Over the last several months, I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d hoped to; in reality, I haven’t blogged at all. There are a couple of reasons for that: one of them was our recent house move (and the aftermath), and the other was a little more personal. Without going into too much detail: we were contending with a very serious health issue in our family, and that took top priority.
The good news is that the clouds are finally parting, and I’m heading into the close of 2011 on a much better note (and with more time) than I’ve spent the last several months. To get back into some blogging, I figured I’d wrap-up the last several months’ worth of activities that took place since SharePoint Saturday Columbus.
Secrets of SharePoint (SoS) Webcast
A lot of things started coming together towards the end of October, and the first of those was another webcast that I did for Idera titled “’Caching-In’ for SharePoint Performance.” The webcast covered each of SharePoint’s built-in caching mechanisms (object caching, BLOB caching, and page output caching) as well as the Office Web Applications’ cache. I provided a rundown on each mechanism, how it worked, how it could be leveraged, and some watch-outs that came with its use.
The webcast was basically a lightweight version (40 minutes or so) of the longer (75 minute) presentation I like to present at SharePoint Saturday events. It was something of a challenge to squeeze all of the regular session’s content into 40 minutes, and I had to cut some of the material I would have liked to have kept in … but the final result turned-out pretty well.
If you’re interested in seeing the webcast, you can watch it on-demand from the SoS webcast archive. I also posted the slides in the Resources section of this blog.
SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati
Many people from the local SharePoint community came out to support the event, and we had a number of folks from out of town come rolling in as well to help ensure that the event was a big success. I ended up delivering two sessions: my “’Caching-In’ for SharePoint Performance” session and my “SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery: New Capabilities, New Possibilities!”
I had a great time at the event, and I’m hoping I’ll be fortunate enough to participate again on the next go ‘round!
New Disaster Recovery WhitePaper
Okay, there’s actually no romance in it whatsoever (thank heavens for prospective readers – no one needs us doing that to them), but there is a solid chunk of coverage on SharePoint 2010’s new platform capabilities pertaining to disaster recovery. We also review some disaster recovery basics in the whitepaper, cover things that have changed since SharePoint 2007, and identify some new watch-out areas in SharePoint 2010 that could have an impact on your disaster recovery planning.
The whitepaper is pretty substantial at 13 pages, but it’s a good read if you want to understand your platform-level disaster recovery options in SharePoint 2010. It’s a free download, so please grab a copy if it sounds interesting. John and I would certainly love to hear your feedback, as well.
SharePoint Backup Augmentation Cmdlets (SharePointBAC)
Since I’d been big on promises and short on delivery in helping these administrators, I finally started on a project to address some of the backup and restore gaps I see in the SharePoint platform. The evolving and still-under-development result is my SharePoint Backup Augmentation Cmdlets (SharePointBAC) project that is available on CodePlex.
With the PowerShell cmdlets that I’m developing for SharePoint 2010, I’m trying to introduce some new capabilities that SharePoint administrators need in order to make backup scripting with the OOTB tools a simpler and more straightforward experience. For example, one big gap that exists with the OOTB tools is that there is no way to groom a backup set. Each backup you create using Backup-SPFarm, for instance, adds to the backups that existed before it. There’s no way to groom (or remove) older backups you no longer want to keep, so disk consumption grows unless manual steps are taken to do something about it. That’s where my cmdlets come in. With Remove-SPBackupCatalog, for example, you could trim backups to retain only a certain number of them; you could also trim backups to ensure that they consume no more disk space (e.g., 100GB) than you’d like.
The CodePlex project is in alpha form right now (it’s brand spankin’ new), and it’s far from complete. I’ve already gotten some great suggestions for what I could do to continue development, though. When I combine those ideas with the ones I already had, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to shape the project into something truly useful for SharePoint administrators.
If you or someone you know is a SharePoint administrator using the OOTB tools for backup scripting, please check out the project. I’d really love to hear from you!
SharePoint Saturday Denver
On the first day of the event, I delivered a brand new session that I put together (in Prezi format) titled The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery. Here’s the amended abstract (and I’ll explain why it’s amended in a second) for the session:
“Are my nightly SQL Server backups good enough?” “Do I need an off-site disaster recovery facility?” “How do I even start the process of disaster recovery planning?” These are just a few of the more common questions that arise when the topic of SharePoint disaster recovery comes up. As with most things SharePoint, the real answer to each question is oftentimes “it depends.” In this business and process-centric session, we will be taking a look at the topic of SharePoint disaster recovery from multiple perspectives: business continuity planner, technical architect, platform owner, and others. Critical concepts and terms will be explained and defined, and an effective process for analyzing and formulating a disaster recovery plan will be discussed. We’ll also highlight some common mistakes that take place when working to build a disaster recovery strategy and how you can avoid them. By the end of this session, you will be armed with the knowledge needed to plan or review a disaster recovery strategy for your SharePoint environment.
The reason I amended the abstract is because the previous abstract for the session didn’t do enough to call out the fact that the presentation is primarily business-centric rather than technically focused. Many of the folks who initially came to the session were SharePoint IT pros and administrators looking for information on backup/restore, mirroring, configuration, etc. Although I cover those items at a high level in this new talk, they’re only a small part of what I discuss during the session.
On Saturday, I delivered my “’Caching-In’ for SharePoint Performance” talk during the first slot of the day. I really enjoy delivering the session; it’s probably my favorite one. I had a solid turn-out, and I had some good discussions with folks both during and after the presentation.
As I mentioned, this year’s event was a two day event. That’s a little unusual, but multi-day SharePoint Saturday events appear to be getting some traction in the community – starting with SharePoint Saturday The Conference a few months back. Some folks in the community don’t care much for this style of event, probably because there’s some nominal cost that participants typically bear for the extra day of sessions. I expect that we’ll probably continue to see more hybrid events, though, because I think they meet an unaddressed need that falls somewhere between “give up my Saturday for free training” and “pay a lot of money for a multi-day weekday conference.” Only time will tell, though.
On the Horizon
Event though 2011 isn’t over yet, I’m slowing down on some of my activities save for SharePointBAC (my new extracurricular pastime). 2012 is already looking like it’s going to be a big year for SharePoint community activities. In January I’ll be heading down to Texas for SharePoint Saturday Austin, and in February I’ll be heading to San Francisco for SPTechCon. I’ll certainly cover those activities (and others) as we approach 2012.
Additional Reading and Resources
- Event: SharePoint Saturday Columbus
- Company: Idera
- Webcast: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
- Webcast Slides: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
- Location: My blog’s Resources section
- Event: SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati
- Blog: Stacy Deere and Stephanie Donahue’s “Not Just SharePoint”
- SPS Cincinnati Slides: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
- SPS Cincinnati Slides: SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery: New Capabilities, New Possibilities!
- Blog: John Ferringer’s “My Central Admin”
- Whitepaper: New Features in SharePoint 2010: A Disaster Recovery Love Story
- CodePlex: SharePoint Backup Augmentation Cmdlets (SharePointBAC)
- Event: SharePoint Saturday Denver
- Tool: Prezi
- SPS Denver Slides: The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery
- SPS Denver Slides: “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
- Event: SharePoint Saturday The Conference
- Event: SharePoint Saturday Austin
- Event: SPTechCon 2012 San Francisco
Nice post!
zee
http://walisystems.com