless I know that I’m going to be doing something with the UPS and social networking, I don’t even bother with it in most of my SharePoint environments. Why? Because the UPS is just a colossal pain in the butt to configure and keep running. It is the bane of SharePoint administrators everywhere. Since I’m averse to pain and rarely do anything with it, I stay away from the UPS.

I had trouble believing that I would have gone through the trouble of configuring the UPS in my development environment, so I decided to take a look in Central Administration. Much to my surprise, I had actually taken the time to jump through all of the hoops (as shown on the right) to get the service running, AD synchronization going, etc.

If the UPS was running and the service was actually started (which I confirmed through the Services on Server section of Central Administration), why was I seeing constant timer service crashes?

I decided to look a little further; specifically, I went in to look at the actual Forefront Identity Manager Service which backstops the whole User Profile Service. I popped-open Start –> Administrative Tools –> Services and navigated to the FIM service. The result (which is shown on the left) explained a lot.

Even though the service was set to auto-start, it wasn’t running. Without the service running, it would make sense that attempts to reach it or interact with it would fail.

I decided to manually start the service. Once I did so, the OWSTIMER.EXE crashes ceased. I thought I was in the clear … until I rebooted. Once I rebooted, the FIM service failed to start again and the OWSTIMER.EXE exceptions started happening again. Ugh.

Rewind

I spent about an hour or two poking and prodding, but I didn’t make much headway. Since I was more interested in getting my development environment usable than solving my UPS problems, I decided to cut bait and rewind.

Remember: this is a VM that we’re talking about. Since I try to practice what I preach (particularly from a backup and restore perspective), I had taken a VM snapshot prior to the start of SP1 work. I rolled-back to my pre-SP1 state and took a different approach to the service pack application.

Fans of the movie Aliens will appreciate my application of the “Ellen Ripley Strategy” as shown on the right:

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

As mentioned earlier, I seldom if ever use the User Profile Service. If it was causing me problems with the application of SP1, I decided that it had to go. At a minimum, I wanted to see if SP1 would go on properly without an instance of the User Profile Service Application running in my environment.

I deleted my UPS service application instance and decided to have a look at the FIM service again. What I saw (on the left) looked a bit different. Rather than being set to auto-start (“Automatic”), both the FIM Service and its associated synchronization service were set to “Disabled.”

I then went through the process of laying down the various service packs, and even before running PSCONFIG I knew that things were going to be different. Applying the SharePoint 2010 Server Service Pack 1 binaries did not start a constant stream of OWSTIMER.EXE exceptions. I was able to lay down all of the service packs and run PSCONFIG without issue. Problem solved.

That’s Your Solution?

So, is deleting your UPS service application instance a solution to this problem? In most production environments, I’d wager that the answer is “probably not".” If I think about the situation from a production perspective, the answer may be to preserve the appropriate UPS databases, tear down the UPS service application instance for SP1 application, and then rebuild the UPS service application afterwards.

My primary objective with this post, though, was to simply provide some initial root-cause analysis and troubleshooting. I may be the only person seeing this; if so, I hope that what I’ve written was at least entertaining. If you happen to be seeing the same symptoms I saw, though, then I hope that what I’ve written saves you a little time while troubleshooting.

Additional Reading and References

1. Microsoft: Technical details about the SharePoint 2010 and Office Server 2010 SP1 releases
2. TechNet: Plan security hardening (SharePoint Server 2010)
3. IMDB: Aliens

This is a bit of an oldie, but I figured it might help one or two random readers.

Let me start by saying something right off the bat: you should never need what I’m about to share.  Of course, how many times have you heard “you shouldn’t ever really need this” when it comes to SharePoint?  I’ve been at it a while, and I can tell you that things that never should happen seem to find a way into reality – and into my crosshairs for troubleshooting.

Disclaimer

The story and situation I’m about to share is true.  I’m going to speak in generalities when it comes to the identities of the parties and software involved, though, to “protect the innocent” and avoid upsetting anyone.

The Predicament

I was part of a team that was working with a client to troubleshoot problems that the client was encountering when they attempted to run some software that targeted SharePoint site collections.  The errors that were returned by the software were somewhat cryptic, but they pointed to a problem handling certain objects in a SharePoint site collection.  The software ran fine when targeting all other site collections, so we naturally suspected that something was wrong with only one specific site collection.

After further examination of logs that were tied to the software, it became clear that we had a real predicament.  Apparently, the site collection in question contained two or more objects with the same identity; that is, the objects had ID properties possessing the same GUID.  This isn’t anything that should ever happen, but it had.  SharePoint continued to run without issue (interestingly enough), but the duplication of object GUIDs made it downright difficult for any software that depended on unique object identities being … well, unique.

Although the software logs told us which GUID was being duplicated, we didn’t know which SharePoint object or objects the GUID was tied to.  We needed a relatively quick and easy way to figure out the name(s) of the object or objects which were being impacted by the duplicate GUIDs.

Tackling the Problem

It is precisely in times like those described that PowerShell comes to mind.

My solution was to whip-up a PowerShell script (FindDuplicateGuids.ps1) that processed each of the lists (SPList) and webs (SPWeb) in a target site collection.  The script simply collected the identities of each list and web and reported back any GUIDs that appeared more than once.

The script created works with both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010, and it has no specific dependencies beyond SharePoint being installed and available on the server where the script is run.

########################
# FindDuplicateGuids.ps1
# Author: Sean P. McDonough (sean@sharepointinterface.com)
# Blog: http://SharePointInterface.com
# Last Update: June 25, 2010
#
# Usage from prompt: ".\FindDuplicateGuids.ps1 <siteUrl>"
#   where <siteUrl> is site collection root.
########################


#########
# IMPORTS
# Import/load common SharePoint assemblies that house the types we'll need for operations.
#########
Add-Type -AssemblyName "Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"


###########
# FUNCTIONS
# Leveraged throughout the script for one or more calls.
###########
function SpmBuild-WebAndListIdMappings {param ($siteUrl)
	$targetSite = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($siteUrl)
	$allWebs = $targetSite.AllWebs
	$mappings = New-Object System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection
	foreach ($spWeb in $allWebs)
	{
		$webTitle = "WEB '{0}'" -f $spWeb.Title
		$mappings.Add($spWeb.ID, $webTitle)
		$allListsForWeb = $spWeb.Lists
		foreach ($currentList in $allListsForWeb)
		{
			$listEntry = "LIST '{0}' in Web '{1}'" -f $currentList.Title, $spWeb.Title
			$mappings.Add($currentList.ID, $listEntry)
		}
	}
	return ,$mappings
}

function SpmFind-DuplicateMembers {param ([System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection]$nvMappings)
	$duplicateMembers = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList
	$allkeys = $nvMappings.AllKeys
	foreach ($keyName in $allKeys)
	{
		$valuesForKey = $nvMappings.GetValues($keyName)
		if ($valuesForKey.Length -gt 1)
		{
			[void]$duplicateMembers.Add($keyName)
		}
	}
	return ,$duplicateMembers
}


########
# SCRIPT
# Execution of actual script logic begins here
########
$siteUrl = $Args[0]
if ($siteUrl -eq $null)
{
	$siteUrl = Read-Host "`nYou must supply a site collection URL to execute the script"
}
if ($siteUrl.EndsWith("/") -eq $false)
{
	$siteUrl += "/"
}
Clear-Host
Write-Output ("Examining " + $siteUrl + " ...`n")
$combinedMappings = SpmBuild-WebAndListIdMappings $siteUrl
Write-Output ($combinedMappings.Count.ToString() + " GUIDs processed.")
Write-Output ("Looking for duplicate GUIDs ...`n")
$duplicateGuids = SpmFind-DuplicateMembers $combinedMappings
if ($duplicateGuids.Count -eq 0)
{
	Write-Output ("No duplicate GUIDs found.")
}
else
{
	Write-Output ($duplicateGuids.Count.ToString() + " duplicate GUID(s) found.")
	Write-Output ("Non-unique GUIDs and associated objects appear below.`n")
	foreach ($keyName in $duplicateGuids)
	{
		$siteNames = $combinedMappings[$keyName]
		Write-Output($keyName + ": " + $siteNames)
	}
}
$dumpData = Read-Host "`nDo you want to send the collected data to a file? (Y/N)"
if ($dumpData -match "y")
{
	$fileName = Read-Host "  Output file path and name"
	Write-Output ("Results for " + $siteUrl) | Out-File -FilePath $fileName
	$allKeys = $combinedMappings.AllKeys
	foreach ($currentKey in $allKeys)
	{
		Write-Output ($currentKey + ": " + $combinedMappings[$currentKey]) | Out-File -FilePath $fileName -Append
	}
}
Write-Output ("`n")

Running this script in the client’s environment quickly identified the two lists that contained the same ID GUIDs.  How did they get that way?  I honestly don’t know, nor am I going to hazard a guess …

What Next?

If you’re in the unfortunate position of owning a site collection that contains objects possessing duplicate ID GUIDs, let me start by saying “I feel for you.”

Having said that: the quickest fix seemed to be deleting the objects that possessed the same GUIDs.  Those objects were then rebuilt.  I believe we handled the delete and rebuild manually, but there’s nothing to say that an export and subsequent import (via the Content Deployment API) couldn’t be used to get content out and then back in with new object IDs. 

A word of caution: if you do leverage the Content Deployment API and do so programmatically, simply make sure that object identities aren’t retained on import; that is, make sure that SPImportSettings.RetainObjectIdentity = false – not true.

Additional Reading and References

1. TechNet: Import and export: STSADM operations
2. MSDN: SPImportSettings.RetainObjectIdentity

I read a lot.  Honestly, I assume that most people who work with technology spend a fair bit of their time reading.  Maybe it’s books, maybe it’s blogs – whatever.  There’s simply too much knowledge out there, and the human brain is only so big, to not be brushing-up on the ol’ technical skill set on a fairly regular basis.

When free books are dangled in front of me, naturally I jump.  I jump even higher when they’re books that I probably would have ended up buying had they not been given to me gratis.

The Opportunity

Several months ago, I received an e-mail from Becky Bertram.  Becky is an exceptionally knowledgeable SharePoint MVP and all-around wonderful woman.  Becky and I first met (albeit briefly) at the MS SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas (2009), and since that time we’ve spoken at a couple of the same events.

In my conversations with Becky and through Twitter, I knew that she was part of a team that was working to assemble a book on SharePoint 2010.  In her e-mail to me, she asked if I’d be interested in a copy of it.  Given what I’ve said about reading, it should come as no surprise to see me say that I jumped at her offer.

Fast forward a bit.  I’ve had SharePoint 2010 Six-In-One for a couple of months now, and I’ve managed to read a solid 80% of its 500+ pages thus far.  Unfortunately, I’m a very slow reader.  I always have been, and I probably always will be.  I probably should have told Becky that before she agreed to send me a copy of the book …

Top-Level Assessment

Let me start by saying that simply put, I think this book is an excellent SharePoint resource.  The reasons that one would find the book useful will likely vary based on their existing knowledge of SharePoint, but I believe that everyone from across the spectrum, newcomer to SharePoint journeyman, will find the book helpful in some way. 

The rest of this post/review explains the book, its intended audience, what it conveys, and some of my additional thoughts.

The Authors

First, let me start by giving credit where it was due.  The SharePoint 2010 Six-In-One is the collaborative effort of seven different and active members of the larger SharePoint community.

• Chris Geier
• Cathy Dew
• Wes Preston
• Raymond Mitchell
• Becky Bertram
• Ken Schaefer
• Andrew Clark

I know several of these folks personally, and that’s one of the reasons why I was so excited to review the book.  Most of the authors are active in user groups.  Nearly all contribute socially through Twitter and other channels.  Many speak at SharePoint Saturdays and other events.  Some are designated Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) by Microsoft.  All are darn good at what they do.

Target Audience

This book was written primarily for relative newcomers to SharePoint 2010, and this demographic is the one that will undoubtedly get the most value out of the book.  As the title of the book indicates, the authors covered six of the core SharePoint areas that anyone wrangling with SharePoint 2010 would need information on:

• Branding
• Business Connectivity Services
• Development
• Search
• Social Networking
• Workflow

The book devotes a few chapters to each topic, and each topic is covered solidly from an introductory perspective.  Many of the common questions and concerns associated with each topic are also addressed in some way, and particulars for some of the topics (like development) are actually covered at a significantly deeper level.

Although it might get glossed-over by some, I want to call attention to a particularly valuable inclusion; specifically, the first three chapters.  These chapters do a fantastic job of explaining the essence of SharePoint, what it is, how to plan for it, concerns that implementers should have, and more.  Given SharePoint’s complexity and “tough to define” nature, I have to applaud the authors on managing to sum-up SharePoint so well in only 60 pages.  Anyone getting started with SharePoint will find these chapters to be excellent on-ramp and starting point for SharePoint.

Contents

The following is the per-chapter breakdown for the book’s content:

• Chapter 1: SharePoint Overview
• Chapter 2: Planning for SharePoint
• Chapter 3: Getting Started with SharePoint
• Chapter 4: Master Pages
• Chapter 5: SharePoint Themes
• Chapter 6: Cascading Style Sheets and SharePoint
• Chapter 7: Features and Solutions
• Chapter 8: Introducing SharePoint Development
• Chapter 9: Publishing in SharePoint Server 2010
• Chapter 10: Introducing Business Connectivity Services
• Chapter 11: Building Solutions Using Business Connectivity Services
• Chapter 12: Why Social Networking Is Important in SharePoint 2010
• Chapter 13: Tagging and Ratings
• Chapter 14: My Site
• Chapter 15: Workflow Introduction and Background
• Chapter 16: Building and Using Workflow in SharePoint 2010
• Chapter 17: Visual Studio: When SharePoint Designer Is Not Enough
• Chapter 18: Introduction to Enterprise Search
• Chapter 19: Administering and Customizing
• Chapter 20: FAST Search
• Chapter 21: Wrapping It All Up

The Experienced SharePoint Reader

So, what if you happen to know a bit about SharePoint and/or have been working with SharePoint 2010 for some time?  I’m in this particular boat, and I have good news: this book strikes just the right balance of breadth and depth so as to be useful as a reference source.  Although the book doesn’t provide really deep dives into its topic areas (not its intent), I found myself reaching for it on a handful of occasions to get myself going on some SharePoint tasks I had to accomplish.  A quick review of Cathy’s chapters on branding, for instance, gave me just the right amount of information needed to get started on a small side project of my own.

Summary

Bottom line: SharePoint 2010 Six-In-One contains just the right mix of breadth and depth so as to be immediately informative to newcomers but also useful as a reference source in the longer term.   I’d recommend this book for anyone working with SharePoint, and I’d especially recommend it to those who are new to SharePoint 2010 and/or seeking to get a grasp on its core aspects. 

Additional Reading and References

1. People: Becky Bertram
2. Book: SharePoint 2010 Six-In-One
3. Author (Twitter): Chris Geier
4. Author (blog): Cathy Dew
5. Author (blog): Wes Preston
6. Author (blog): Raymond Mitchell
7. Author (blog): Becky Bertram
8. Author (blog): Ken Schaefer
9. Author (Twitter): Andrew Clark
10. Events: SharePoint Saturday
11. Designation: Most Valuable Professional (MVP)

I first presented (in some organized capacity) on SharePoint’s platform caching capabilities at SharePoint Saturday Ozarks in June of 2010, and since that time I’ve consistently received a growing number of questions on the topic of SharePoint BLOB caching.  When I start talking about BLOB caching itself, the area that seems to draw the greatest number of questions and “really?!?!” responses is the use of the max-age attribute and how it can profoundly impact client-server interactions.

I’d been promising a number of people (including Todd Klindt and Becky Bertram) that I would write a post about the topic sometime soon, and recently decided that I had lollygagged around long enough.

Before I go too far, though, I should probably explain why the max-age attribute is so special … and even before I do that, we need to agree on what “caching” is and does.

Caching 101

Why does SharePoint supply caching mechanisms?  Better yet, why does any application or hardware device employ caching?  Generally speaking, caching is utilized to improve performance by taking frequently accessed data and placing it in a state or location that facilitates faster access.  Faster access is commonly achieved through one or both of the following mechanisms:

• By placing the data that is to be accessed on a faster storage medium; for example, taking frequently accessed data from a hard drive and placing it into memory.
• By placing the data that is to be accessed closer to the point of usage; for example, offloading files from a server that is halfway around the world to one that is local to the point of consumption to reduce round-trip latency and bandwidth concerns.  For Internet traffic, this scenario can be addressed with edge caching through a content delivery network such as that which is offered by Akamai’s EdgePlatform.

Oftentimes, data that is cached is expensive to fetch or computationally calculate.  Take the digits in pi (3.1415926535 …) for example.  Computing pi to 100 decimals requires a series of mathematical operations, and those operations take time.  If the digits of pi are regularly requested or used by an application, it is probably better to compute those digits once and cache the sequence in memory than to calculate it on-demand each time the value is needed.

Caching usually improves performance and scalability, and these ultimately tend to translate into a better user experience.

SharePoint and caching

Through its publishing infrastructure, SharePoint provides a number of different platform caching capabilities that can work wonders to improve performance and scalability.  Note that yes, I did say “publishing infrastructure” – sorry, I’m not talking about Windows SharePoint Services 3 or SharePoint Foundation 2010 here.

With any paid version of SharePoint, you get object caching, page output caching, and BLOB caching.  With SharePoint 2010 and the Office Web Applications, you also get the Office Web Applications Cache (for which I highly recommend this blog post written by Bill Baer).

Each of these caching mechanisms and options work to improve performance within a SharePoint farm by using a combination of the two mechanisms I described earlier.  Object caching stores frequently accessed property, query, and navigational data in memory on WFEs.  Basic BLOB caching copies images, CSS, and similar resource data from content databases to the file system of WFEs.  Page output caching piggybacks on ASP.NET page caching and holds SharePoint pages (which are expensive to render) in memory and serves them back to users.  The Office Web Applications Cache stores the output of Word documents and PowerPoint presentations (which is expensive to render in web-accessible form) in a special site collection for subsequent re-use.

Public-facing SharePoint

Each of the aforementioned caching mechanisms yields some form of performance improvement within the SharePoint farm by reducing load or processing burden, and that’s all well and good … but do any of them improve performance outside of the SharePoint farm?

What do I even mean by “outside of the SharePoint farm?”  Well, consider a SharePoint farm that serves up content to external consumers – a standard/typical Internet presence web site.  Most of us in the SharePoint universe have seen (or held up) the Hawaiian Airlines and Ferrari websites as examples of what SharePoint can do in a public-facing capacity.  These are exactly the type of sites I am focused on when I ask about what caching can do outside of the SharePoint farm.

For companies that host public-facing SharePoint sites, there is almost always a desire to reduce load and traffic into the web front-ends (WFEs) that serve up those sites.  These companies are concerned with many of the same performance issues that concern SharePoint intranet sites, but public-facing sites have one additional concern that intranet sites typically don’t: Internet bandwidth.

Even though Internet bandwidth is much easier to come by these days than it used to be, it’s not unlimited.  In the age of gigabit Ethernet to the desktop, most intranet users don’t think about (nor do they have to concern themselves with) the actual bandwidth to their SharePoint sites.  I can tell you from experience that such is not the case when serving up SharePoint sites to the general public

So … for all the platform caching options that SharePoint has, is there anything it can actually do to assist with the Internet bandwidth issue?

Enter BLOB caching and the max-age attribute

As it turns out, the answer to that question is “yes” … and of course, it centers around BLOB caching and the max-age attribute specifically.  Let’s start by looking at the <BlobCache /> element that is present in every SharePoint Server 2010 web.config file.

BLOB caching disabled

<BlobCache location="C:\BlobCache\14" path="\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|jpe|jfif|bmp|dib|tif|tiff|ico|png|wdp|hdp|css|js|asf|avi|flv|m4v|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|rm|rmvb|wma|wmv)$" maxSize="10" enabled="false" />

This is the default <BlobCache /> element that is present in all starting SharePoint Server 2010 web.config files, and astute readers will notice that the enabled attribute has a value of false.  In this configuration, BLOB caching is turned off and every request for BLOB resources follows a particular sequence of steps.  The first request in a browser session looks like this:

In this series of steps

1. A request for a BLOB resource is made to a WFE
2. The WFE fetches the BLOB resource from the appropriate content database
3. The BLOB is returned to the WFE
4. The WFE returns an HTTP 200 status code and the BLOB to the requester

Here’s a section of the actual HTTP response from server (step #4 above):

HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
Cache-Control: private,max-age=0 
Content-Length: 1241304 
Content-Type: image/jpeg 
Expires: Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:59:39 GMT 
Last-Modified: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:59:40 GMT 
ETag: "{9EE83B76-50AC-4280-9270-9FC7B540A2E3},7" 
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 
SPRequestGuid: 45874590-475f-41fc-adf6-d67713cbdc85

You’ll notice that I highlighted the Cache-Control header line.  This line gives the requesting browser guidance on what it should and shouldn’t do with regard to caching the BLOB resource (typically an image, CSS file, etc.) it has requested.  This particular combination basically tells the browser that it’s okay to cache the resource for the current user, but the resource shouldn’t be shared with other users or outside the current session.

Since the browser knows that it’s okay to privately cache the requested resource, subsequent requests for the resource by the same user (and within the same browser session) follow a different pattern:

When the browser makes subsequent requests like this for the resource, the HTTP response (in step #2) looks different than it did on the first request:

HTTP/1.1 304 NOT MODIFIED 
Cache-Control: private,max-age=0 
Content-Length: 0 
Expires: Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:59:59 GMT

A request is made and a response is returned, but the HTTP 304 status code indicates that the requested resource wasn’t updated on the server; as a result, the browser can re-use its cached copy.  Being able to re-use the cached copy is certainly an improvement over re-fetching it, but again: the cached copy is only used for the duration of the browser session – and only for the user who originally fetched it.  The requester also has to contact the WFE to determine that the cached copy is still valid, so there’s the overhead of an additional round-trip to the WFE for each requested resource anytime a page is refreshed or re-rendered.

BLOB caching enabled

Even if you’re not a SharePoint administrator and generally don’t poke around web.config files, you can probably guess at how BLOB caching is enabled after reading the previous section.  That’s right: it’s enabled by setting the enabled attribute to true as follows:

<BlobCache location="C:\BlobCache\14" path="\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|jpe|jfif|bmp|dib|tif|tiff|ico|png|wdp|hdp|css|js|asf|avi|flv|m4v|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|rm|rmvb|wma|wmv)$" maxSize="10" enabled="true" />

When BLOB caching is enabled in this fashion, the request pattern for BLOB resources changes quite a bit.  The first request during a browser session looks like this:

In this series of steps

1. A request for a BLOB resource is made to a WFE
2. The WFE returns the BLOB resource from a file system cache

The gray arrow that is shown indicates that at some point, an initial fetch of the BLOB resource is needed to populate the BLOB cache in the file system of the WFE.  After that point, the resource is served directly from the WFE so that subsequent requests are handled locally for the duration of the browser session.

As you might imagine based on the interaction patterns described thus far, simply enabling the BLOB cache can work wonders to reduce the load on your SQL Servers (where content databases are housed) and reduce back-end network traffic.  Where things get really interesting, though, is on the client side of the equation (that is, the Requester’s machine) once a resource has been fetched.

What about the max-age attribute?

You probably noticed that a max-age attribute wasn’t specified in the default (previous) <BlobCache /> element.  That’s because the max-age is actually an optional attribute.  It can be added to the <BlobCache /> element in the following fashion:

<BlobCache location="C:\BlobCache\14" path="\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|jpe|jfif|bmp|dib|tif|tiff|ico|png|wdp|hdp|css|js|asf|avi|flv|m4v|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|rm|rmvb|wma|wmv)$" maxSize="10" enabled="true" max-age=”43200” />

Before explaining exactly what the max-age attribute does, I think it’s important to first address what it doesn’t do and dispel a misconception that I’ve seen a number of times.  The max-age attribute has nothing to do with how long items stay within the BLOB cache on the WFE’s file system.  max-age is not an expiration period or window of viability for content on the WFE.  The server-side BLOB cache isn’t like other caches in that items expire out of it.  New assets will replace old ones via a maintenance thread that regularly checks associated site collections for changes, but there’s no regular removal of BLOB items from the WFE’s file system BLOB cache simply because of age.  max-age has nothing to do with server side operations.

So, what does the max-age attribute actually do then?  Answer: it controls information that is sent to requesters for purposes of specifying how BLOB items should be cached by the requester.  In short: max-age controls client-side cacheability.

The effect of the max-age attribute

max-age values are specified in seconds; in the case above, 43200 seconds translates into 12 hours.  When a max-age value is specified for BLOB caching, something magical happens with BLOB requests that are made from client browsers.  After a BLOB cache resource is initially fetched by a requester according to the previous “BLOB caching enabled” series of steps, subsequent requests for the fetched resource look like this for a period of time equal to the max-age:

You might be saying, “hey, wait a minute … there’s only one step there.  The request doesn’t even go to the WFE?”  That’s right: the request doesn’t go to the WFE.  It gets served directly from local browser cache – assuming such a cache is in use, of course, which it typically is.

Why does this happen?  Let’s take a look at the HTTP response that is sent back with the payload on the initial resource request when BLOB caching is enabled:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
Cache-Control: public, max-age=43200 
Content-Length: 1241304 
Content-Type: image/jpeg 
Last-Modified: Thu, 22 May 2008 21:26:03 GMT 
Accept-Ranges: bytes 
ETag: "{F60C28AA-1868-4FF5-A950-8AA2B4F3E161},8pub" 
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 
SPRequestGuid: 45874590-475f-41fc-adf6-d67713cbdc85

The Cache-Control header line in this case differs quite a bit from the one that was specified when BLOB caching was disabled.  First, the use of public instead of private tells the receiving browser or application that the response payload can be cached and made available across users and sessions.  The response header max-age attribute maps directly to the value specified in the web.config, and in this case it basically indicates that the payload is valid for 12 hours (43,200 seconds) in the cache.  During that 12 hour window, any request for the payload/resource will be served directly from the cache without a trip to the SharePoint WFE.

Implications that come with max-age

On the plus side, serving resources directly out of the client-side cache for a period of time can dramatically reduce requests and overall traffic to WFEs.  This can be a tremendous bandwidth saver, especially when you consider that assets which are BLOB cached tend to be larger in nature – images, media files, etc.  At the same time, serving resources directly out of the cache is much quicker than round-tripping to a WFE – even if the round trip involves nothing more than an HTTP 304 response to say that a cached resource may be used instead of being retrieved.

While serving items directly out of the cache can yield significant benefits, I’ve seen a few organizations get bitten by BLOB caching and excessive max-age periods.  This is particularly true when BLOB caching and long max-age periods are employed in environments where images and other BLOB cached resources are regularly replaced and changed-out.  Let me illustrate with an example.

Suppose a site collection that hosts collaboration activities for a graphic design group is being served through a Web application zone where BLOB caching is enabled and a max-age period of 43,200 seconds (12 hours) is specified.  One of the designers who uses the site collection arrives in the morning, launches her browser, and starts doing some work in the site collection.  Most of the scripts, CSS, images, and other BLOB assets that are retrieved will be cached by the user’s browser for the rest of the work day.  No additional fetches for such assets will take place.

In this particular scenario, caching is probably a bad thing.  Users trying to collaborate on images and other similar (BLOB) content are probably going to be disrupted by the effect of BLOB caching.  The max-age value (duration) in-use would either need to be dialed-back significantly or BLOB caching would have to be turned-off entirely.

What you don’t see can hurt you

There’s one more very important point I want to make when it comes to BLOB caching and the use of the max-age attribute: the default <BlobCache /> element doesn’t come with a max-age attribute value, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one in-use.  If you fail to specify a max-age attribute value, you end up with the default of 86,400 seconds – 24 hours.

This wasn’t always the case!  In some recent exploratory work I was doing with Fiddler, I was quite surprised to discover client-side caching taking place where previously it hadn’t.  When I first started playing around with BLOB caching shortly after MOSS 2007 was released, omitting the max-age attribute in the <BlobCache /> element meant that a max-age value of zero (0) was used.  This had the effect of caching BLOB resources in the file system cache on WFEs without those resources getting cached in public, cross-session form on the client-side.  To achieve extended client-side caching, a max-age value had to be explicitly assigned.

Somewhere along the line, this behavior was changed.  I’m not sure where it happened, and attempts to dig back through older VM images (for HTTP response comparisons) didn’t give me a read on when Microsoft made the change.  If I had to guess, though, it probably happened somewhere around service pack 1 (SP1).  That’s strictly a guess, though.  I had always gotten into the habit of explicitly including a max-age value – even if it was zero – so it wasn’t until I was playing with the BLOB caching defaults in a SharePoint 2010 environment that I noticed the 24 hour client-side caching behavior by default.  I then backtracked to verify that the behavior was present in both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010, and it affected both authenticated and anonymous users.  It wasn’t a fluke.

So watch-out: if you don’t specify a max-age value, you’ll get 24 hour client-side caching by default!  If users complain of images that “won’t update” and stale BLOB-based content, look closely at max-age effects.

An alternate viewpoint on the topic

As I was finishing up this post, I decided that it would probably be a good idea to see if anyone else had written on this topic.  My search quickly turned up Chris O’Brien’s “Optimization, BLOB caching and HTTP 304s” post which was written last year.  It’s an excellent read, highly informative, and covers a number of items I didn’t go into.

Throughout this post, I took the viewpoint of a SharePoint administrator who is seeking to control WFE load and Internet bandwidth consumption.  Chris’ post, on the other hand, was written primarily with developer and end-user concerns in mind.  I wasn’t aware of some of the concerns that Chris points out, and I learned quite a few things while reading his write-up.  I highly recommend checking out his post if you have a moment.

Additional Reading and References

1. Event: SharePoint Saturday Ozarks (June 2010)
2. Blob Post: We Drift Deeper Into the Sound … as the (BLOB Cache) Flush Comes
3. Blog: Todd Klindt’s SharePoint Admin Blog
4. Blog: Becky Bertram’s Blog
5. Definition: lollygag
6. Technology: Akamai’s EdgePlatform
7. Wikipedia: Pi
8. TechNet: Cache settings operations (SharePoint Server 2010)
9. Bill Baer: The Office Web Applications Cache
10. SharePoint Site: Hawaiian Airlines
11. SharePoint Site: Ferrari
12. W3C Site: Cache-Control explanations
13. Tool: Fiddler
14. Blog Post: Chris O’Brien: Optimization, BLOB caching and HTTP 304s

Last week, I was in Boston for BZ Media’s SPTechCon Boston event.  It was a great opportunity to see and spend time with many of my friends in the SharePoint community, do a book signing with John Ferringer and Idera, and take in a few sessions.

Although I wasn’t technically a presenter at the conference, I did deliver a “lightning talk” on the first day of the conference.  Lightning talks are five minute presentations that are typically given by sponsors and designed to expose audiences (who are usually chowing-down on food) to the sponsors’ services, products, etc.

I was given Idera’s slot to speak, and I was also given the latitude to basically do whatever I wanted … so, I decided to have some fun with it!

The Lightning Talk Itself

The five minute presentation that appears below is titled Backup/Restore Knowledge Nuggets: What’s True, What’s Not?  If you weren’t at SPTechCon and can spare a few minutes, I think you’ll find the presentation to be both amusing and informative.

Follow the link and try it out!  You’ll find that the play button allows you to step through the presentation from start to finish pretty easily.

Prezi has a very slick mechanism for embedding actual presentations directly into a website, but that isn’t an option here on my blog.  WordPress.com hosts my blog, and they strip out anything with <object> tags.  I tried to embed the presentation directly, but it got me nowhere  :-(

Wait, What’s Prezi?

I recently became hooked on Prezi (the product + service that drove both the lightning talk and the link that I included above) when I saw Peter Serzo use it to deliver his service application session at SharePoint Saturday Columbus.  Prior to Prezi, I did everything with PowerPoint.  Once I saw Prezi in action and got some additional details from Peter, though, I knew that I’d be using Prezi before long.

I don’t see Prezi as a replacement for PowerPoint, but I do see it as a nice complement.  PowerPoint is great for presenting sequential sets of data and information, and it excels in situations where a linear delivery is desirable.

Prezi, on the other hand, is fantastic for talks and presentation where jumping around happens a lot – such as you might do when trying to tie several points back to a central theme or concept.  Prezi isn’t nearly as full-featured as PowerPoint, but I find that it can be more visually engaging and simply “fun.”

Wrapping It Up

The lightning talk at SPTechCon was the perfect arena for a test run with Prezi, and I think the presentation went wonderfully… and was a whole lot of fun to deliver, as well.  I certainly see myself using Prezi more in the future.  SharePoint Saturday Dallas is coming up in just a couple of weeks …

If you take the time to watch the presentation, I’d really love to hear your feedback!

Additional Reading and References

1. Company: BZ Media LLC
2. Book: SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide
3. Blog: John Ferringer’s MyCentralAdmin
4. Company: Idera
5. Presentation: Backup/Restore Knowledge Nuggets: What’s True, What’s Not?
6. Product: Prezi
7. Twitter: Peter Serzo (@pserzo)
8. Event: SharePoint Saturday Columbus
9. Event: SharePoint Saturday Dallas

I recently authored a blog post titled “Configuration-Only Backup and Restore in SharePoint 2010,” and in that post I tried to address some of the false hopes and misunderstandings I saw arising around SharePoint 2010’s configuration-only backup and restore capabilities.

While I was putting the post together, I was reminded of another head-scratcher that I’ve seen confuse some folks on a handful of occasions; specifically, what the differences are between the Backup-SPFarm and Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase PowerShell cmdlets in SharePoint 2010 when it comes to configuration-only backup.

Before I go too far, I should probably rewind a bit and explain a few things.

Many Paths to the Destination

If you aren’t yet familiar with configuration-only backup and restore in SharePoint 2010, the basics of it are covered in this TechNet article and in my previous post.  I’d recommend checking both out before continuing.

Configuration-only backups in SharePoint 2010 can be generated in several different ways;

1. Using the “Backup up only configuration settings” option when running a backup using Central Administration’s Farm Backup and Restore capabilities.
2. Through STSADM.exe using STSADM.exe –o backup with the –ConfigurationOnly switch.
3. By running the Backup-SPFarm PowerShell cmdlet along with the –ConfigurationOnly switch.
4. By executing the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase PowerShell cmdlet.

Option #1 is obviously designed for the “UI-oriented” administrator who wants to accomplish a configuration-only backup with a point-and-click interface.  Option #2 works, but Microsoft has been pretty clear that STSADM.exe is on its way out and should be generally be avoided in favor of the PowerShell cmdlets shown in Options #3 and #4.

Options #3 and #4 are where I’ve actually seen some administrative head-scratching start.  Both options leverage PowerShell, and both produce a configuration-only backup.  The Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet would seem most appropriate for the job … but is it?  If it is most appropriate, then why the redundant capability with the Backup-SPFarm cmdlet?

Two Cmdlets, One Function?

We have two PowerShell cmdlets that produce the same type of backup set.  Understanding how the cmdlets differ starts with an analysis of the syntax and parameters for each one.  Let’s start by looking at the syntax for each of the cmdlets in full.

First, the Backup-SPFarm cmdlet.

Backup-SPFarm -BackupMethod <String> -Directory <String> [-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>] [-BackupThreads <Int32>] [-ConfigurationOnly <SwitchParameter>] [-Confirm [<SwitchParameter>]] [-Force <SwitchParameter>] [-Item <String>] [-Percentage <Int32>] [-WhatIf [<SwitchParameter>]] [<CommonParameters>]

Next, the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet.

Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase -Directory <String> [-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>] [-DatabaseCredentials <PSCredential>] [-DatabaseName <String>] [-DatabaseServer <String>] [-Item <String>] [<CommonParameters>]

Each of the cmdlets requires that you specify where the backup set should be created using the –Directory switch, and each cmdlet permits the selection of either the entire configuration hierarchy (the default) or specific subset of it through the –Item switch.

There’s quite a bit of noise in the full syntax for each cmdlet, particularly for Backup-SPFarm, so let’s distill things down a bit and look at each cmdlet in turn.

Backup-SPFarm

For the purposes of this discussion, the following represents the core syntactical elements of interest for configuration-only backup using the Backup-SPFarm cmdlet:

Backup-SPFarm [-ConfigurationOnly <SwitchParameter>]

All you need to do is specify the –ConfigurationOnly switch and you’re ready to go.  There’s really not much more to it than that.

Under the hood, this method of configuration-only backup creation is the same as running a configuration-only backup operation from within SharePoint Central Administration.  Backup-SPFarm assumes that you’ve got a live SharePoint farm, that it’s operating properly, and that you want to capture its configuration with the backup process.

Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase

So then, what’s the deal with Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase?

Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase [-DatabaseCredentials <PSCredential>] [-DatabaseName <String>] [-DatabaseServer <String>]

Clearly there’s something more going on with this cmdlet.  Looking at the parameters, it should be clear that the –DatabaseName and –DatabaseServer switches allow you to specify an alternate configuration database and server location as the target of the configuration-only backup operation you intend to perform.  If you happen to require SQL Server authentication to access the configuration database, then you can specify connection credentials with the –DatabaseCredentials switch.

In most cases where I’ve seen the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet described, these extra database-centric parameters have been passed-off as giving you the ability to backup configuration databases that reside in other (non-local) farms.  I’ve also seen it suggested that it would be possible to centralize configuration-only backups for multiple farms using this cmdlet.  While I think that those are certainly possibilities, I think that they fail to consider the bigger picture and backup/restore as an end-to-end process.

It’s All About Recovery

First, let me close the case on the Backup-SPFarm cmdlet.  Under normal circumstances, Backup-SPFarm is how you should be running a configuration-only backup if you need it.  The TechNet documentation spells this out in the description for both the Backup-SPFarm and Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlets.  Although Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase can be used to backup the configuration database of an operational farm, that’s not really its intended use (as I see it, anyway).

To understand the real value of the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet, you need to think past the execution of backups and consider the process of recovery.  In many of the organizations I’ve consulted for, the SharePoint environments were not protected using the native backup and restore capabilities that come with the platform.  Quite a few of these mid-size and enterprise organizations handled SharePoint farm protection using SQL Server backups, third-party tools, or a combination of the two.  Usability guidelines for the native backup capabilities were sometimes the reason for avoiding SharePoint’s built-in tools; in other cases, backups were controlled and managed by a different internal group that had already standardized on their own (non-SharePoint) backup tool or product.

In each of the aforementioned backup scenarios, the primary goal was protection of SharePoint’s SQL Server databases.  Content databases were utterly critical targets in these backup scenarios since nothing would bring them back if they were lost.  Whether or not other databases were backed up depended on the recovery strategy.  In the event of catastrophic farm failure, some administrators try to recover all parts of the farm; others prefer to rebuild the farm from scratch and bolt the content databases back in.  Many different approaches to the recovery challenge exist, and each has benefits and disadvantages.

Regardless of the restore approach taken for database backups, the SharePoint farm configuration database has generally been regarded as relatively useless.  After all, farm configuration databases are not normally portable.  When you rebuild a SharePoint farm, you end up with a new farm configuration database.  In SharePoint 2007, it was generally accepted that the farm configuration database was “throwaway;” backing it up wasn’t even necessary unless you had some very specific (and oftentimes proprietary) use case for it.

The Restore Process: SharePoint 2010-Style

With SharePoint 2010, the question of “should I backup the farm configuration database?” should generally be answered with a “yes.”  The same restrictions regarding the use of a farm configuration database backup still apply from SharePoint 2007 (i.e., you can’t simply “drop it into” a live SharePoint farm and go), but we now have configuration-only backup and restore with SharePoint 2010.

If you think about the database or file-based approach to backup, and you consider the process of restoring or rebuilding a SharePoint farm, then you’ll probably understand where the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet actually fits in.  The cmdlet is less about backup than it is about restore.

If you’re trying to put a farm back together after a catastrophic failure using database backups, then you’re probably going to follow a series of steps that starts out like this:

1. Rebuild your servers with their operating systems
2. Install SharePoint
3. Create a new SharePoint farm (with a new farm configuration database)
4. Restore your old farm’s databases

Once you’ve completed step #3, you actually have a working SharePoint farm – it just doesn’t look anything like the farm you’re trying to rebuild/restore yet.  You’ll probably still need to re-provision services and service applications, re-establish all of your farm’s configuration settings, etc.

Assuming you were capturing your farm configuration database as part of the backup cycle for your old farm, then step #4 is where the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase can be brought in to work its magic.  The Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase does actually require a functional farm to properly operate (even against another configuration database), but it can be used to execute a configuration-only backup against the old (pre-catastrophe) farm configuration database that was restored into SQL Server from backup in step #4.  The configuration-only backup set that is generated through the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase action can then be brought into the rebuilt farm almost immediately using the Restore-SPFarm cmdlet with the –ConfigurationOnly switch engaged.

The Data Protection Manager 2010 Connection

I’ll be clear and state that I don’t have hard evidence to say with certainty that my take on the Backup-SPFarm and Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase division of responsibilities is what Microsoft envisioned when they created them, but I am relatively confident based on what I’ve seen and know – especially when I factor-in Microsoft’s data protection product offerings and enterprise backup/restore strategy.

In particular, I’m talking about Microsoft’s own System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) product line.  The DPM product line conducts its backup and restore operations through the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) that is built into the Windows operating system.  VSS is a very powerful mechanism for the creation of consistent, point-in-time file snapshots … but at its core, VSS is file-based.

Even though DPM advertises some integration capabilities with SharePoint, it isn’t “aware” of SharePoint beyond its interface with the SharePoint Foundation Volume Shadow Copy Service Writer (SPF VSS Writer) and the SPF VSS Writer’s subordinate search index writer.  For all practical purposes, this means that DPM can’t really treat SharePoint backups as much more than file-based backups.  DPM’s approach to SharePoint farm protection is to backup SQL Server databases (including the configuration database) and the farm’s search index partitions.  It doesn’t understand farm metadata, IIS configuration settings, the SharePoint Root (aka “14 hive”), etc.  These additional targets can be backed-up using DPM’s file system protection capabilities, but they aren’t associated in any way with other SharePoint backups.

So even though DPM can protect a SharePoint farm configuration database, it can’t do anything more with it than you or I can do with a standard SQL Server database restore.  If you realize that DPM only works with files and doesn’t have much in the way of application-level intelligence, this chart that compares its capabilities against other SharePoint protection mechanisms makes quite a bit of sense.  It should also make it clear why even Microsoft’s products have a need for the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet.

Closing Thoughts

Don’t interpret what I’m saying as DPM 2010-bashing.  On the contrary, I’ve been using DPM since it’s 2007 release in my home network environment, and I think it’s a pretty good product.  I only brought up DPM to make my point about the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet – not to beat-up the product.

Since both SQL Server backups and DPM are capable of restoring a SharePoint configuration database – but not much more than that – the Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet fills a very important role in the SharePoint restore process.  It’s the “bridge” from many backup/restore solutions to SharePoint itself for purposes of getting back configuration data.

The general rule of thumb that I give people is this: use Backup-SPFarm if you’re trying to extract configuration data from a live farm, and use Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase if you’re trying to extract configuration data from a restored (and otherwise unassociated) configuration database.

Additional Resources and References

1. Blog Post: Configuration-Only Backup and Restore in SharePoint 2010
2. TechNet: Backup-SPFarm PowerShell cmdlet
3. TechNet: Backup-SPConfiguration PowerShell cmdlet
4. TechNet: Backup and recovery overview (SharePoint Server 2010)
5. TechNet: Restore-SPFarm PowerShell cmdlet
6. Product: Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
7. MSDN: SharePoint Foundation VSS Writer
8. TechNet: Plan for backup and recovery (SharePoint Server 2010)

Since my first copy of our new book actually arrived in the mail yesterday (from Amazon.com), I think I can officially announce that the SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide is available!  Here’s a picture of it – straight out of the box:

John Ferringer and I apparently didn’t learn our lesson the first time around.  When Cengage approached us about writing another version of the book, we said “yes.”  We were either in denial or had repressed the memories associated with writing the first book.  There were definitely some difficulties and challenges (like trying to learn the relevant pieces of the SharePoint 2010 platform while also writing about them), but we managed to pull it off again.

Of course, we couldn’t have done this without the technical prowess and patience of JD Wade.  JD was our technical editor, and he had a knack for questioning any assumption or statement that wasn’t clearly backed by fact.  He did a fantastic job – I couldn’t have been happier.  The book’s accuracy and quality are a direct result of his contributions.

What’s Inside?

Interested in what we included?  Here’s the table of contents by chapter:

1. SharePoint Disaster Recovery Planning and Key Concepts
2. SharePoint Disaster Recovery Design and Implementation
3. SharePoint Disaster Recovery Testing and Maintenance
4. SharePoint Disaster Recovery Best Practices
5. Windows Server 2008 Backup and Restore
6. Windows Server 2008 High Availability
7. SQL Server 2008 Backup and Restore
8. SQL Server 2008 High Availability
9. SharePoint 2010 Central Administration Backup and Restore
10. SharePoint 2010 Command Line Backup and Restore: PowerShell
11. SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Development
12. SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery for End Users
13. Conclusion

As you can see, we’ve included a little something for just about everyone who might work with SharePoint or interface with it for disaster recovery purposes.  SharePoint administrators will probably benefit the most from the book, but there are definitely sections that are of use to SharePoint developers, DR planners, and others who are interested in SharePoint from a business continuity perspective.

If you happen to pick up a copy of the book, please share your feedback with us – good, bad, ugly, or anything else you feel like sending our way!  We poured a lot of time and effort into this book in an attempt to “do our part” for the community, and your thoughts and feedback mean everything to us.

Thanks, and enjoy!

Additional Resources and References

1. Book: SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide
2. Blog: John Ferringer’s MyCentralAdmin
3. Blog: JD Wade’s Wading Through

Since our SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide is written, starched, pressed, and ready to wear, I thought it was time to get back to some of the blogging I promised to start doing again once the book was finished.  I guess that if I didn’t have something to write, I simply wouldn’t know what to do with myself.  <insert smirk here>

Motivation For This Post

SharePoint 2010’s configuration-only backup and restore capabilities are on a long list of topics I’ve been meaning to blog about, but in all honesty it wasn’t at the top of that list.  I’ve been seeing the topic start to get some real attention in a number of forums, though, from folks like Todd Klindt (in one of his recent netcasts) and Benjamin Athawes (in his blog and in the helpful replies he’s been providing out in Microsoft’s TechNet forums).

It seems that many folks in the SharePoint community have heard about configuration-only backup and restore, and I think there’s an awful lot of hope that it will help with some of the problems we faced with SharePoint 2007.  By the time you finish reading this post, I hope to impart a solid understanding of what configuration-only backup and restore will – and won’t – do for you.

The Elephant In The Room

Before I go any further, let me address the question that I suspect the overwhelming majority of you probably want an answer to:

Will configuration-only backup and restore let me clone my SharePoint 2010 farm?

The quick answer: no.  At the risk of being a bit flippant, I’ll include a slightly longer answer: heck no – not even close.

When configuration-only backup and restore was introduced to the world, it promised so much.  I remember hearing the discussion of “farm templates” and of “cloning configuration.”  I remember sitting through Bill Baer’s business continuity management (BCM) session at the SharePoint Conference in 2009 and thinking about all the things I was going to do with the new capability.

In light of what I now know about configuration-only backup and restore, I went back to the recorded SPC sessions (including SPC311 – Bill’s BCM session) to make sure I wasn’t hearing things.  I wasn’t.  My guess is that the initial vision for configuration-only backup and restore had to get scaled-back prior to the product becoming generally available.  Maybe the team ran out of time, maybe they hit technical hurdles, or perhaps it was a combination of the two.  Regardless, the capability in its current form isn’t quite what I had hoped it would be.

Enough with the hand-waving.  Let’s dive in.

High-Level: What Is Configuration-Only Backup and Restore?

For a brief primer on configuration-only backup and restore, check out the “Backup and recovery overview (SharePoint 2010)” article on TechNet.  If you don’t want to take the time to read the article, though, I’ll sum it up for you: a configuration-only backup and restore allows you to extract portable configuration settings from a SharePoint 2010 farm configuration database and apply those settings to a different farm.  The promise, as indicated earlier, is that you could effectively “clone” the configuration of a farm.  The configuration template that would be generated from this process could then be applied to other farms to create copies of the original farm’s settings and configuration.  This would be extremely beneficial when duplicating environments (e.g., creating staging and testing environments that match a production environment), building development and demo virtual machines (VMs), and more.

Those of you who have worked with SharePoint 2007 recognize the leap forward that this represents.  Anyone who has spent any amount of time exploring SharePoint backup and recovery knows that farm configuration databases are tied to their SharePoint environments.  Microsoft doesn’t support transplanting one farm’s configuration database into another farm; most of the time, it simply wouldn’t work.  Even if you could get it to work through some extremely impressive techno-jujitsu, you’d be in a horribly unsupported state as far as Microsoft support was concerned.

What Does It Look Like?

Configuration-only backup and restore in SharePoint 2010 is an extension to the existing catastrophic backup and restore capabilities located in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration and Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup namespaces.  The processes and mechanisms that allow you to create farm-level backups from Central Administration (through “Farm Backup and Restore”), PowerShell (via Backup-SPFarm), and STSADM.exe (via STSADM –o backup in catastrophic mode) are the same ones that are employed in configuration-only backups.

In fact, the backup sets that are generated from a configuration-only backup are basically the same, structurally speaking, as those that are generated from a “normal” (content + configuration) catastrophic backup.  One easy way to determine the nature of a backup, though, is to crack open the backup location’s table of contents file (spbrtoc.xml) and examine the value within the <SPConfigurationOnly /> element for a given backup or restore run (represented by a <SPHistoryObject /> element).

For example, this particular backup run was clearly a configuration-only backup because its <SPConfigurationOnly /> element contains a value of True. 

<SPHistoryObject> 
    <SPId>571d2ad2-f485-46de-918e-653e8868c8bc</SPId> 
    <SPRequestedBy>SPDC\s0ladmin</SPRequestedBy> 
    <SPBackupMethod>Full</SPBackupMethod> 
    <SPRestoreMethod>None</SPRestoreMethod> 
    <SPStartTime>08/18/2010 16:15:12</SPStartTime> 
    <SPFinishTime>08/18/2010 16:15:37</SPFinishTime> 
    <SPIsBackup>True</SPIsBackup> 
    <SPConfigurationOnly>True</SPConfigurationOnly> 
    <SPBackupDirectory>e:\temp\spbr0001\</SPBackupDirectory> 
    <SPDirectoryName>spbr0001</SPDirectoryName> 
    <SPDirectoryNumber>1</SPDirectoryNumber> 
    <SPTopComponent>Farm</SPTopComponent> 
    <SPTopComponentId>7850df11-60ef-460c-ab4a-9b7b9f2f735f</SPTopComponentId> 
    <SPWarningCount>0</SPWarningCount> 
    <SPErrorCount>0</SPErrorCount> 
</SPHistoryObject>

If you browse the folder containing the backup set that is generated from a configuration-only backup, you’ll see the expected array of sequentially numbered hexadecimal .bak files, as well as a log file (spbackup.log) and backup component hierarchy file (spbackup.xml).

The .bak files themselves contain XML-serialized representations of various farm objects that were captured during the configuration backup process:

<object type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.DiagnosticsService, Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c">
  <fld type="System.Collections.Hashtable, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" name="m_Throttles" />
  <fld name="m_Versions" type="null" />
  <fld name="m_UpgradeContext" type="null" />
  <fld type="System.Collections.Hashtable, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" name="m_UpgradedPersistedFields" />
  <fld name="m_Properties" type="null" />
  <sFld type="String" name="m_LastUpdatedUser">SPDC\s0ladmin</sFld>
  <sFld type="String" name="m_LastUpdatedProcess">psconfigui (4228)</sFld>
  <sFld type="String" name="m_LastUpdatedMachine">SPDEV</sFld>
  <sFld type="DateTime" name="m_LastUpdatedTime">2010-04-25T17:38:27</sFld>
</object>

Again, this is all very similar to a standard catastrophic farm backup.  The one notable absence in the backup set that is produced during a configuration-only backup is that of SQL Server database backup files that begin (internally) with a telltale TAPE header.  The absence of these files is expected, though, since configuration-only backups operate on farm configuration settings and metadata – not the content and other data that is housed primarily in SQL Server databases.

“Wait,” you might be saying, “service applications typically have quite a bit of configuration data, and much of that data is housed in SQL Server databases.  Wouldn’t those databases be captured by the configuration-only backup process?”  Hold that question – I’ll be addressing it in a short bit.

A Quick Peek At What’s Going On Under The Hood

To better understand how configuration-only backup and restore works, it helps to dive below the backup set and into the SharePoint object model to see what’s actually happening.  If you’re not a developer, no worries – I’ll try to keep this simple.

The type that is the backbone of configuration-only backup and restore operations is the IBackupRestoreConfiguration interface.  Classes in the SharePoint object model can implement this interface (and supply a CanBackupRestoreAsConfiguration property value of true) if they wish to meet the bare minimum requirements for inclusion in configuration-only backup and restore operations.

If you’ve worked with catastrophic backup and restore in the SharePoint object model before, this interface name may seem a little familiar to you – even if it isn’t.  That’s because extending the native catastrophic backup and restore functionality of SharePoint to include new content classes is done through the similarly named IBackupRestore interface.  IBackupRestore came before IBackupRestoreConfiguration, and the latter is actually derived from the former.  The patterns of interaction between the runtime backup objects and objects that implement these two interfaces is very similar – as you might expect given their inheritance relationship.

So you might be wondering, “So what?  I don’t plan to build configuration-only backup and restore-capable components.  Why are you going through all of this.”  The answer to that question is relatively easy to answer: we can get a pretty clear understanding of what is actually included in configuration-only backup and restore operations by looking at the SharePoint classes that implement the IBackupRestoreConfiguration interface.

Hold onto the concept of examining types that implement IBackupRestoreConfiguration; we’ll be coming back to it in just a second.

What Does A Configuration-Only Backup Actually Capture? – Part 1

Let’s leave the SharePoint object model and come back up to ground level for a moment.

In plain English, configuration-only backup and restore is basically supposed to address the “I need to create a template of my farm” pain point we felt with SharePoint 2007.  Does it?  What gap is filled by the capability according to Microsoft?

If you read the TechNet article I linked to earlier, you’ll find just five types of settings (or configuration data items) that are actually listed as included in a configuration-only backup:

• Antivirus
• Information rights management (IRM)
• Outbound e-mail settings (only restored when performing an "overwrite").
• Customizations deployed as trusted solutions
• Diagnostic logging

I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t exactly line up too well with the list of things I’d want to replicate from Farm A to Farm B if I were actually trying to clone Farm A configuration settings.  Don’t get me wrong: several of the items listed are things I would want to bring across (especially the customizations in the farm solution store), but there are a whole host of additional things I’d want to see.

What Does A Configuration-Only Backup Actually Capture? – Part 2

The five bullet points I just supplied aren’t entirely well-defined, and they’re more than a little “light” in terms of farm configuration data.  Let’s define the list a bit more clearly by seeing which classes in the SharePoint object model actually implement the required IBackupRestoreConfiguration interface.

When I fire-up Reflector and analyze the types that use the IBackupRestoreConfiguration interface, I come up with the following classes (ignoring the SPBackupRestore type, since its ImplementsIBackupRestoreConfiguration method only checks to see whether or not other objects themselves actually implement the interface):

• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDiagnosticsServiceBase
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPResourceMeasure
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolution
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionCollection
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionLanguagePack
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUserCodeExecutionTier
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUserCodeLoadBalancerProvider
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUserCodeProvider
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUserCodeService
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService
• Microsoft.SharePoint.UserCode.SPSolutionValidator

Each of these classes is capable of participating in a configuration-only backup because it implements IBackupRestoreConfiguration.  The list is longer than the five bullets I mentioned earlier, but many of the classes cited can be grouped into common areas of functionality.  The SPSolution, SPSolutionCollection, and SPSolutionLanguagePack types are associated with trusted solutions (the farm solution store), for example, while the SPDiagnosticsServiceBase type is tied to trace log and event throttling management (i.e., diagnostic logging).  A simple one-to-one mapping between classes and settings areas (that you might find in Central Administration) doesn’t actually exist.

Identifying what is included in a configuration-only backup isn’t quite a quick and easy affair.

What Doesn’t A Configuration-Only Backup Capture?

Sometimes it’s simply easier to talk about what a thing isn’t rather than what it is.  As you’re probably coming to see, configuration-only backup and restore is one of those things.

For those who hoped that configuration-only backup and restore would deliver us to the promised land of SharePoint farm templates and full configuration replication, the first signs of trouble in paradise come by reading the implementation notes for the IBackupRestoreConfiguration interface.  In essence they state that you shouldn’t be implementing the interface to capture configuration settings unless the following three conditions are true for the settings in question:

1. The settings you’re trying to preserve are only configuration settings – not content like lists, documents, etc.
2. The settings you want to capture are scoped to the entire farm or the Content Publishing Web Service (i.e., they apply equally to all non-Central Admin Web applications and the site collections contained within them – not to just a subset)
3. The settings aren’t tied to server names or your specific SharePoint farm topology

That list starts “simple” and ends “rough.”  With those three bullets, we can instantly rule-out configuration data that is tied to individual Web applications, content databases, site collections, and everything else below them.  Configuration-only backup and restore won’t protect your per-Web application settings, either, including alternate access mappings (AAMs).

I’m making a special point of highlighting AAMs because configuration-only backup and restore was initially advertised as being capable of capturing these mappings.  Sure, you can view AAMs within Central Administration and may think that they’re maintained at the farm level, but they aren’t – they’re tied to specific Web applications.  AAMs for a Web application are represented (within the object model) as an instance of the SPAlternateUrlCollection class.  The SPAlternateUrlCollection isn’t on the list of IBackupRestoreConfiguration implementers provided earlier, nor are its parent types (most notably the SPWebApplication type through its AlternateUrls property).  Net effect: it isn’t included in configuration-only backup and restore operations.

Since cloning a SharePoint farm usually involves taking it from one environment to another, bullet #3 is a rather big sticking point, as well.  Configuration-only backup and restore won’t handle anything that includes a server name, IP address, or any other environmentally-dependent setting.  The reason is pretty simple – how would SharePoint know how to actually re-wire that stuff (in a new environment) on restore?

Ouch.

Okay, What About Service Applications?

The Service Application Framework is new to SharePoint 2010, and it represents a major step forward in correcting many of the performance, configuration, and scalability limits of MOSS 2007’s shared service provider (SSP) model.  If you’ve touched SharePoint 2010 in any form, chances are you’ve at least stumbled into service applications in some form.  Examples include the Managed Metadata Service, Business Data Connectivity (BCS) Services, and Search.

Although the Service Application Framework has been engineered to participate in normal (content+configuration) catastrophic backup and restore operations, it doesn’t do so through the standard IBackupRestore interface.  Developers of service application and related classes can adorn their classes with a couple of different attributes (IisWebServiceApplicationBackupBehaviorAttribute and IIsWebServiceApplicationProxyBackupBehaviorAttribute – not exactly “short and sweet” in the name department), and they get backup and restore integration as a freebie.  This is a big relief for developers, because properly implementing the IBackupRestore interface in their classes is anything but trivial.

There is a downside to the attribute-based backup and restore approach as its implemented, though: the Service Application Framework simply doesn’t participate in configuration-only backup and restore.  When you execute a configuration-only backup, you won’t capture any configuration data tied to search, BCS, managed metadata, web analytics, Excel services, or any of the other service applications.

Double ouch.

The Verdict On Configuration-Only Backup And Restore

I’ll start by apologizing if this post dashed your hopes.  Believe me when I say that I had very high hopes for configuration-only backup and restore, as well.  Cloning farms by hand is painful work; I’ve done it enough times to know that much.

Since configuration-only backup and restore doesn’t actually cover any configuration data tied to service applications and individual Web applications, cloning a farm in SharePoint 2010 is still going to be a largely manual affair.  Scripting can (and probably should) play a large role, and so will documentation.

There, I said it – the ugly “d” word.  Documentation.

Documentation continues to play a big role in capturing configuration data in SharePoint 2010, but that doesn’t mean you have to resort to taking notes or capturing screenshots en masse.

Microsoft has (indirectly) acknowledged that configuration-only backup and restore isn’t going to round up all of our desired configuration settings, and they’ve attempted to lend us a hand through some PowerShell scripting.  If you haven’t yet reviewed Microsoft’s farm documentation script on TechNet, I highly recommend that you check it out.  Saying that the script’s treatment of farm configuration data is “extensive” is kind of like saying that a tsunami is a “big wave” – it doesn’t do it justice.

I also want to be clear and say that despite the limitations I’ve described, I still think that configuration-only backup and restore is worth some serious investigation for anyone trying to do template creation, cloning, and disaster recovery work.  Given my focus on disaster recovery, for example, the ability to get a farm’s solution store backed-up in a form that can be restored easily at a later time is a huge benefit – one that would really ease the process of farm recovery in a true disaster scenario.

Additional Resources and References

1. Book: SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide
2. Netcast: Todd Klindt’s Netcast 54
3. Blog: Benjamin Athawes’ Tales from a SharePoint Farm
4. Blog: Bill Baer’s TechNet Blog
5. TechNet: Backup and recovery overview (SharePoint 2010)
6. API: IBackupRestoreConfiguration
7. API: IBackupRestore
8. Product: Red Gate’s Reflector
9. MSDN: What’s New: Service Application Framework
10. TechNet: Document Farm Configuration Settings (PowerShell Script)

Do you trust TechNet?  I generally do, as I figure the good folks at Microsoft are doing their best to disseminate reliable information to those of us working with their products.  As I recently learned, though, even the information that appears on TechNet needs some cross-checking once in a while.

Bear with me, as this post is equal parts narrative and data discussion.  If you don’t like stories and want to cut straight to the chase, though, simply scroll down to the section titled “The Conclusion” for the key takeaway.

Site Collection Backup Primer

For those who aren’t overly familiar with site collection backups, it’s probably worth spending a moment discussing them a bit before going any further.  Site collection backups are, after all, at the heart of this blog post.

What is a site collection backup?  It is basically what you would expect from its name: a backup of a specific SharePoint site collection.  These backups can be used to restore or overwrite a site collection if it becomes lost or corrupt, and they can also be used to copy site collections from one web application (or farm) to another.

Anytime you execute one of the following operations, you’re performing a site collection backup:

• from the command line: STSADM.exe –o backup –url <url> –filename <filename>
• through PowerShell in SharePoint 2010: Backup-SPSite <url> –Path <filepath>
• Using the “Perform a site collection backup” link in SharePoint 2010 Central Administration

When a site collection backup is executed, a single file with a .bak extension is generated that contains the entire contents of the site collection targeted.  This file can be freely copied and moved around as needed.  Aside from some recommendations regarding the maximum size of the site collection captured using this approach (15GB and under in SharePoint 2007, 85GB and under in SharePoint 2010), the backups themselves are really quite handy for both protection and site collection migration operations.

A Little Background

John Ferringer and I have been plugging away at the SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide for quite some time.  As you might imagine, the writing process involves a lot of research, hands-on experimentation, and fact-checking.  This is especially true for a book that’s being written about a platform (SharePoint 2010) that is basically brand new in the marketplace.

While researching backup-related changes for the book, I made a special mental note of the following change regarding site collection backups in SharePoint 2010:

The text that is circled in the image above (taken straight from a TechNet page titled Backup and recovery overview (SharePoint Server 2010)) says this:

Workflows are not included in site collection backups

This stuck with me when I read it, because I hadn’t recalled any such statement being made with regard to site collection backups in SharePoint 2007.  Since Microsoft made a special note of pointing out this limitation for SharePoint 2010, though, I figured it was important to keep in mind.  Knowing that workflows had changed from 2007 to 2010, I reasoned that the new limitation was probably due to some internal workflow plumbing alterations that adversely affected the backup process.

The Setup

A couple of weeks back, I was presenting at SharePoint Saturday Ozarks alongside an awesome array of other folks (including Joel Oleson) from the SharePoint community.  Due to a speaker no-show in an early afternoon slot, Mark Rackley (the event’s one-man force-of-nature organizer) decided to hold an “ask the experts” panel where attendees could pitch questions at those of us who were willing to share what we knew.

A number of good questions came our way, and we all did our best to supply our experiences and usable advice.  Though I don’t recall the specific question that was asked in one particular case, I do remember advising someone to perform a site collection backup before attempting to do whatever it was they wanted to do.  After sharing that advice, though, things got a little sketchy.  The following captures the essence of the exchange that took place between Joel and me:

Me: <to the attendee> Site collection backups don’t capture everything in SharePoint 2010, though, so be careful.

Joel: No, site collection backups are full-fidelity.

Me: TechNet specifically indicates that workflows aren’t covered in site collection backups with SharePoint 2010.

Joel: No, the backups are still full fidelity.

Me: <blank stare>

The discussion topic and associated questions for the panel quickly changed, but my brain was still stripping a few gears trying to reconcile what I’d read on TechNet with what Joel was saying.

After the session, I forwarded the TechNet link I had quoted to Joel and asked if he happened to have an “inside track” or perhaps some information I didn’t have access to.  We talked about the issue for a while at the hotel a little later on, but the only thing that we could really conclude was that more research was needed to see if site collection backups had in fact changed with SharePoint 2010.  Before taking off that weekend, we decided to stay in contact and work together to get some answers.

Under The Hood

To understand why this issue bothered me so much, remember that I’m basically in the middle of co-authoring a book on the topic of disaster recovery – a topic that is intimately linked to backup and restore operations.  The last thing I would ever want to do is write a book that contains ambiguous or (worse) flat-out wrong information about the book’s central topic.

To get to the heart of the matter, I decided to start where most developers would: with the SharePoint object model.  In both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010, the object model types that are used to backup and export content typically fall into one of two general categories:

• Catastrophic Backup and Restore API.  These types are located in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup namespace, and they provide SharePoint’s full-fidelity backup and restore functions.  Backup and restore operations take place on content components such as content databases, service applications, and the entire SharePoint farm.  Catastrophic backup and restore operations are full-fidelity, meaning that no data is lost or selectively ignored during a backup and subsequent restore.  By default, catastrophic backup and restore operation don’t get any more granular than a content database.  If you want to protect something within a content database, such as a site collection, sub-site, or list, you have to backup the entire content database containing the target object(s).
• Content Deployment API.  The member types of this API (also known internally at Microsoft as the PRIME API) reside within the Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment namespace and are used for granular content export and import operations.  The exports that are created by the types in this namespace target objects from the site collection level all the way down to the field level – typically webs, lists, list items, etc.  Content Deployment exports are not full-fidelity and are commonly used for moving content around more than they are for actual backup and restore operations.

So, where does this leave site collection backups?  In truth, site collection backups don’t fit into either of these categories.  They are a somewhat unusual case, both in SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

Whether a site collection backup is initiated through STSADM, PowerShell, or Central Administration, a single method is called on the SPSiteCollection type which resides in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration namespace.  This is basically the signature of the method:

SPSiteCollection.Backup(string strSiteUrl, string strFilename, bool bOverwrite)

To carry out a site collection backup, all that is needed is the URL of the site collection, the filename that will be used for the resultant backup file, and a TRUE or FALSE to indicate whether an overwrite should occur if the selected file already exists.

If you were to pop open Reflector and drill into the Backup method on the SPSiteCollection type, you wouldn’t get very far before running into a wall at the SPRequest type.  SPRequest is a managed wrapper around the take-off point for a whole host of external calls, and the execution of the Backup method is actually handled in unmanaged legacy code.  Examining the internals of what actually takes place during a site collection backup (or restore, for that matter) simply isn’t possible with Reflector.

Since the internals of the Backup method weren’t available for reflective analysis, I was forced to drop back and punt in order to determine how site collection backups and workflow interacted within SharePoint 2010.

Testing Factors

I knew that I was going to have to execute backup and restore tests at some point; I was just hoping that I would be a bit more informed (through object model inspection) about where I needed to focus my efforts.  Without any visibility into the internals of the site collection backup process, though, I didn’t really have much to start with.

Going into the testing process, I knew that I wasn’t going to have enough time to perform exhaustive testing for every scenario, execution path, variable, and edge-case that could be relevant to the backup and restore processes.  I had to develop a testing strategy that would hit the likely problem areas as quickly (and with as few runs) as possible.

After some thought, I decided that these points were important facets to consider and account for while testing:

• Workflow Types.  Testing the most common workflow types was important.  I knew that I would need to test at least one out of the box (OOTB) workflow type.  I also decided that I needed to test at least one instance of each type of workflow that could be created through SharePoint Designer (SPD) 2010; that meant testing a list-bound workflow, a site collection workflow, and a reusable workflow.  I decided that custom code workflows, such as those that might be created through Visual Studio, were outside the scope of my testing.
• Workflow Data.  In order to test the impact of backup and restore operations on a workflow, I obviously had to ensure that one or more workflows were in-place within the site collection targeted for backup.  Having a workflow attached to a list would obviously test the static data portions of the workflow, but there was other workflow-related data that had to be considered.  In particular, I decided that the testing of both workflow history information and in-process workflow state were important.  More on the workflow state in a bit …
• Backup and Restore Isolation.  While testing, it would be important to ensure that backup operations and restore operations impacted one another (or rather, had the potential to impact one another) as little as possible.  Though backups and restores occurred within the same virtual farm, I isolated them to the extent that I could.  Backups were performed in one web application, and restores were performed in a separate web application.  I even placed each web application in its own (IIS) application pool – just to be sure.  I also established a single VM snapshot starting point; after each backup and restore test, I rolled back to the snapshot point to ensure that nothing remained in the farm (or VM, for that matter) that was tied to the previous round of testing.

Testing Procedure

I created a single Publishing Portal, bolted a couple of sub-sites and Document Libraries into it, and used it as the target for my site collection backup operations.  The Document Library that I used for workflow testing varied between tests; it was not held constant and did change according to the needs of each specific test.

I ran four different workflow test scenarios.  My OOTB workflow scenario involved testing the page approval workflow for publishing pages.  My other three SPD workflow tests (list-bound, site collection, and reusable workflow) all involved the same basic set of workflow steps:

1. Wait five minutes
2. Create a To Do item (which had to be completed to move on)
3. Wait five more minutes
4. Add a comment to the workflow target

In both the OOTB workflow and SPD workflow scenarios, I wanted to perform backups while workflows were basically “in flight” to see how workflow state would or wouldn’t be impacted by the backup and restore processes.  For the publishing approval workflow, this meant taking a site collection backup while at least one page was pending approval.  For the SPD workflows, it meant capturing a backup while at least one workflow instance was in a five minute wait period and another was waiting on the completion of the To Do item.

Prior to executing a backup in each test case, I ran a couple of workflow instances from start to finish.  This ensured that I had some workflow history information to capture and restore.

Once site collection backups were captured in each test case, I restored them into the empty web application.  I then opened the restored site collection to determine what did and didn’t get transcribed through the backup and restore process.

Results Of Testing

In each workflow case (OOTB and all three SPD workflows), all workflow information that I could poke and prod appeared to survive the backup and restore process without issue.  Workflow definition data was preserved, and workflow history came over intact.  Even more impressive, though, was the fact that in-process workflow state was preserved.  SPD workflow steps that were in the middle of a wait period when a backup was taken completed their wait period after restore and moved on.  To Do items that were waiting for user intervention continued to wait and then proceeded to the next step when they were marked as completed in the restored site collection.

In addition, new instances of each workflow type could be created and started in both site collections following the backup and restore operations.  The backup and subsequent restore didn’t appear to have any effect on either the source or destination.

Though my testing wasn’t exhaustive, it did cast a doubt on the absolute nature of the statement made on TechNet regarding site collection backups failing to include workflows.

Joel’s Legwork

While I was conducting my research and testing, Joel was leveraging his network of contacts and asking folks at Microsoft for the real story behind site collection backups and workflow.  He made a little progress with each person he spoke to, and in the end, he managed to get someone to go on the record.

The Conclusion

The official word from Microsoft is that the TechNet note indicating that site collection backups don’t include workflows is a misprint.  In reality, the point that should have been conveyed through TechNet was that content exports (via the Content Deployment API) don’t include workflows – a point that is perfectly understandable considering that the Content Deployment API doesn’t export or import with full-fidelity.  Microsoft indicated that they’ll be correcting the error, and TechNet may have been corrected by the time you read this.

My takeaway on this: if something on TechNet (or anywhere else on the web) doesn’t quite add up, it never hurts to test and seek additional information from others in the community who are knowledgeable on the subject matter.  In this case, it made a huge difference.

Additional Resources and References

1. Blog: John Ferringer
2. Book: SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide
3. TechNet: Backup and recovery overview (SharePoint Server 2010)
4. Event: SharePoint Saturday Ozarks
5. Blog: Joel Oleson
6. Blog: Mark Rackley
7. Tools: Reflector