:4TheLuvofSharePoint – Ivan Sanders

SharePoint 2013 and Metalogix Content Matrix

SharePoint is mission-critical and users demand availability. Content Matrix allows you to migrate SharePoint by site collection, site, list, library, business unit, or department with zero downtime. Run old and new farms in parallel and test and re-arrange as often needed. Along with the Re-Organizer feature empowers your site collection owners and users, to manage SharePoint sites, content and metadata on an ongoing basis to keep in sync with business needs. All of my clients love this tool as it makes their environments more flexible and now with Re-Organizer we are enabling the site owners to more easily manage their site structure.

Error on Installation of Content Matrix 7.3.0002

During the installation of the Online edition of Content Matrix version 7.3.0002 while installing Metalogix Extensions Web Services you will see the error "MD5 check failed for the current file to be staged, the file may be corrupt" in the screenshot to the left. However, the installation will continue and complete. Also, if you go to the location in your AppData Folder and copy the "Metalogix SharePoint Extensions Web Service Setup.msi" it will run locally without any issues. The error appears to be related to the msi not matching the online manifest

Error Copying List Views Content Matrix 7.3.xxxx

Unfortunately, the installation error is not the only issue. The infamous "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" error occurs when you attempt to copy list views. However, if you copy the complete list all views are included in the copy. In looking at the error details it appears to be caused by a dialog box, this makes sense as it never creates the job or writes to any log.

Error Copying Sites Lists or Library’s  Content Matrix Organizer 7.3.xxxx

The last symptom was when attempting to copy / move anything  using the Reorganize from the Widget Drop Down or the Ribbon of the list…

We initially found and reported these errors on 12/18/2015..

At first we thought incorrectly the error only occurred after an upgrade from an earlier version of Content Matrix, after further testing we found the issues existed in all 7.3.x versions whether installed as part of an upgrade or installed in a pristine environment. As always Metalogix Content Matrix is our favorite tool for SharePoint Migrations whether on-prem or online and Metalogix support is very helpful.  The only resolution at this time is to revert to a previous version Metalogix Content Matrix version 7.2.0017

Ivan

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Windows Server 2003 & 2003 R2 Support is ending July 14, 2015

What does end of support mean for you? After July 14, Microsoft will no longer issue security updates for any version of Windows Server 2003:

• If you are still running Windows Server 2003 , you need to take steps NOW to plan and execute a migration strategy to protect your infrastructure.
• By migrating to Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Azure or Office 365, you can achieve concrete benefits, including improved performance, reduced maintenance requirements, and increased agility and speed of response to the business.
• Extended support for Windows Server 2003 will end on July 14, 2015, and customers are once again looking at the final months of a generous Windows product support cycle. Recommendations for customers using Windows Server 2003 include the following:
• Customers that go beyond the termination of extended support place themselves at risks and potentially in a regulatory noncompliance situation. Even if regulatory compliance is not a concern, the security improvements that Windows Server 2012 R2 provides are worth adopting if just to help defend against industrial espionage.

 Key issues if you are still supporting Windows Server 2003 after July 14th 2015:

• Lack of patches/updates/non-security fixes. No-cost, non-security-related update support terminated on July 13, 2010. However, support for non-security-related updates was available on a for-fee basis to customers that felt it was important to continue to have access to fixes that could help their system run optimally and perform well.
• Elimination of security fixes. Customers see security fixes as being among the most critical fixes for their installed servers. These fixes will no longer be delivered to customers for their Windows Server 2003 servers, regardless of how severe a given issue may be. This may be less of a problem with many aging Windows Server 2003 applications, mainly because the applications still in use are increasingly likely to be inward facing rather than outward facing.
• Lack of support. Customers no longer have the ability to contact Microsoft for technical support in the event of a server problem. This becomes particularly important when a system experiences an outage and customers are unable to restore the system and recover data and applications from the stalled machine.
• Application support challenges. Application ISVs dislike having a complex support matrix and typically support current versions along with a finite number of earlier editions of the product. For most ISVs, an 11 -year-old application is probably already past its rational support life cycle, and in most cases, these application ISVs are about to discontinue or have already discontinued support for aging operating system environments such as Windows Server 2003.

Regulatory Compliance :

• Customers in regulated industries or handling regulated data, including healthcare and payment card industry (PCI) data, may find that they are out of compliance, which could mean fines or being cut off from key trading partners that seek to protect their own regulatory compliance status.
• Inability to leverage modern cloud options from Microsoft and other vendors. Windows Server 2003 can run on virtually every hypervisor in the market, but that does not mean it is an equal player in these modern deployment scenarios. For example, Windows Server 2003 installations cannot be re-hosted in a Microsoft Azure environment, unless it is a 64-bit image, but the vast majority of Windows Server 2003 installations are 32-bit solutions. So even if customers bring the 32-bit image to the Azure cloud, they cannot continue using that operating system instance. When spinning up new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) instances in Azure, Microsoft provides catalog images only for 64-bit instances of Windows Server 2012 R2.

Bottom Line:

Security vulnerabilities could arise for which no protection is possible. Attackers who exploit these openings could gain control of systems based on Windows Server 2003. Then use the compromised system to launch attacks from within the data center against other, newer systems to capture and relay data from the network to the attacker outside and introduce false transactions or tamper with legitimate business activities. If such an attack were to take place, it may be impossible or impractical to stop it from succeeding and from being repeated, since the code vulnerability inside the OS will not be patched. Business functions dependent upon the system running under Windows Server 2003 may be unexpectedly subject to complete loss of access to the functionality of the system if it has to be shut down due to compromise. Alternatively, lack of viable alternatives for the business function may dictate that the system remain in operation despite compromises, thus endangering other systems that are not based on Windows Server 2003.

Wow 13 Years who would have thought…

If you have NOT decommissioned your Windows Server 2003 Servers then you should purchase an Extended Sup[port agreement for these servers and actively be in the process of moving to new Hardware and Software… You can use the Windows Server 2003 Migration Planning Assistant which will walk you through a migration assessment and help you choose a Microsoft partner if you need help in the migration and decommissioning of your old hardware.

Ivan

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This is something that IT Pros and Devs should readily understand. However, it can save all users time and money..

As an example: I run Windows Server 2012 R2 on my Laptop  where I have 2 1tb SSD drives (they are a lot cheaper now) so I can natively run SharePoint instead of having to use several VMs. When I have Windows Server 2012 R2 Installed I use De-Duplication and it enables me to save 436GB of disk space by keeping a single version of the file on the data drive while creating pointers to the file in every location where a duplicate exists. If you do a lot of SharePoint development you end up with a lot of Hives so that you can easily start up a replica of your clients environment. Since I can only have two hard drives on my laptop and I am swapping out the DVD player to so. De-Duplication is a life saver, it allows me to store twice the amount of data as the disk would normally hold. if I then install a Desktop OS on my laptop I have to move my second drive to a server and copy the files off as they have been deduplicated and I would have been unable to open them on using the Windows 10 Client ,

The Server community has enjoyed DeDuplication since Windows Server 2012 in an Operating System but all SANs of all manufactures have this feature build in (too bad they don’t fit in your laptop bag). This is a hard drive  storage technology that should be made available in every OS not just  Server OSs. The really stupid part is that we can copy the features from the Windows Server OS and enable them on Windows 8, 8.1, and now 10. However, I really like to keep my systems as pristine as possible which is difficult enough when developing software..

If your running Windows 10 like me your probably running build 10130,  then complete the following steps to ask Microsoft to include this feature in Windows 10 Client OS

1. Open Search or hit  the Windows key and type  feedback, then click on Windows feedback to Open the feedback app

2. Click on Files, Folders, and Online Storage. and type in dedup into the search bar

3. You will find 5/6 of people requesting de-duplication to be added to the Windows !0 Client OS, please Click UpVote at the bottom of each request

It is NOT a LUXURY to have De-Duplication on Windows 10 Client OS is a necessity as we can only fit 2 drives in as laptop and when you run multiple VMs to help people learn  software development skills. I cant really imagine why it would not be added to the Windows 10 Client OS.

Ivan

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It seems like everyone NothingButSharePoint and Microsoft Office and Microsoft Bogs states that you can not embed unless your using Office 365 (this may have been due to using SharePoint 2010). There are many more post and articles that require you to use Onedrive.. There are probably many better ways to sharing Content using WAC with multiple farms and SharePoint On-Prem and I would enjoy hearing about how you have solved this issue

Embed a PowerPoint Presentation from a source SharePoint Farm and render the presentation in a target SharePoint Farm using CEWP

1. Go to http://focalpoint.cotoso.com and search for PPTX

2. Use the Drop Down, Choose embedded information, and Copy All

3. Go to http://learning.fabricam.com

5. Add Content Editor WebPart

6. Click Inside the WebPart Choose the Orange Insert, Click Embed Code

7. Insert (Paste CTRL+V) the Code you copied from http://focalpoint.contoso.com

8. Then Click the Insert button,

9. Next Edit the WebPart, and change the Width to 540px, then click OK

10. Click Check-in, then Publish this Draft

Note: The Site Collection Feature – Cross-Farm Site Permissions is activated on both Farms, the cross-farm site permissions feature to allow internal SharePoint applications to access websites across farms.

Ivan

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If you have upgraded from a previous version of Metalogic Content Matrix SharePoint edition or have multiple Content Matrix editions (SharePoint, Fileshare, Blog) deployed you may receive the error “Failed to find the main application assembly” when attempting to run any of your PowerShell Copy Job Scripts. If you are not running the Metalogix copy jobs in PowerShell you will not be affected by this issue.

Resolution

The resolution that worked for me was to uninstall Metalogix Content Matrix Consoles, Content Organizer and the Content Matrix WSPs. Open a command prompt in admin mode and run Gacutil /lr > E:\Apps\gacutil.txt to pipe the contents of the GAC to a txt file to review. In one environment I found two assemblies were not being removed Metalogix.System.Commands.dll and Metalogix.SharePoint.Adapters.StoragePoint.dll. The setup uses Installutil and was unable uninstall the two assemblies listed previously.

From the open command prompt run the following

• gacutil /u Metalogix.System.Commands.dll
• gacutil /u Metalogix.SharePoint.Adapters.StoragePoint.dll

substitute any assemblies you found for the ones I used as necessary

Download gacutil as part of the Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8279. I spoke with Bill Wilcock the Western Regional Support Manager for Metalogix and “Metalogix has determined it is definitely the GAC assemblies and the issue should be resolved in the next hotfix release coming out in a week or two.” 

As I mentioned above, If you are not running the Metalogix copy jobs in PowerShell you will not be affected by this issue. But if your not running the copy jobs in PowerShell you should be; the jobs run at least 2x faster and you can set up a schedule in Task Scheduler to run your incremental jobs daily. This means that when its time to cut over,its very anticlimactic as the site admins, department admins, and end users have verified their content has been successfully migrated, they have time to get used to the new look and feel, and started using the new features prior to Go Live.

Cheers,

-Ivan

Blog: http://blogs.msmvps.com/ivansanders/

See you in Helsinki March 14th for SharePoint Saturday

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I came across a client the other day who had began implementing a new domain about 6 months ago with with 4 Hosts Windows Server 2012 Data Center Edition 2 XEON PROCS, with 12 Cores 24 Threads, 256GB RAM, along with 32TB Sata3 6GB Drives Internally RAID5, and 2 Internal Disks 1TB RAID0. However, they had used the Windows Server 2012 Data Center Evaluation Edition and were somewhat stuck.

What I found through friends and Google was though you couldn’t just add the Datacenter Edition Key using the GUI and we were unable to find a solution to resolve a group of Servers  that hosted the AD-DS Feature,

1. DISM /online /Get-CurrentEdition

The GUI doesn’t not work For Converting from Evaluation to FULL License

Make note of the Current Edition : In our case since we know its Data Center Edition the Current Edition : ServerDatacenter

Now that we know the Current Edition ID, its simple to run the next command

2. DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerDatacenter /ProductKey:1234-5678-9876-5432-1234 /AcceptEula

Note: Obviously you will need to use your own product Key as the one I have provided will not work.

Once you modify the PID to use your own licensed version. You will notice that the process will update components, then Install PID, Remove the Evaluation Components and ask you to reboot..

Once the server has rebooted, the bottom of your screen will no longer have the Evaluation Count Down

Happy Holidays Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays happy Holidays Happy Holidays Happy Holidays

Don’t forget to check Microsoft 12 Days of Deals with Surface RTs as low as $$99 dollars HAVE FUN…

Happy Holidays,

-Ivan

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I ran into an interesting problem after using terabyte unlimited image for Windows to transfer my installation from a 1TB drive to a 2TB Drive and I have used it many times without any issues. When I opened Office I received a notification that I had 3 days to Activate Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus and when I attempted to activate over the internet I received another notification that I had exceeded the number of licenses available, which luckily for me was wrong. So I logged in retrieved another Product Key (PID) and followed the instructions below to resolve the issue.

On Microsoft Windows 7 Click Start > Control Panel > Programs > and from the list of installed programs, find Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 (or your installed version of Office) > select the correct version and click Change.

• From the newly opened dialog box, select the Enter a Product Key (PID) option, and then click Continue.
• Type your new product key and check the option that says Attempt to automatically activate my product online to automatically activate your Installation of Office 2010 . Then click on Continue and Install Now.
  
• Note: Your computer must be connected to the Internet if you want to activate Office 2010 online.
• Most people have written you can also activate Office 2010 later by running any Office 2010 app, and then clicking on the File tab > Help. However, after changing the name of my computer and imaging onto a larger drive I was unable to change the PID unless I followed the steps above and completed a new install.

Cheers,

-Ivan

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A recent, isolated issue was discovered in the SharePoint 2010 Products April 2012 Cumulative Update that could result in an HTTP 500 error when users delete objects to include documents, lists, and Webs and a new object is created using the same path where the original object remains in the Recycle Bin.

The following packages were affected:
KB2598151 – SharePoint Server Package
KB2598152 – Project Server Package
KB2598321 – SharePoint Foundation Package
KB2598304 – Wss-x-none.msp

Resolution
This issue has been resolved in the revised packages. The revised packages include support for resolving issues related to the originally published updates.

Products Affected
SharePoint Foundation 2010
SharePoint Server 2010

We recommend that you test hotfixes before you deploy them in a production environment. Because the builds are cumulative, each new release contains all the hotfixes and security updates that were included in the previous SharePoint Server 2010 update package releases.

Description of the SharePoint Server 2010 cumulative update package (SharePoint server-package): April 24, 2012 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2598151

-Ivan

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REPOST of Joelo based on info from Todd Klindt and Facebook

-Ivan

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One of the frustrating experiences I have had recently due to using ADFS2, DirSync or SSO is the Public Certificate used for ADFS2 and SSO expires 20 days early (more about this in an additional post). However this shouldn’t be an issue since my Partner Account / The Partner of Record should be able to reset Passwords and mange my Client Office 365 environment. However, as you can see from the screenshot below. There isn’t anywhere to manage your clients, like there was in BPOS. Though if you login to http://Partner.Microsoft.com you can find many users and clients that you have being managed.

Partner Overview

The Partner overview allows you to view additional marketing material or Build Your Business, Send Invitations,  and Confirm Purchase Orders. While I still have less than 500 Client Users with only a handful of clients including my own company.

Though as you can see from the next screen shot I am logged in as the Global Admin of my Partner Account and been granted Assign Administrative Access to Companies I support

Global Admin Settings

There doesn’t appear to be any way to manage your clients. This wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t deprecated my Companies Global Admin Account by associating the email address with the ASDFS Service Account which is a domain user without certain privileges in my domain. Also, there isn’t any documentation that the companies Global Admin Account would be deprecated. The reason I did so was so that any issue with DirSync would be emailed to this account and it would be monitored. Interestingly, all DirSync failures go to your alternate email address in my case this is an unmanaged domain like yahoo.com.

There will be a more complete post where I walk through the steps of restoring SSO when your certificate expires 20 days prior to its Expiration.. The moral of the story is to use a Password LockBox Like the Lenovo Client Security Solution and create more than one Global Admin Account prior to implementing SS and don’t add the Global Admin Account to any of your Domain Users especially a service account.

-Ivan

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