Here are the “Best Of” the questions and answers from today’s TechNet Webcast: “Planning for and Deploying Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 1 of 2)”.
Thanks to all who attended!
-Kevin
PS – Here is my resource page for this webcast
PPS – Here is the link to register for Part 2
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“Will this cover a server farm install or a single installation?”
We actually did a build of a new installation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a single server, but it was as the first server in a server farm installation.
“We’d like to deploy an internal SharePoint server along with a external unlimited access server accessible by our customers and partners. 1.) What are some considerations we need to take into account? 2.) Can we seamlessly publish content to the external server concurrently using ISA 2006 link translation?”
1. Judging from your second question, I think you already have a handle on some of the main considerations – those being security and external vs. internal access and namespaces. Also, depending on how you plan on setting up the external access, you‘ll want to be sure you have the proper licensing model that will support it.
2. Absolutely. ISA can do the link translation for you. But there is also that same capability built-in to Office SharePoint Server 2007. Make sure you attend (or view) part 2 of this webcast, where I demonstrate how to configure that support.
“When will MOSS 2007 become available? Also, can the blogs and wikis be easily tied to user’s AD groups?”
Check out the “How to Buy” page. Also, you can download a trial of MOSS 2007.
And as for your second question – I’m not sure what kind of a tie you’re looking for. But users in MOSS 2007 are associated with their AD account, and security group memberships are used to secure or allow access to resources in MOSS.
“Is there any restrictions for installing MOSS 2007 on an IIS server that has Frontpage Server Extensions enabled?”
I don’t think so, but I’ve sent the question to some very knowledgeable people. I’ll put an update here when I get it.
“Will scenario 2 work if the goal is to start small, but to be able to expand environment easily as this service takes off?”
(Scenario 2 is the small farm scenario)
Yes. The biggest benefit to starting out with a small one-server farm as opposed to the “basic” (one server, and we’ll put SQL Express in for you) install is that you have the ability to scale. Each of those scenarios can be built one after the other as needed, to scale up and/or out.
“Can you use Virtual Server 2005 and Virtual PC 2007 in conjunction to create scenario 2 & 3 for testing?”
Absolutely. It’s what I intend to do for my own server farm. In fact, my personal user-base is so small that I’ll probably get away with running it as virtual servers all on one box, next to my virtual DC and two virtual Exchange 2007 servers.
“Can you combine a search server role with Excel services?”
Yes. Those roles can run from the same machine.
Now… if I misunderstood your question, and if what you’re really asking is, “Can I search an Excel Spreadsheet that is being served up by Excel Services?”, then the answer is the same. Yes. A file that is available through those services is also saved to a document library, and can also be crawled, indexed, and made available to those who have rights to get to it.
“Is there a way to restore individual documents, if they get deleted, or does the entire DB need to be restored?”
Ah.. I’m sorry I missed this question when you asked it, because I forgot to show you the beauty of the new Recycle Bin. (I’ll be discussing it in greater detail in Part 2.) At its simplest, the recycle bin in WSS and MOSS acts just like the bin you have on your desktop. You can recover items you delete yourself. And where it differs is that it also adds an additional layer of protection – kind of a recycle bin of deleted docs – so that even if it leaves your own recycle bin, it may be safe for a certain time period before it’s permanently deleted.
Yeah.. we’ve done a lot to address that problem of restoring what was accidentally or incorrectly deleted.
“Sharepoint URL’s are notoriously long and cumbersome. What is the recommendation for aliasing sites? Is there a way to do it through sharepoint or does each site need to have it’s own IP and then use DNS for the aliasing?”
I’m not sure the solution is any better in WSS v3 or MOSS 2007. You have to target web applications in some unique way – either by name or by port used. SharePoint does the configuration for you – basically setting up the name and port information that is used by IIS.
“I noticed Clustered SQL Servers in the diagrams, Is Database mirroring supported? Is the auto failover function supported?”
DB Mirroring is indeed supported, but only automatic failover for the content databases. Other databases (Config DB, Search DB, SSP content or SSP Search) are not going to failover automatically. However, you can manually fail them over by using the STSADM “renameserver” command to point the services to the formerly-secondary-now-primary mirror server.
“Kevin, could you please tell us what the recommended audiences for each deployment topologies (small,medium, large farm..) are ? I mean what is the maximum of users ?”
As I said in the webcast, this is one of those “it depends” questions. I don’t have any firm figures on how many users can be supported by which scenario.
“Do you have to complete all the tasks on the Central Administration front page before adding content sites?”
No, you don’t. As I showed in the demo, when my creation of the SSP went too long (for demo purposes), I was able to create the main web site even before the SSP was done.
“Any online learning or Virtual lab for MOSS and or WSS 3.0?”
The best place to go for learning is www.microsoft.com/learning. There is indeed an online “clinic” entitled “Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007”, which is found here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/elearning/course/3370.mspx
You can also try SharePoint Server 2007 in a virtual lab.
“What did you do about all the update the Windows Server 2003 R2 need to install when freshly deployed ? Did you installed them all ? And also the .NET 3.0 downloadable package ? Any recommendation?”
My recommendation is to always have all updates in place before you install a new piece of software such as WSS v3 or Office SharePoint Server 2007. And yes, the .Net Framework 3.0 is downloadable. You can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F5-25634C3BF043&displaylang=en
“Are the exchange public folders going away and being replaced by MOSS 2007?”
No, Exchange Public Folders are not going away in the foreseeable future. However, we’re still hoping that people will see that, even in the free Windows SharePoint Services v3.0, the benefits of content management on a SharePoint site far outweigh what you have in Exchange Public Folders.
“If a document library document has a footer enabled with the path and filename, what will the path be when saved in a document library?”
The path will be the web address of the document – so something like http://www.litwareinc.com/documents/mydocument.doc.
Is there a SharePoint architecture diagram showing how the various components are related and explaining the purpose of each?”
I couldn’t find one, but I’ll ask around.
“What is needed to get business data catalogs to work?”
At the heart of it you’ll be building/configuring an .xml file that is the definition of what the data looks like, how it’s accessed, and how it should be rendered for SharePoint to use it.
Here is a good starting point, with additional links to further information, on how to plan for using Business Data Catalogs: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/604431c9-de72-43b9-a3a9-3b0c3bf3444e1033.mspx?mfr=true
“If you have 1 web server and 1 database server, it the deployment still considered a ‘farm’?”
Yes. Although you don’t yet have any load-balanced web servers or database clustering, SharePoint still considers this a “farm”. (Like an Active Directory “Forest” is still a forest if it has only one “tree”, so too a SharePoint “farm” is still a farm even if it only has one.. um.. tractor web server.)
“What is the difference between SharePoint2007 with regard to earlier versions?”
Here’s an Excel spreadsheet that spells out what is new or different compared to SharePoint Portal Server 2003: http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=XT102011901033&CTT=5&Origin=HA101978031033
“Is there a migration path from Sharepoint Team Services to MOSS 2007?”
Check out the Migration Resources Here.
“Regarding web accessibility, has the MOSS 07 CMS improved for accessible content and CSS? Just curious since this was an issue in the past and if you could provide a webcast or online resource on the topic.”
“Does the Experience Improvement program transfer hostnames, ip addresses, domain names, other company-confidential information?”
No. There is no company confidential or identifiable information transferred by default. Check the disclaimer/description on the form where you sign up to see the details.
“Can we change the site template once define? For instance, I create a site using the team template and now I want to set it as a meeting site–is it possible??”
I don’t think so. You can modify the site design and layout after you create it, but I don’t think you can switch templates once it is initially built.
“What are your recommendation in terms of which roles are installed on the MOSS server when deploying in the context of domain network (Active Directory) ? Do you add the Active Directory role ?
You could put MOSS on the same server that is also a Domain Controller (AD Role), but it’s not recommended. As long as your server is a member of a domain, you can use the accounts and groups in the directory to set permissions on services and resources. The MOSS server just needs to be able to access a domain controller and global catalog server.
“How would you replicate site content to another MOSS server somewhere else?”
You can actually set up content rules and paths, with jobs to replicate content. I’ll be talking about that in part 2 of the webcast.
“Is it possible to allow authentication to two different subsites using two authentication providers? For instance, we want to use another active directory domain controller with isolated accounts on the same SharePoint server?”
I believe there are restrictions in terms of what SSO (Single-Sign-On) or pluggable authentication providers can do for you here. (another topic I’ll discuss in part 2) However, if you’re talking about two AD domains or forests with a trust relationship established, I wouldn’t think this should be a problem.
“Kevin, what will be giving away during launch events?”
Absolutely Full of I.T. 