SharePoint Portal Server Administration T hroughout this book, you have used the SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) Central Administra- tion site to manage sites and users. However, administration and maintenance in SPS2003 goes beyond simply setting up user accounts and team sites. Just like any other critical business system in your organization, SPS requires a comprehensive maintenance plan to protect cor- porate data and ensure optimal performance. Because SPS acts as a repository for documents and information, you must ensure that the system is backed up regularly. You must also ensure that unused sites are removed to free system resources. Additionally, SPS services must be configured for performance. Beyond these basic tasks, your installation may require the development of a disaster recovery plan or service- level agreement. Although the intent of this chapter is not to act as a substitute for the Administrator’s Guide, I will examine the major administrative tasks you must perform to keep an SPS installation healthy. Back Up and Restore One of the first things that you will want to configure in a production environment is proper backup of the SPS installation. SPS ships with a backup and restore tool that is accessible by selecting Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Portal Server Data Backup and Restore. Figure 11-1 shows the utility. The backup and restore utility backs up every aspect of your SPS installation with the exception of custom Web Parts. Therefore, you should back up the Windows 2003 system in conjunction with the backup and restore utility. Additionally, several prerequisites must be met before the utility can run correctly: • SQL Server 2000 client tools must be installed on the server where the utility runs. • The service account for SQL Server must have write access to the backup directory. • The search service must have write access to the backup directory. • The search database access accounts must have write access to the backup directory. • The user configuring backup and restore must have write access to the backup directory. 357 CHAPTER 11 ■ ■ ■ 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 357 Backup and restore in SPS is simple because you can only perform the operation for the entire portal as a whole. Although the task itself is simple, you pay the price in flexibility. For example, you cannot recover a single lost file from a document library. Instead, you have to rebuild the server and restore the entire portal. This is a significant drawback, to say the least. We can only hope that a third party produces a better set of tools that will allow more granular restorations. Here are the steps to follow to perform a backup: 1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator. 2. Open Windows Explorer. 3. Create a new directory at the location C:\backup. 4. Select Start ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Portal Server Data Backup and Restore. 5. In the “Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 backup and restore” dialog, click Browse. 6. In the “File prefix for all backup images” dialog, navigate to the C:\backup directory and type the prefix backup1 in the File Name field. 7. Click Open. CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION358 Figure 11-1. The backup and restore utility 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 358 8. In the Backup Comment field, type A test backup. 9. In the Available Components list, expand the tree and ensure that all of the components are selected. 10. Click Backup to run the backup. Site Usage Analysis The distributed model of SPS potentially allows any user in the organization to create sites. This is particularly true when you enable Self-Service Site Creation (SSSC) mode. The result of this approach is that an organization can rapidly have hundreds of team sites created. This sit- uation not only increases the complexity of site navigation for all users, but also increases the resources required to maintain backups. Therefore, you will want to take steps to ensure that the available sites are bringing significant value to end users. Site usage analysis gives you a way to track the use of sites within SPS and to identify those that are bringing the most value. Site usage analysis is not configured by default in SPS. You must begin by configuring it at the server level. To enable site usage analysis, follow these steps: 1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator. 2. Select Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Central Administration. 3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Component Configuration ➤ Configure Usage Analysis Processing. 4. On the Configure Usage Analysis Processing page, check the box labeled Enable Logging. 5. Check the box labeled Enable Usage Analysis Processing. 6. Set appropriate parameters. 7. Click OK. Once usage analysis is configured, it must run before any information is available. After it runs, however, you will be able to view usage information at either the collection or site level. The statistics provide information on such things as the number of page hits and number of unique users. Here is what you need to do to view usage statistics: 1. Log in to SPS as a member of the Administrator site group. 2. Navigate to any top-level site in the portal. 3. From the site home page, click the Site Settings link. 4. On the Site Settings page, select Administration ➤ Go to Site Administration. 5. On the Top-Level Site Administration page, select Site Collection Administration ➤ View Site Collection Usage Summary. CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION 359 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 359 6. On the Site Collection Usage Summary page, view the statistics and click OK. 7. On the Top-Level Site Administration page, select Management and Statistics ➤ View Site Usage Data. 8. On the Site Usage Report page, view the statistics for this individual site. Cleaning Up Unused Sites Along with ensuring the quality of available sites, another problem with site proliferation is that there is really no motivation for any user to delete a site after it has served its purpose. If a user creates a site for the annual company sales meeting, they are unlikely to care about the site after the meeting is over. In fact, this is just a larger version of the same issues that affect all file systems. If you were to examine the file system backups at most organizations, you would find that a significant number of the documents being backed up no longer have any use. The solution in SPS is to implement site use confirmation and deletion. This facility allows SPS to query site owners and determine if a site is still in use. The owners confirm sites that are still in use, whereas sites that are no longer useful may be deleted. If you want, you can even set up SPS to automatically delete sites that have not been confirmed over a period of time. Site use and confirmation is configured to send e-mail notifications to the owner of a site collection that has not been used for a specified period of time. When the e-mail is received, the owner will have a set of hyperlinks in the e-mail that will allow the owner to confirm that the site is in use or delete the site. If you have enabled automatic site deletion, then the site will automatically be deleted if the site collection owner fails to respond to the request after a configured number of notifications. To enable site use confirmation and deletion, take these steps: 1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator. 2. Select Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration. 3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration ➤ Configure Virtual Server Settings from the Virtual Server List. 4. On the Virtual Server List page, select Default Web Site. 5. On the Virtual Server Settings page, select Automated Web Site Collection Management ➤ Configure Site Collection Use Confirmation and Deletion. 6. On the “Configure site collection use confirmation and auto-deletion” page, check the box labeled “Send e-mail notifications to owners of unused site collections.” 7. Set the notification parameters. 8. Check the box labeled “Automatically delete the site collection if use is not confirmed” if you want to enable automatic site deletion. 9. Click OK. CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION360 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 360 Enabling automatic site deletion ensures that unneeded sites are always removed from the SPS installation. However, automatically deleting sites can result in the removal of sites that are seldom used but contain valuable information. For this reason, you should always set reasonable notification intervals that give plenty of opportunity for site collection owners to respond. Finally, you should require that all site collections have a designated secondary owner who can respond to the notifications if the primary owner is unavailable. In order to make sure that all site collections have a secondary site collection contact, follow these steps: 1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator. 2. Select Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration. 3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration ➤ Configure Virtual Server Settings from the Virtual Server List. 4. On the Virtual Server List page, select Default Web Site. 5. On the Virtual Server Settings page, select Automated Web Site Collection Manage- ment ➤ Configure Self-Service Site Creation. 6. On the Configure Self-Service Site Creation page, ensure that Self-Service Site Creation mode is On. 7. Check the box labeled Require Secondary Contact. 8. Click OK. The site use confirmation and deletion system uses two different message texts to send notifications: one text is used when you enable site confirmation, while the other text is used if you have also enabled automatic deletion. Administrators may customize these notices, which are located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\ TEMPLATE\1033\XML\DeadWeb.xml. Listing 11-1 shows the contents of the notification file. Listing 11-1. The Site Notification Message <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <!-- _lcid="1033" _version="11.0.5510" _dal="1" --> <!-- _LocalBinding --> <Email> <Confirmation> <ConfirmationSubject> Confirm SharePoint Web site in use </ConfirmationSubject> <ConfirmationBody> <![CDATA[Please follow the link below to your SharePoint Web site to confirm that it is still in use. CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION 361 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 361 <br><a href="|0">|0</a><br><br> If the site is not being used, please go to <a href="|1">|1</a>, and select "Delete This Site" to remove the Web site. <br><br> You will receive reminders of this until you confirm the site is in use, or delete it.]]> </ConfirmationBody> </Confirmation> <AutoDeleteWarning> <AutoDeleteSubject> ACTION REQUIRED: Your SharePoint site collection is about to expire </AutoDeleteSubject> <AutoDeleteBody> <![CDATA[To extend the expiration date for this site collection, click the link below:<br><a href="|0">|0</a><br><br> Otherwise this site collection, including all of its subsites, might be deleted.<br><br> If this site collection is no longer needed, you can delete it by going to <a href="|1">|1</a>, and selecting "Delete this site".<br><br> Please note - When a SharePoint Web site collection is deleted, all Web sites, content and information which were part of the site collection are completely erased. The site can only be restored if a backup exists.]]> </AutoDeleteBody> </AutoDeleteWarning> </Email> Managing the Search Service Although SPS provides several ways to locate information, such as area and personal links, there is no substitute for a healthy search engine. The quality of searches performed within the portal is dependent upon properly scheduling and building indexes of content on key sources. Early in the book, I specified the account to use when crawling data sources, but it is important to remember that the account used must have permission to access the data sources you want to include in the index. To change the access account, you need to follow this procedure: 1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator. 2. Select Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration. 3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Server Config- uration ➤ Configure Server Farm Account Settings. 4. On the “Configure server farm account settings” page, locate the Default Content Access Account section. CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION362 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 362 5. Check the Specify Account box. 6. Type the user name and password of an account that has permission to access the sources you wish to include in your index and search process. Defining External Content Sources In most organizations, searchable content will not be strictly limited to sites, documents, and lists contained within SPS. Instead, there are likely to be several external sources that contain documents that you will want to make accessible through searching. Along with site content already contained in the portal, SharePoint can index Microsoft Exchange servers, Lotus Notes databases, web sites, and file servers. To add a content source, follow these steps: 1. Log in to SPS as a member of the Administrator site group. 2. From the portal home page, click the Site Settings link. 3. On the Site Settings page, select Search Settings and Indexed Content ➤ Configure Search and Indexing. 4. On the Configure Search and Indexing page, select General Content Settings and Indexing Status ➤ Add Content Source. 5. On the Add Content Source page, select the type of content to crawl and click Next. 6. Specify the particular parameters necessary to crawl the source. 7. Click OK. 8. Establish a full and incremental update schedule for the source. Scheduling Content Crawls Regardless of whether the content is a direct part of SPS or an external source, you will need to schedule content crawls to make the source available in search results. SPS’s search service supports Full, Incremental, and Adaptive updates of the content indexes. A Full update crawls the entire content source and updates the search index for every document. A Full update will add new information to the index, modify existing information, and delete obsolete information. A Full update is an intensive operation that should be sched- uled for off-peak hours and performed only occasionally. Generally, a Full update is warranted under the following conditions: • Whenever the index update rules are changed • Whenever the server crashes • When the portal structure changes significantly • When the noise word file is changed • When an index is manually reset CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION 363 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 363 An Incremental update, on the other hand, only indexes content that has changed since the last crawl. This makes an Incremental update much more efficient. You can schedule such updates daily during off-peak hours to ensure that the search results are always up to date. An Adaptive update uses historical analysis to try and perform a more efficient update than even that achieved with an Incremental update. The analysis uses information from pre- vious updates to determine which documents are likely to have changed. The update then focuses on this set of documents. To create an update schedule, follow these steps: 1. Log in to SPS as a member of the Administrator site group. 2. From the portal home page, click the Site Settings link. 3. On the Site Settings page, select Search Settings and Indexed Content ➤ Configure Search and Indexing. 4. On the Configure Search and Indexing page, select General Content Settings and Indexing Status ➤ Manage Search Schedules. 5. If the content source already has a schedule defined, you may select Edit from the drop-down menu associated with the item. 6. If the content source does not have a schedule defined, click the New Search Schedule link. Creating Keywords Keywords are used by the search engine to show results more prominently when a search result includes such words. Administrators can create and manage keywords by selecting Site Settings ➤ Search Settings and Indexed Content ➤ Manage Keywords. In this section, you can create keywords, identify synonyms, and associate them with a Best Bet URL. Figure 11-2 shows a sample results page with a Best Bet prominently displayed using a star icon. CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION364 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 364 Enabling Online Presence Wherever a user is referenced throughout SPS, you can provide presence information. Presence information is used to identify who is online and send instant messages to them. Presence infor- mation is available only when the client machine has Office 2003 installed along with either the Microsoft Messenger or the MSN Messenger. Figure 11-3 shows an example of presence infor- mation displayed in the portal. CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION 365 Figure 11-2. Displaying Best Bets Figure 11-3. Displaying presence information 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 365 To enable online presence, follow these steps: 1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator. 2. Select Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration. 3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration ➤ Configure Virtual Server Settings from the Virtual Server List Page. 4. On the Virtual Server List page, select Default Web Site. 5. On the Virtual Server Settings page, select Virtual Server Management ➤ Virtual Server General Settings. 6. On the Virtual Server General Settings page, select Yes to “Enable person name Smart Tag and online status for members.” 7. Click OK. Managing Quotas and Locks As an organization uses SPS, it will consume more and more resources. To ensure that the instal- lation remains healthy, you need to specify limits—called quotas—surrounding the resources that any site can use. If usage gets out of hand, you may even need to lock the site so that no additional resources can be consumed. Quotas are not enabled by default in SPS. To enable them, you must define a quota tem- plate that contains the restrictions you wish to impose. Quota values are maintained in the configuration database and are typically applied to site collections when they are first created. The quota template is used to apply a set of restrictions to a site collection all at once. Follow these steps to create and apply a quota template: 1. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator. 2. Select Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration. 3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration ➤ Configure Site Quotas and Locks from the Virtual Server List. 4. On the Manage Quotas and Locks page, select Manage Quotas ➤ Manage Quota Templates. 5. On the Manage Quota Templates page, select “Create a new quota template.” 6. Name the quota Test Template. 7. Click OK. 8. Return to the Manage Quotas and Locks page. 9. Select Manage Quotas ➤ Manage Site Collection Quota and Locks. CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION366 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 366 [...]... for SharePoint, it will use the alias with search results to ensure that the address links are always valid 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 369 CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION Follow these steps to list the alias name with SharePoint Services: 1 Log in to SPSPortal as a portal administrator 2 Select Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Central Administration. .. Administration 3 On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration ➤ Configure Alternate Portal Site URLs for Intranet, Extranet, and Custom Access 4 On the “Configure alternate portal access settings” page, select Edit from the dropdown menu associated with the Default Web Site entry 5 In the Intranet URL field, type http:/ /sharepoint. sps.local... click Save 17 Save the file into the \\spsportal\certificates\spsportal directory 18 On the Certificate Issued page, click the Download Certificate Chain link 19 In the File Download dialog, click Save 20 Save the file into the \\spsportal\certificates\spsportal directory 371 5750_c11_final.qxd 372 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 372 CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION Installing the New Certificate... Page 373 CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION Testing Secure Access Once the certificate is installed on the portal server, you are ready to utilize SSL When users access the portal through SSL, they will initially see the certificate warning; you can subsequently install the certificate on their machine and trust your root authority This will allow them to access the portal without acknowledging... environments, 29–30 configuring Remote Desktop Administration (RDA) on SPSController, 35–36 installing Exchange 2003 on SPSController, 33–35 installing SPS2003 on SPSPortal, 39–44 installing SQL Server 2000 on SPSPortal, 38–39 installing Visual Studio NET 2003 on SPSPortal, 45 installing Windows Server 2003 on SPSController, 30–34 installing Windows Server 2003 on SPSPortal, 36–38 preparing SPSClient, 45 form... creation, 29–30 configuring Remote Desktop Administration (RDA) on SPSController, 35–36 installing Exchange 2003 on SPSController, 33–35 installing SPS2003 on SPSPortal, 39–44 installing SQL Server 2000 on SPSPortal, 38–39 installing Visual Studio NET 2003 on SPSPortal, 45 installing Windows Server 2003 on SPSController, 30–34 installing Windows Server 2003 on SPSPortal, 36–38 preparing SPSClient, 45 development... 30 service packs, 44 SharePoint installation considerations, 25–26, 30 Smart Document programmability support, 242 SPS2003 on SPSPortal, 39–44 SQL Server 2000 on SPSPortal, 38–39 Terminal Services, 203 upgrading from SPS2001, 29 Visual Studio NET 2003 on SPSPortal, 45 Web clients, 204 Web Part template for SharePoint Services, 119 Windows Server 2003 on SPSController, 30–34 on SPSPortal, 36–38 integrating... N Namespace attribute, Web Parts, 140 naming servers, 31 News areas, 51 ■ O OBJECT tag, ActiveX controls (client-side Web Parts), 187–188 Office System, 1, 17–18, 24–25, 229 integration See Office System integration SharePoint components, 18 Office 2003, 24–25 SharePoint installation considerations, 25–26, 30 SharePoint Portal Server (SPS), 23–24 Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), 19–23 solutions See... Document Information tab, 235 Documents tab, 234 Links tab, 234 Membership tab, 233 Status tab, 233–234 Tasks tab, 234 SharePoint, 1 SharePoint Portal Server See SPS SharePoint Services Office System integration See Office System integration programming See programming SharePoint Services sharepoints, 367 creating aliases, 367–369 enabling Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), 369–373 ShowAllSites property, 306... Common Name step, type spsportal in the Common Name field 20 Click Next 21 In the Geographical Information step, enter the appropriate information and click Next 22 In the Certificate Request File Name step, click Browse 5750_c11_final.qxd 11/3/05 9:31 PM Page 371 CHAPTER 11 ■ SHAREPOINT PORTAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION 23 In the Saves As dialog, navigate to the C:\certificates\spsportal directory and click . ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Central Administration. 3. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, select Component. Log in to SPSPortal as a local administrator. 2. Select Start ➤ All Programs ➤ SharePoint Portal Server ➤ SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration.