2011 the year that was January 4, 2012
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This post is somewhat belated, but I guess it is better late than never! 2011 is a year I’ll never forget for many reasons. It all started on the 2nd January 2011 when I fell off my mountain bike doing the 42 Traverse, cracking several ribs in the process.
The next major event was the February 22nd Earthquake that caused major devastation to Christchurch’s CBD and extensively damaged my house. It was all hands to the pump moving our clients into new / temporary locations, recovering servers, restoring backups etc in what must be the largest combined disaster recovery in New Zealand history.
We all know bad things happen in threes and just as we started to regain a sense of normality the next major drama of 2011 happened. Datasouth, a company I had worked at for 6 years when into liquidation on the 31st March. At the time it was one of the most stressful thing that has ever happened in my life. I never though I would be the person who turned the lights out for the last time!
Every cloud has a silver lining and so this ‘big bang’ spawned an idea that rapidly became Canterbury Business Solutions, which I founded with Peter Cummins and David Carter. We’re now 8 months down the track and looking forward to an exciting year in 2012!
No end of year summary would be complete without mentioning the technologies that I have enjoyed the most this year, so here we go…
- Xero – this brilliant cloud solution, makes Accounting easy and dear I say it fun! If you are thinking of starting a business I recommend you have a look.
- iPhone – keeps me in touch with clients, Xero (see number 1), my bank and social contacts.
- SharePoint 2010 – I spent a lot of time working with SharePoint in 2011. The biggest limitation is your imagination with this excellent platform.
- LinkedIn – a great tool for business owners for all kinds of reasons. If you aren’t using it then you are missing out.
- Tech people – many people who have started IT companies of various types have given my free advice and helped in so many ways! Thank you.
So now, it’s 2012 and I’m looking forward to an interesting year ahead. It’s off to a good start spending time with friends and family.
SharePoint 2010 and Forefront TMG December 13, 2011
Posted by Steve in powershell, SharePoint.Tags: Forefront TMG, ISA Server, SharePoint
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Ever wanted to published SharePoint 2010 externally and found it difficult to understand and even harder to find good documentation? I’ve worked on this particular issue several times in the past few months, so thought it was time to put fingers to keyboard and provide a few tips.
These notes cover publishing SharePoint 2010 with either ISA 2006 or Forefront TMG.
Before you begin:
Commonly your internal SharePoint farm will be accessed over HTTP whilst external access is via HTTPS.
In this example I will use the following configuration:
SharePoint URL: http://sharepoint.domain.local
MySites URL: http://mysites.domain.local
Wildcard digital certificate: *.internetdomain.com
Two external DNS records pointing to the same external IP address on the ISA server:
• SharePoint.internetdomain.com
• Mysites.internetdomain.com
SharePoint Steps:
1. Extend the SharePoint and MySites web applications (in Central Admin)
2. Install your digital certificate (and root certificate) on the Web Front End Server
3. Using PowerShell add two Alternative Access Mappings (AAM’s):
- New-SPAlternativeURL https://sharepoint.domain.local -zone “Internet” – internal
- New-SPAlternativeURL https://sharepoint.internetdomain.com -zone “Internet”
- Get-SPAlternativeURL can be used to list the AAM’s
4. In IIS edit the binding on the Extended web application – change from HTTP to HTTPS and select the certificate above. Once done remove the HTTP (listening on port 443) binding, this isn’t needed.
5. Make sure the new sites have started an IISReset may be required.
Forefront TMG or ISA Server Steps:
1. Create a web listener
- HTTPS
- Redirect HTTP to HTTPS
- Use the same certificate installed on SharePoint above
- Configure SSO = .internetdomain.com (this ensures only one login to TMG or ISA is required for all sites on that listener with matching domains)
2. Create two publishing rules, one for SharePoint and the other for MySites
- Use the same web listener for both
- Forward the original host headers
- Bridge the connection using HTTPS (keep the protocols the same between the external URL and the internal URL)
In some instances you may need to create translation rules for HTTP to HTTPS. This can be done on the publishing rule.
Access rules can be used to block access to specific sub-URL’s.
UDP support returning to Exchange 2010 October 1, 2011
Posted by Steve in Exchange 2010.Tags: Exchange 2010, Outlook 2003
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When Microsoft released Exchange 2010 they removed support for UDP notificiations and in the process made the Exchange mail server experience less than perfect for the millions of people who still use Outlook 2003. I wrote a blog post about this that has been a real hit, so I can tell people everywhere were desperate for a fix.
Good news, Microsoft will be bring support for UDP back with Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 Rollup 3!
Full details here: support.microsoft.com/kb/2009942
Thank you Microsoft, about time!
SharePoint Error Tracing August 14, 2011
Posted by Steve in SharePoint.Tags: Error, SharePoint, ULSviewer
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Tracing the cause of errors in SharePoint can leave you wondering where to start. In this article I provide some tips on preparing your SharePoint farm with error tracing in mind.
In this example I will assume we have a SharePoint farm with two web front ends (with network load balancing) and an application server. The same method can be used on larger farms.
This method is useful for identifying problems that occur on one server in your farm but not others. The are usually intermittent issues that occur randomly for some users and not others (due to different Web Front Ends servicing the requests).
Configuring SharePoint and IIS
Alternative Access Mappings
- In Central Admin, configure alternative access maps for each server in the farm using the servers actual name e.g. SP_WFE1, SP_WFE2, SP_APP1
- Test by connecting to your SharePoint servers using HTTP://servername
Configured IIS
- Logon to each server and modify the IIS Bindings to include a host header with the servers actual name (matching the alternative access mapping)
Download ULSviewer from MSDN and put a copy on each web front end.
Trapping errors
The trick to catching errors is to reproduce the error on a known host and capture the error with ULSviewer.
- Choose a server e.g. SP_WFE1
- Logon to the server and run ULSviewer
- Reproduce the error using SP_WFE1 rather than the normal SharePoint URL
- Copy the error correlation code from the error message
- Create a filter in ULSviewer
- Filter by Correlation and paste the code copied in the step above
- If multiple errors are returned in the log, look for the words error or exception (usually)
- Highlight the error and full details will appear in the top of ULSviewer pane.
New beginnings April 2, 2011
Posted by Steve in Uncategorized.6 comments
Many of you will know that I have worked in several different roles at Datasouth over the past 6 years. At 1:30pm on Thursday 31st March 2011 Datasouth Business Solutions Ltd went into voluntary liquidation. It was a sad ending and a very difficult time for everyone involved.
I believe we had built a truely world class team delivering exceptional service to clients in New Zealand and Australia. I am extremely proud of the work we did and in particular how we helped our clients in the two catastrophic earthquakes that hit Christchurch in September 2010 and February 2011. We were winners of the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Award in New Zealand three years running, something no other company has done.
The sheer volume of emails and phone calls from clients, partners and competitors offering to help our team in our time of need is just overwhelming. I think this shows not only the strength of our relationships but also how Canterbury as a community has come together during the past few months.
So what’s next?
In December 2010 I was promoted to a new role as Group Software Manager and set about building and developing a multi-disciplined team. Our team had a strong feeling an obligation to follow through on promises to our clients and provide continuity of support. After a few discussions, some number crunching with Excel and lots of positive encouragement, our two Senior Developers and I decided that we should setup a company. Everything happened quickly and within a couple of days we had the bones of an agreement between the three of us.
Our focus will be on .NET development, SQL Server, Reporting Services, Data Warehousing and consulting around solution design and architecture.
Yesterday was the most exciting day in my 21 years in the IT industry because we started work on our (ad)venture!
Website, email address and new phone to come.
New Zealand SharePoint Conference 2011 March 18, 2011
Posted by Steve in SharePoint.Tags: SharePoint
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The third annual SharePoint Conference held in Wellington New Zealand ( #NZSPC ) was a tremendously good conference. Although SharePoint was in the title, this conference offered much more than the usual technical discussion about development techniques, infrastructure configuration and metadata. I normally head straight for the IT Pro oriented infrastructure discussion but this time, despite the impressive speaker list, decided to see what was going on in the business and end user sessions. What an eye opener! Here’s why…
Technical conference sessions that are oriented towards IT Pro’s are usually broad and without detail, or very narrow focuses with a lot of detail. When it comes to doing this things post conference I always end up on Technet or Google for tips. The presentation value is really about telling you what you should look for, reality is most of this is on the net if you look for yourself.
Donald Harman (blue) and I are keen!
What isn’t on the net, is real world stories of how solutions are implemented guts and all (you can find plenty of good stories, but these are usually written by marketing people). By attending the customer sessions I quickly picked up a few good tips that are useful for any project, not just SharePoint. The reason is these people are talking about how they solved a business problem, the effort required and the level of success. Thankfully no one claimed to be 100% successful, they talked instead about small improvements occuring incrementally over time.
This got me thinking, how do you measure the success of SharePoint. The answer is you don’t. SharePoint is the platform that enables you to build business solutions. You should really be measuring the business process (yes SharePoint makes this easier). If you can measure it, you can set a KPI and that means someone can be held accountable for the process, no more process failure due to “lost paper work”. SharePoint is great for improving the visibility of business processes which in-turn helps the business combat inconsistency, identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
Another clear message is that the last person you should get to manage your SharePoint deployment is IT. SharePoint is a platform for business, not an infrastructure project for the guys and gals with static straps. Don’t get me wrong, infrastructure is very important but what’s more important is buy-in from the business. Best find a person high up the pyramid, who has authority and the desire to take ownership of the project. Make this person the sponsor and get them engaged!
Thinking of baby steps once more, the best success comes when people deploy SharePoint incrementally. Start with Out of the Box functionality, if that doesn’t fit look for third party solutions and as a last resort develop custom code. Code-free means easier upgrades, less cost, lower risk and faster implementation. Don’t try and do it all at once, pick a few small business problems and take small steps first. Once you get confidence from the business, tackle more complex items.
Project Management and Training are not events, they are part of the journey. The project must be managed from start to finish and involve people from all stakeholder groups. Training is important too, continue to train well past the delivery of the solution. The best user uptake occurs when regular face-to-face training occurs, don’t rely on email messages and documents.
The most important thing I picked up at the conference was enthusiasm. All people talking about the solutions they had built were excited about what they had achieved and wanted to deliver more. Even the guys on the expert panel at the end of the conference spoke about learning things in Wellington. This is fantastic and the reason I got into IT in the first place.
If you are in anyway interested or exposed to SharePoint, join the community via your local user group or look for people on Twitter, #SharePoint is a good starting point. Thank you to the NZSPC organisers, you did a fabulous job.
Rebuilding Christchurch March 6, 2011
Posted by Steve in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
On the 4th off September 2010 Christchurch was hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake causing widespread damage. The city was just getting back on its feet again when a massive 6.3 magnitude after-shock struck very close to the city at 12:51pm on Tuesday 22nd February 2011. The city suffered horrific damage a loss of life.
Some reports say that as up to one third of buildings in the CBD collapsed or will need to be demolished. 50,000 people work in the CBD. Cantabrians are a strong bunch and discussions about the reconstruction of our city centre are already taking place.
While 60% of Christchurch’s economy comes from the agriculture sector, the city also has strong tourism and hi-tech sectors. While we shouldn’t forget our history and I am a fan of our historic buildings, I think we have an amazing, once in a lifetime opportunity to reinvent ourselves as a modern, highly connected city that is a showcase for sustainability, technology and modern architecture.
Here are the things I would like to see in our rebuild central city:
- Modern low-rise buildings. Not concrete boxes, but attractive modern architecture.
- Use green technologies for heating, cooling, power etc
- Use the highest standards for earthquake strengthening to ensure people trust the buildings once more.
- Green spaces with excellent walking and cycling access.
- Trams, not just for tourists but for public transport in around the CBD. Keep buses for the suburbs.
- Rebuild our iconic Catherdal.
- Provide fibre connectivity to all new buildings.
- Encourage technology, research and corporate business back into the CBD.
- Celebrate our history by rebuilding historic buildings, but in a way that will not detract from their beauty or risk peoples lives in the future.
- Bring tourists back to the city with hotels, venues, cafe’s and bars.
In my view it is essential that we attract people and businesses back to the CBD. People must feel safe and have a reason to move back. I think we should look forward and build a Christchurch for the future, rather than a rebuilding one from the past. We must attract the right people and businesses to the CBD by building an environment that is attractive to them.
I love Christchurch, it is the place I choose to be. Lets build a better city for all!
