Bill Baer /bɛːr/

As Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies becomes more business critical for organizations, data protection and redundancy become primary objectives in any size deployment. Disaster recovery and redundancy can be achieved using any of a collection of available technologies to include SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring for redundancy and hardware or software-based replication solutions for disaster recovery or geographic replication. One of the most seamless methods available to a SharePoint deployment for geographic replication is SQL Server 2000/2005 Log Shipping.

While attending Ask the Experts at the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Conference 2008, I was asked about migrating user accounts in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to a new login name programmatically, fortunately Windows SharePoint Services addressed user account migrations with the Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 post SP1 hotfix package 896593 which was followed by a number of applications including SPUserUtil Keith Richie corrected me today - SPUserUtil preceeded the MigrateUser API - Thanks Keith!

While walking about the various booths and displays this afternoon during the Ask the Experts session at the Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference 2008 I found this rather unusual SharePoint user in the midst. If Master Chief uses SharePoint…. ;-)

The SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring with SharePoint Products and Technologies whitepaper has been updated and available for download at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83725&clcid=0x409. Revisions include information on configuring failover with SharePoint Products and Technologies using SQL Aliasing, content database limitations and more. SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring posts on this blog: SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0/Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Part 1 (Introduction, Overview, and basics)

Performance recommendations and guidance is something I receive comment and question on quite frequently, typically in hallway conversation or in passing at conferences - so in the spirit of those occurrences I’ve decided to compile a quick list of SharePoint performance recommendations that can be conveyed verbally in five minutes or less. Governance Do limit the number of site collections/content database, I’m adamantly opposed to the “airline booking model” and much prefer what I like to refer to as the “accounting model” of database management, for example, if you know your maximum allowable site collection quota will be 5GB, and would like to keep your content databases at 100GB, logically you can host no more than 20 site collections per database and while this can result in a large number of content databases, you avoid site collection proliferation…with this model you should also take into account growth and set aside 5-10% to support schema changes, etc.

Seattle → Amsterdam → The Hague → Seattle (TechReady6) → SharePoint Conference 2008. February has been an amazing month for myself and SharePoint, having the opportunity to promote the platform in Europe and discuss security and data protection with SharePoint in Seattle at TechReady6, a whitepaper published, and a birthday in between ;-). I won’t be presenting at the SharePoint Conference (I always say that and always find myself doing so), but will be present at the conference and represented during the Ask the Experts session on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 11:00 A.

I’m pleased to announce the general availability of my most recent whitepaper, “Database Maintenance for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies”. This whitepaper describes the recommended maintenance strategies for the databases that host content and configuration settings for SharePoint Products and Technologies. Read more…

In the past several weeks, I’ve traveled along the west coast and overseas discussing governance as it applies to SharePoint Products and Technologies and am delighted to announce the availability of the beta of the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool. The SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool is single reporting application that can be used to mitigate SharePoint Products and Technologies server proliferation by scanning the network for server machines with Windows SharePoint Services 3.

The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool has been made available for download on TechNet. To learn more about the benefits and applications of the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool see my beta release announcement at Announcing the Beta Release of the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool or visit the resource links below: Resources Description and more Information Download

A recent discussion on Garbage Collection management on 64-bit Web servers hosting Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 led into a discussion on rendering performance, particularly steps to reduce overall rendering time at the client. While monitoring client rendering can be achieved to some degree through measuring TTLB - purely in ensuring pages are served in a timely manner (see ASP.NET Performance Monitoring, and When to Alert Administrators for monitoring recommendations), there are too many variables that can result in overall performance variations to include browser, hardware, machine state, etc.