The SharePoint Farmer's Almanac : w2k8

Prepare for the future: Windows 2008 and 64bit

Shane — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:48:04 GMT

New Year = New work for you. As I look into my crystal ball for 2009 I see Windows Server 2008 and 64 bit servers in your future. Why? If for no other reason than the next version of SharePoint will be 64bit only and I know you are looking forward to test driving it whenever it shows up. Todd and I have spent quite a bit of time discussing the items below so I thought I would share some of the thoughts we had.

64 bit

You are probably a lot like me and think 32 bit vs. 64 bit? No big deal, everything is the same you just get to use more memory. Yeah… on the surface that sounds great but in reality not the case. In reality, the software world is still very new to this whole 64bit thing and sometimes we are the ones who suffer. An example is simple things like ifilters for Search. For the longest time we didn't have a reliable, free 64 bit PDF ifilter. This caused more than one SharePoint deployment to be changed in mid project because no one checked; they just assumed it was available. The point is until you do a project top to bottom in 64 bit you are going to be under the false assumption it will all just work. Did you know the VSeWSS (Visual Studio Extension for SharePoint) only work in 32 bit?

Now luckily for us the current version of SharePoint runs in both 32 and 64 bit so this is the time to play. In a perfect world you would have two test farms, one for 32 bit and one for 64 bit, and then you could try everything twice. You probably also know that you can mix and match the two architectures in the same farm, while this is true try to proceed with caution. While they can be combined you cannot mix a role. So for example if your web front end (WFE) is 32 bit then you shouldn't add a second WFE that is 64 bit, this is unsupported. But you can have a 32 bit WFE and 64 bit Index server with no problems.

Even outside of the SharePoint/Administrator space 64 bit is becoming more prevalent. My new Dell M4400 is running Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit. Why? The laptop supports 8 GB of RAM and to take advantage of that you need 64 bit. The downside to this is for a lot of hardware the 64 bit drivers are not as readily available or they are not as stable as their 32 bit counterparts. Then once you do a get a stable deployment of Windows on your laptop you may find not all of your software works. For a long time Cisco didn't have a 64 bit VPN client, that was very painful. Eugene Rosenfeld has a blog post on Why I hate x64 which points out some oddities when it comes to software, some have been fixed others have not. The key thing here is you would have never thought of these things not working until you committed to running 64 bit.

I realize after reading this it is easy to think this 64 bit thing sucks, I should just avoid it. No. You need to take this knowledge and embrace it because sooner than later you will find yourself running 64 bit servers. Would you prefer to learn them now while it is a side thought instead of being knee deep into a critical project, trying to meet a deadline and discover such things?

Other Random Reading – Making the Move to x64

(This is funny but I am having this same conversation on Twitter right now completely unrelated to this post.)

Windows Server 2008

Another false assumption – I know EVERYTHING there is to know about Windows Server 2003 so I am already an expert at W2k8. Wrong again. You may be able to figure out things fairly quickly but there are a lot of little things that are different. For a SharePoint admin IIS 7 != IIS 6 no matter how badly we want it to be. Example? I tried to setup SharePoint and Kerberos on a Windows 2008 box and a few hours later I found the new check box I needed to deselect in a post from Spence. :( Did you know that W2k8 has a 28 MB file upload limit baked in? I didn't until the first time I encountered it. Windows Server 2008 WFE will not allow large file uploads The list goes on and on.

Now this stuff does not mean W2k8 is bad, just different. And until you dig your claws in and play A LOT you aren't going to learn these little differences. I have been trying to blog the differences as I have encountered them but there are more to come.

Another random thought about W2k8 is our dear friend Hyper-V. If you see the use of Hyper-V in your future you need to start with it early and often also. It is not the next version of Virtual PC or Virtual Server so experience with those products will not help. Hyper-V is faster but at a cost of having to learn again how to build and configure things. Even more annoying, most of your W2k3 VHDs will have to be reactivated when you move them to Hyper-V. Very rude. Once again, you aren't going to find the nuisances until you try.

My challenge to you

Find yourself a box you can install Windows Server 2008 64 bit on with Hyper-V. Then in Hyper-V create a virtual Windows Server 2008 64 bit box. Now add SQL 2008 and then MOSS 2007 SP1 + the December cumulative update. How did that go? I am sure it wasn't easy but I promise you will have learned plenty along the way and at the end you will have a nice play ground for testing against. Hell, then be sure to update your resume with all of the new skills you just acquired. :)

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Windows Server 2008 WFE will not allow large file uploads

Shane — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:51:35 GMT

I had a client a couple weeks ago who upgraded from SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007 using the database attach method. This means the MOSS farm was built on new hardware which we chose Windows Server 2008 for. This was a very challenging upgrade for several reasons but primarly because the 2003 site database was in bad shape. Once we worked through the issues and got things up we noticed strange behavior. When uploading a large file (anything larger than 28 MB) the browser would instantly come back with a 404 error. So our first thought was check the three normal settings for large uploads.

Central Admin > Application Management > General web application settings. By default this is 50 MB. You can increase to 2 GB.
Then you can go into IIS. Find your web application and go to properties. Then change the IIS timeout from 120 seconds to a much larger setting.
Upload.aspx is an application page. Application pages have their own web.config which controls their timeout. The default for these pages is 360 seconds. You need to increase this.

All of these settings apply whether you are using w2k3 or w2k8 and are covered in this kb http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925083

We made all of those changes and no change in behavior. And besides we didn't have a timeout issue because on a 27 MB file is processed for a few seconds and then uploaded no problem. On a 30 MB or greater file it failed instantly.

Todd Klindt to the rescue he pointed me at this KB944981 - You cannot upload files that are larger than 28 MB on a Windows Server 2008-based computer that is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

So I gave it a try and it actually made things worse. What the heck? Well then I reread it. They tell you to make a change to the web.config and say just put the change in the <configuration> section. WRONG! Well kind of. You need to make the change in the <configuration> section but it has to be after the </configSections> tag. So I recommend you paste their change between </configSections> and the <SharePoint> tag.

Now everything works great. Do note their change only allows you to upload files with a size of 50 MB. If you want larger you will need to increase the maxAllowedContentLength=.

If you are going to be playing with Windows Server 2008 and SharePoint I recommend you go poke around the SharePoint and w2k8 resource center at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735844.aspx. Thanks to Emily Schroeder for the tweet on that page which she runs. J

Even better yet Todd and I have some fun new stuff coming on Windows Server 2008 and 64 bit before the end of the year.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Windows 2008 not playing nice with Central Admin

Shane — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:51:25 GMT

This is one for your "that is odd" file.

Just finished installing MOSS 2007 on a fresh w2k8 server with SQL 2008. All 64 bit. I am hoping to build a dedicated production server for http://www.sharepoint911.com instead of the current prod, test, dev, try crazy stuff server we have. J

After I finished installing I ran configuration wizard and created a new farm successfully. When config wizard finished it automatically launched Central Admin and all was well. I started bouncing around starting services and such. The home page of central admin looked something like:

Notice those nice links for Services on server or Incoming mail. Just as things should be.

Then I closed the browser and opened it again and manually typed in the URL for central admin. Now look at the screen shot and the missing links in the Topology and Services section.

Over on the Application Management tab Create a web application is missing. Why?

Well some people have learned (the hard way) if you are not a local administrator on the central admin server you have the same missing links but since I was logged in as the same user that wasn't my issue. After about 10 minutes of beating my head on the table I did find the difference. When you go to Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office Server > SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration it is actually running configuration wizard with the showcentraladmin parameter. Through the magic that is SharePoint this command is also setting Internet Explorers protected mode to Off. With it Off you get all of the links. When you navigate by typing in the URL to Central Admin in IE protected mode is On by default for the Local Intranet zone. With it On no links for you.

You want even stranger. When I open IE on my Vista desktop and navigate to central admin (on the remote server) by default the site opens in the Internet Zone with Protected Mode On and I still get all the proper links.

Hope this saves someone. On a bright note it has inspired my next post.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting