Revival Hymn
If you haven't seen the revival hymn yet, head on over to GodTube and see this. It is 35 minutes long, but powerful, beyond measure!
This will rock your ministry! I know most of you have seen it, but everytime I see it, it moves me!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Sharepoint: Moving a Site Up / Down
There is a really cool way that you can move a sharepoint site up or down in your hierarchy.
Let's say you created a sharepoint site your root level (ie http://intranet/website) and six months later you decide it really should be contained under your IT subsite (http://intranet/it/website). You can use the program STSADM to move a site from one location to another.
Steps to move a WSS subsite.
1. Create the new target URL (I created a blank site @ http://intranet/it/website)
2. Fire up the command line
3. CD \"Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"
4. Export the old URL using the following Command:
stsadm -o export -url http://intranet/website -filename c:\test\backup.cmp
5. Import the file back into Sharepoint using the the following command:
stsadm -o import -url http://intranet/it/website -filename c:\test\backup.cmp
That's it! You have moved your website. You need to check user permissions especially if you are moving to a new subsite!
OTHER COOL STUFF: There is an option to -includeusersecurity while you do the export. You can also choose whether or not to pull all the revisionhistory over with the doc libs or not...
For a full view of options for Export / Import, run the following commands to see all your options:
stsadm -o export
stsadm -o import
These will print out all your possible options for doing these two operations!
Let's say you created a sharepoint site your root level (ie http://intranet/website) and six months later you decide it really should be contained under your IT subsite (http://intranet/it/website). You can use the program STSADM to move a site from one location to another.
Steps to move a WSS subsite.
1. Create the new target URL (I created a blank site @ http://intranet/it/website)
2. Fire up the command line
3. CD \"Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"
4. Export the old URL using the following Command:
stsadm -o export -url http://intranet/website -filename c:\test\backup.cmp
5. Import the file back into Sharepoint using the the following command:
stsadm -o import -url http://intranet/it/website -filename c:\test\backup.cmp
That's it! You have moved your website. You need to check user permissions especially if you are moving to a new subsite!
OTHER COOL STUFF: There is an option to -includeusersecurity while you do the export. You can also choose whether or not to pull all the revisionhistory over with the doc libs or not...
For a full view of options for Export / Import, run the following commands to see all your options:
stsadm -o export
stsadm -o import
These will print out all your possible options for doing these two operations!
Sharepoint: Automated Backups using STSADM
During the recent IT Roundtable Podcast there was discussion about SharePoint and how to automate the backup process.
We are using WSS 3.0, not the full blown MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server) software.
The following is my exact backup command (inside a batch file that is scheduled to run every night at 11:00pm):
c:
cd "\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"
stsadm -o backup -directory \\ccm-gallery\ITBackup\ccm-sps\Sharepoint -backupmethod full
Basically this command does a full farm backup of your sharepoint environment into a subfolder. This will backup all necessary sharepoint databases / configurations / xml files ect that are need to recreate the sharepoint site.
WARNING: This will take care of everything inside of the Sharepoint WSS environment. If you customize anything outside of the environment (ie: create new master pages, implement FBA, or other alternative authentication schemes) - you will need to back these up seperately!
For safety sake, I run the STSADM commands automatically, then I also drop a full backup of the C:\InetPub folders.
When I restored my server recently, our intranet (plain vanilla WSS 3.0 Site with Windows Auth) restored in about 5 minutes after the server was rebuilt.
WARNING #2: The backup script I have proposed here creates a new subdirectory every time a backup takes place and drops the whole farm there. For us this is about 1.2 GB every time there is a backup. So make sure you keep that area fairly clean. We are doing backups to another server with 500Gb just for doing these kind of backups!
This command is just built into Sharepoint... Works great!
We are using WSS 3.0, not the full blown MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server) software.
The following is my exact backup command (inside a batch file that is scheduled to run every night at 11:00pm):
c:
cd "\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"
stsadm -o backup -directory \\ccm-gallery\ITBackup\ccm-sps\Sharepoint -backupmethod full
Basically this command does a full farm backup of your sharepoint environment into a subfolder. This will backup all necessary sharepoint databases / configurations / xml files ect that are need to recreate the sharepoint site.
WARNING: This will take care of everything inside of the Sharepoint WSS environment. If you customize anything outside of the environment (ie: create new master pages, implement FBA, or other alternative authentication schemes) - you will need to back these up seperately!
For safety sake, I run the STSADM commands automatically, then I also drop a full backup of the C:\InetPub folders.
When I restored my server recently, our intranet (plain vanilla WSS 3.0 Site with Windows Auth) restored in about 5 minutes after the server was rebuilt.
WARNING #2: The backup script I have proposed here creates a new subdirectory every time a backup takes place and drops the whole farm there. For us this is about 1.2 GB every time there is a backup. So make sure you keep that area fairly clean. We are doing backups to another server with 500Gb just for doing these kind of backups!
This command is just built into Sharepoint... Works great!
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Check your Firmware!
My most recent server problem (Satan and Raid 5) was caused not by a faulty or two faulty disks, but by a bad firmware in the Raid controller card that was sent to me by Dell. I used to check all my firmware / controller firmware / bios, etc at regular intervals, but since I started at the Church there just doesn't seem to be time... EVERYONE should double check thier firmware on thier Dell servers... Don't get stuck rebuilding! Anyway, the server rebuilt wonderfully, and I was able to Document (cough, cough) this time.
Pray for servers without ceasing!
Pray for servers without ceasing!
Monday, October 8, 2007
Satan and Raid 5
Well it's official -- Raid 5 just ain't good enough no more. We have had a long weekend. Saturday morning, I got a phone call that Shelby and Email were down. This hasn't happened before... Both of those apps are on our Super Redundant VMWare Server that hasn't ever even hiccup'ed. I came and in and the worst fears were there. 2 Hard Drives blinking yellow at the same time. That's right, my 408GB SAS Raid 5 Array was gone, and all the VM's with it. We are still in the process of restoring the system, but I have some very good lesson's learned from this little excercise. Hopefully I will get the SAN I have been waiting for...
We'll find out!
We'll find out!
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Better Windows Media Services Monitoring
I have had volunteers doing monitoring of our live services for quite some time. One of the trivial tasks that they have done is record the number of active streams during the service so we have metrics of how many people are watching, and of how much bandwidth we use. This has started becoming a growing task since we are adding more streams, and about to start streaming our multi-site service as well.
In the interest of getting better data, and more data points I have written / hacked together a script that will log the data for all the WMS publishing points with active data, and will also record total bandwidth. This little script can be scheduled to run every 5 minutes during your services and it logs the data to a CSV file so you can then import into any Database or Excel and graph or do what you want with it.
I will email the script to anyone interested along with installation instructions. Don't worry, it's really easy. Should take no more than 5 minutes to install have running!
Leave a comment or email me for a copy of the script and installation instructions!
In the interest of getting better data, and more data points I have written / hacked together a script that will log the data for all the WMS publishing points with active data, and will also record total bandwidth. This little script can be scheduled to run every 5 minutes during your services and it logs the data to a CSV file so you can then import into any Database or Excel and graph or do what you want with it.
I will email the script to anyone interested along with installation instructions. Don't worry, it's really easy. Should take no more than 5 minutes to install have running!
Leave a comment or email me for a copy of the script and installation instructions!
Tuning Terminal Server
We have been using a thin client environment for many of our administrative staff for the last year, and the system has run almost maintenence free, but the time comes when all things need a cleanup. One of the areas I was always curious about was a cleanup of the IE Temporary Items in multiple profiles. I did what any good IT guy does... I googled it. Here is a link to a script that will scrub all the IE Temporary Folders for all profiles on a computer. I have run it and can testify to it working.
http://www.greatnorthcomputing.com/System+Admin+Articles/109.aspx
After making this change, I modified my Group Policy to automatically empty the IE temporary folders every time a user logs off. If you are looking for this Group Policy Item, it can be found in Group Policy Management under:
Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Internet Explorer->Internet Control Panel->Advanced Page
Here you will see the Empty Temporary Internet Files folder... This will start preserving the space you have available on the drive because how clean our users are....
Other GP items to note:
I Enabled the Turn Off Crash Detection to knock down some of the annoying IE crashed on... messages when you log onto the Terminal Server as Admin.
I hope this helps someone else!
http://www.greatnorthcomputing.com/System+Admin+Articles/109.aspx
After making this change, I modified my Group Policy to automatically empty the IE temporary folders every time a user logs off. If you are looking for this Group Policy Item, it can be found in Group Policy Management under:
Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Internet Explorer->Internet Control Panel->Advanced Page
Here you will see the Empty Temporary Internet Files folder... This will start preserving the space you have available on the drive because how clean our users are....
Other GP items to note:
I Enabled the Turn Off Crash Detection to knock down some of the annoying IE crashed on... messages when you log onto the Terminal Server as Admin.
I hope this helps someone else!
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