Microknowledge

Don’t Forget About Me, If, By 'Me', You Mean the Page File on a SharePoint Server

Recently I was asked to help troubleshoot performance issues on an older, seasoned SharePoint 2007 installation.  (No Developer Dashboards here!).  We ran through a lot of performance counters, checked the SQL performance, and made sure that indexing and backups weren’t coinciding with business hours.  All good.  So why were the pages so sluggish?

Looking at counters on the web front end server showed the server was swapping memory.  A lot.  The server originally began life with only 2-4GB of RAM and a single 60GB hard disk.  Over time, it had grown to 16GB of RAM with an extra 500GB disk for index files (so, a lot of free space there!)  However, we found that the page file (previously known as the swap file!) was still locked at 2GB.  Expanding this to about 24GB, spread across multiple local disks, really improved not only system performance but also perceptions of system responsiveness.

To sum up -- do NOT assume you don’t need page files, even on virtualized servers.  The general rule of thumb – Microsoft recommends the total page file size should be 1-3X the size of total physical RAM.  (If you allow Windows to automatically regulate this, the size is usually OK.  Further details can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2021748 (see below for summary tables).

Default Page File Sizes for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

System Memory Size (RAM)	Minimum Page File Size	Maximum Page File Size
Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 <1GB	1.5 x RAM	3 x RAM
Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 >= 1GB	1 x RAM	3 x RAM

Default Page File Sizes for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

System Memory Size (RAM)	Minimum Page File Size	Maximum Page File Size
<1GB	Large enough to hold a kernel-memory crash dump and is RAM plus 300MB or 1GB, whichever is larger	3 x RAM or 4GB, whichever is larger
>= 1GB	Large enough to hold a kernel-memory crash dump and is RAM plus 300MB or 1GB, whichever is larger	3 x RAM or 4GB, whichever is larger

I’m at SPTechCon on Boston all week – will share more shortly!

SharePoint 2010 Troubleshooting with ULS, Event, Usage and Health Logs

Despite your best efforts, users may eventually get the 2010 error screen:

 

SharePoint errors always include a unique “correlation ID” to help identify related logged events in multiple areas.  However, in a medium or large farm, the number of local log files to cross reference can become cumbersome.

However, in SharePoint 2010, the unified logging and monitoring service integrates information from a broad range of sources:

• Windows Event Logs
• Performance Monitors & Counters
• SharePoint Features and Web Parts
• Unified Logging Service (Diagnostics)

This process relies on the Usage and Health Shared Service Application, and by default, information is centralized in the WSS_Logging database.  SharePoint uses timer jobs to aggregate information from all these systems across all the servers in your farm.  The table structure of the database is complex; however, the database has prebuilt views for ULS, Analysis Service, Site Structure, etc. However, if you look at an out-of-the-box logging database, you will NOT see the NTEventLog and ULSTraceLog views shown here:

 

How do you get them?

By design, the Timer jobs for aggregating event logs and ULS logs are disabled.  In part, this is because the potential for runaway database growth is significant if verbose logging is used across a number of servers.

However, if you enabled the following two Timer jobs, the jobs will create the “missing” SQL views:

• Diagnostic Data Provider: Trace Log
• Diagnostic Data Provider: Event Log

Once you have the correct data and views in the database, you can run a SQL query like the one below to find all the logged events that correspond to a given correlation ID:

SELECT * FROM [WSS_Logging].[dbo].[ULSTraceLog] WHERE CorrelationID = '04377DAE-C2FD-4DBE-A57E-101B3005059E’

Watch the database sizes, but this can be a very effective technique when you need more information about a logged error.  Good luck!

Super Geeky LDAP-ADAM Configuration with SharePoint 2007

We were recently working on a client SharePoint farm that required an extranet authentication provider to link to an LDAP-oriented Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) server.  For those of you keeping score, ADAM is a lightweight version of Active Directory dedicated to user authentication.

We began by extending the primary intranet application to a new top level URL, also on port 80, as part of the Internet zone.  .  This automatically adds the Alternate Access Mapping and creates the appropriate IIS Web Site.

 

Next we added the right configuration settings inside web.config for the primary site, the extended site, and Central Admin.  (All of these can be found by default at C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\virtualdirectorories).  The following setting go at very beginning of the systems.web node (e.g. immediately after the <system.web> tag.)   [Your server and userContainer tags will vary from this sample, fyi, but trust me, this is correct.]

 

<membership defaultProvider="ADAMMembership">

    <providers>

    <add name="ADAMMembership"

     type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Security.LDAPMembershipProvider, Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71E9BCE111E9429C"

     server="SERVERNAME"

         port="389"

         useSSL="false"

         userDNAttribute="distinguishedName"

         userNameAttribute="cn"

         userContainer="OU=users,DC=[SAMPLE],DC=[SAMPLE],DC=com"

         userObjectClass="user"

         userFilter="(ObjectClass=user)"

         scope="Subtree"

         otherRequiredUserAttributes="sn,givenname,cn" />

        </providers>

   </membership>

 

 

 

Then we configured the Internet zone to use Forms authentication against the ADAMMembership provider.  And users still couldn’t login.

 So we checked again, and wanted to verify that the central admin and web pools had the right permissions to read from the ADAM server.    In ADSI Edit, we connected to the LDAP server  and switched from “Default  Naming Context” to “Configuration.  Next, ,we selected the "Roles" container and right-clicked the “Readers”.  Edit the Members  property and click Add Windows Account to verify which accounts can access the ADAM server.

And, like that, ADAM users can login to SharePoint. 

Migrating to Hyper-V -- Removing Virtual Machine Additions

A quick tip for folks who have used Microsoft Virtual Server/Virtual PC to work with server images, especially  in development and staging environments.  Although Microsoft’s Hyper-V offers significant improvements over Virtual Server, there’s a trick or two to remember when migrating to the newer technology.

 

 

If you remember back to your first virtual server image, you may recall that you had to hunt around for an ISO image to install Virtual Machine VPC) Additions.  This adds additional Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) support to the guest operating system that allows for the host system to direct orderly shutdown, and allows mouse control to flow seamlessly between guest and host windows.

 

Hyper-V provides a simpler way to add its own support to new virtual servers from its Virtual Machine Connection.  You can use the menu option to Insert Integration Services Setup Disk.  However, this installation will complain if you copied the hard disk and configuration data over from the older Virtual Server environment.  Specifically, it won’t install until the Virtual Machine Additions are uninstalled.  But Hyper-V then won’t let you uninstall the older software.

 

The workaround is to shutdown the new Hyper-V installation and mount the system virtual hard drive (VHD) under Virtual PC or Virtual Server 2005.  (Either copy or share the VHD file!)  This will allow you to remove the Virtual Machine Additions from the VHD image.  Close down Virtual PC and then restart or recopy the VHD back to the Hyper-V environment.  You should now be able to install the new Integration Services from the Hyper-V console.  Good luck!