Bill Baer /bɛːr/

With SharePoint Conference 2014 registration now open, it seems appropriate to look back and provide just a little historical SPC information. There have been 5 previous SharePoint Conferences. 2006 The inaugural SharePoint Conference, SharePoint Conference 2006 was held in Bellevue, Washington on May 15th, 2006 at the Meydenbauer Convention Center with the keynote delivered by Bill Gates. The theme…“Connecting People, Process, and Information”. 2008 The second SharePoint Conference was held in Seattle, Washington at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center on March 4th, 2008 with the keynote delivered by Kurt Delbene and Bill Gates.

An updated SharePoint Server 2013 Trial image is available in the Windows Azure Platform Gallery. The image is based on the current Windows Server 2012 Datacenter release and includes a complete installation of SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise Trial patched with the March Public and August Cumulative Updates. NOTE Additional configuration is required to use the SharePoint Server 2013 Trial image include 1) a database server running SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012 2) a server running AD DS.

Shredded Storage is a new storage model implementation in SharePoint Server 2013 used to provide smoother I/O patterns, improve data transfer performance, and reduce storage utilization when using historical versions with SharePoint. This whitepaper provides a background of SharePoint products storage evolution and the implementation specifics and benefits of Shredded Storage in SharePoint 2013. Download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39719

An updated SharePoint Server 2013 Trial image is available in the Windows Azure Platform Gallery. The image is based on the current Windows Server 2012 Datacenter release and includes a complete installation of SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise Trial patched with the March Public and April Cumulative Updates. NOTE Additional configuration is required to use the SharePoint Server 2013 Trial image include 1) a database server running SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012 2) a server running AD DS.

AlwaysOn Availability Groups can provide a high-availability and disaster recovery solution for SQL Server Remote Blob Store (RBS) BLOB objects (blobs). AlwaysOn Availability Groups protects any RBS metadata and schemas stored in an availability database by replicating them to the secondary replicas. AlwaysOn Availability Groups Overview The AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature is a high-availability and disaster-recovery solution that provides an enterprise-level alternative to database mirroring. Introduced in SQL Server 2012, AlwaysOn Availability Groups maximizes the availability of a set of user databases for an enterprise.

The March 2013 Public Update for SharePoint Server 2013 was released on March 12, 2013 and in addition to resolving several issues, features new and added capabilities such as the ability to configure multiple app domains in when using AAM or Host Header configurations. For a complete list of fixes included in this update see also Description of the SharePoint Server 2013 update: March 12, 2013. NOTE Ensure adequate disk space is available to extract the SharePoint Server 2013 March 2013 Public Update content.

Introduction What is an Extranet? A common definition for the term Extranet is a network that enables controlled access to external users or an extension of an organization’s intranet extended to external users to include customers, partners, suppliers, etc. in isolation from other internet or intranet users. Extranet topologies with SharePoint Products have become an increasingly popular solution to enable collaboration with partners, customers, and external users; however, can be complex to implement and maintain over time.

SharePoint 2013 implements new System Status Notifications designed to provide site users information about lifecycle events to include availability of upgrade, maintenance, and read-only states. System Status Notifications present important information about a SharePoint deployment and its availability, whether during upgrades, routine maintenance, or conversion to read-only. Users are kept “in the know” as they receive a prominent banner on their sites that provides insight into the activity being performed—helping reduce calls to the help desk and subsequent burden on IT.

In order to remain competitive in today’s business climate you need to be able to respond to change and challenges quickly. Sometimes that means adjusting your SharePoint infrastructure on a moment’s notice to maintain a competitive advantage. Infrastructure as a Service solves these challenges through a ready-to-use, pay as you go solution which means you can deploy in hours as opposed to days, whether you’re looking to deploy a simple SharePoint-based Internet site or to quickly provision a development environment.

A number of questions have been asked surrounding Shredded Storage in SharePoint 2013. To better understand the benefit of Shredded Storage and what is provides from a relational database BLOB data storage perspective it’s helpful to understand the evolution of SharePoint’s storage model. Past and Present SharePoint Portal Server 2001 SharePoint Portal Server 2001 represented the first commercially available version of SharePoint and utilized a unique, new storage model based on the Web Storage System originally implemented in Exchange Server 2000.