Bill Baer /bɛːr/

A recently published whitepaper is now available on TechNet that describes the benefits of deploying Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition and scenarios in which its features can be applied. Excerpt The adoption of Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010 can grow exponentially across an organization quickly gaining momentum and taking root as a critical part of an organization’s ecosystem. To help protect data, ensure availability, and keep costs down, we recommend that customers choose Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition during initial deployment.

The SharePoint Server 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM) has been released. Download the virtual machine set at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=751fa0d1-356c-4002-9c60-d539896c66ce&displaylang=en.

New multi-tenancy features are an exciting concept in SharePoint 2010, particularly when considering the implications on hosting SharePoint for a variety of tenants, each requiring some method of partitioning, administration, and a method of reporting and control whether within the boundaries of an Enterprise or as a hosting provider. In this post we’ll look at one of the layers of multi-tenancy in SharePoint 2010. Site Subscriptions SharePoint 2010 provides support for a concept known as site subscriptions.

Database mirroring provides an additional layer of resiliency, specifically, in highly available architectures, by providing a level of granularity not available to failover clustering. For additional information on database mirroring see also http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189852.aspx (SQL Server 2008) or http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189852(SQL.90).aspx (SQL Server 2005). In Office SharePoint Server 2007 database mirroring was a complex to implement, primarily due to the fact that our connection strings were both in managed code and the unmanaged SQL layer which required an administrator deploying database mirroring to leverage SQL Server Client Connection Aliases across front-end Web and application servers - beyond that - database mirroring in Office SharePoint Server 2007 also required databases as principal to maintain node majority, meaning all databases as principal had to reside on the same instance and subsequently failover had to occur moving all databases as a single unit.

SharePoint 2010 provides the administrator a number of improvements to facilitate rapid problem identification and resolution. Among these is the implementation of Correlation Ids. Correlation Ids are GUIDs assigned to events which transpire during the lifecycle of a resource request. As problems occur, the Correlation Id is commonly surfaced within the context of an error when presented to the person initiating the request or through the Developer Dashboard. User Interface (error.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 provided a Site Directory that was commonly used to “catalog” the collection of sites within a server farm environment, most commonly, organizations used categories to isolate like or related site collections and the built-in provisioning callback to ensure site collections were listed in the Site Directory on creation. In SharePoint Server 2010 the Site Directory has been deprecated, meaning that on new installations of SharePoint Server 2010 you cannot create and have a functional Site Directory; however, the Web Template and configuration options associated with the Site Directory have been retained, though strictly for backwards compatibility support.

Keeping the trend going this week we’ll look at Active Directory Markers in SharePoint Server 2010. Governance is one of the key planning processes that should occur when considering the deployment of any technology, and SharePoint Server 2010 provides a number of tools and resources to facilitate the product and technology aspects of governance, one of which is the concept of Active Directory Markers to manage and control the uncontrolled proliferation of SharePoint in the Enterprise.

Last week I covered Managed Accounts in SharePoint Server 2010, this week we’ll cover HTTP Request Monitoring and Throttling - I’ve been following a lot of conversions surrounding Resource Throttling in SharePoint Server 2010, of which most have focused on the core scenario involving managing large lists; however, there have been a few discussions on HTTP Request Monitoring and Throttling and how that ties in an organizations security architecture or how it can be used to augment it, particularly how it relates to Distributed-Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Today marked an important milestone for us today with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 – RTM! Keeping it short, off to celebrate! P.S. Participate in the virtual lunch launch ;-) on May 12th, 2010 at http://www.the2010event.com/. Bill

Claims-based identity or Claims Mode Authentication in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 has been all the buzz. Developers are looking to do more with augmentation of claims and IT Professionals are looking at new opportunities to delegate identities - whether across machine or trust boundaries, or to provide seamless and secure solutions enabling robust interoperability scenarios with external systems. Understanding claims-based identity is the first step in realizing its potential and to understand it, we need to understand the basic concepts and nomenclature.