Bill Baer /bɛːr/

TechReady5 concluded on Friday and I’m finally returning to work after several customer sessions that immediately followed and one question was shared between the two - what do you recommend or what are you using to monitor performance and how do you determine load and stress when architecting a SharePoint Products and Technologies infrastructure? The answer is, there are a variety of tools to stress test your Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies deployment; let’s cover some them:

Database mirroring is increasing in popularity and becoming an integral part of high availability and disaster recovery solutions within the SharePoint Products and Technologies arena. I’ve spent much of the last few months building labs, testing scenarios, impacts on platforms whether it be WSS or MOSS. This post is the third and final on my series [SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring and Windows SharePoint Services/Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007]. We know with asynchronous mirroring we can automatically manage SQL Server 2005 failover by introducing the witness role in our server farms, the most challenging question to answer is how to manage web front-end failover.

Building Simple Custom Approval Workflows with InfoPath 2007 Forms - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb629921.aspx Creating and Editing Custom Document Information Panels from Office SharePoint Server 2007 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb684925.aspx Integrating Siebel CRM with Office SharePoint Server 2007 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb613692.aspx

It appears Joel invited me to participate in a chain-letter of sorts with the context being stuff I wouldn’t want to live without. After thinking about the question for a moment, I found it much easier to compile a list of things I could live without, but to keep with the intent of the invitation - I’ve derived the following list: My wife and son; without their support I likely would not be where I am in life today.

I recently received a request asking 1) if a site collections portal site connection can be programmatically replaced or modified and 2) can this be accomplished on a schedule without implementing a provisioning intercept or callback based on Site Directory metadata. First let’s examine the first question: Can a site collections portal site connection be programmatically replaced or modified…the simple answer is yes. Using the Sites property of the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.WebApplication class to return a SPSiteCollection object representing a collection of site collections on a Web application.

Web applications are the foundation of a SharePoint Products and Technologies server farm and host the root site collection, root and subordinate webs. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 used the term Virtual Server to designate a Web application also known as a Web site in Internet Information Services. A root site [collection] is the term commonly applied to the what is the uppermost site collection within a server farm or otherwise referred to as the top-level site collection or alternatively portal site collection.

One of the most common questions making its way to my Inbox as of recently is how to determine the required requests per second (RPS) to support a SharePoint Products and Technologies deployment. While many IT Pros opt to use the recommend values associated with RPS and Internet Information Services (IIS) the transactions are considerably different between a light-weight .NET application or common IIS Web site. To establish a general requirement for requests per second for a SharePoint Products and Technologies deployment you will need answers to the following questions:

It’s nothing SharePoint related, but a rare treat to catch a glimpse of an unobscured Mt. Rainier - these were taken over on a semi-clear afternoon around 6:00 P.M. from the Puyallup-Graham area about 30 miles south of Seattle. You’re looking south/southeast in these photographs, in the distance beyond the Evergreens is the Puyallup Valley and the town of Orting along the banks of the Carbon River. (more info…) <IMG class=sopretty src=“https://msdnshared.

TechReady5 is fast approaching and I’ve just confirmed my speaking schedule. For those internal readers planning to attend any sessions I am presenting, I’ve included the complete schedule below (rooms are TBD): OFC327 Upgrading SPS 2003 Areas and Portals to Office SharePoint Server 2007 7/25/2007 1:30PM-2:45PM OFC323 SharePoint Disaster Recovery, Failover, & High Availability 7/26/2007 10:15AM-11:30AM **OFCCT301-R1 MSIT: Upgrading Customized Sites, Portals To MOSS 2007 **7/23/2007 1:30PM-2:45PM OFCCT302-R1 DPM and Sharepoint

It’s early, but I’m already reorganizing furniture in preparation for Microsoft Surface (Winter 2007). If you’re unfamiliar, I encourage you to visit http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ and learn more. Microsoft Surface among its great potential and possibilities, offers what is known as direct interaction, basically the ability to “touch” something that has always been virtual and just out of our reach such as digital images, music, etc. sans mouse or keyboard. The Microsoft Surface form factor (30" tabletop horizontal) permits a multi-user computing experience through recognizing, simultaneously - many items at once.