KY Sharepoint Users Group

If you live in the Louisville, KY area, come out to the Sharepoint users group.  We exist not only to spread the awesomeness of Sharepoint, but we want to develop a sense of community around the product.  We can all learn from each other’s experiences.

The group was started a few months back by Jeremy Sublett a MOSS MVP, and myself to develop said community.  Jeremy’s background is development, and mine is in infrastructure, so I think we offer a great mix of skills and experience to enhance the local community.

The group meets the 3rd Thursday of every month at the Mirazon offices from 5:30-7:00.  The events are free and we encourage anyone, from n00b to seasoned veteran to attend.  Check the link on the right of the page to go to our site and get more details.

Hopefully we will see you there!

MOSS service accounts and passwords…made easy.

There is a great post floating out there about all of the service accounts needed to properly setup MOSS.  Right off the bat there is eight, and more to come with each new app pool account.  Check the post here, its excellent!

Now this can present a bit of a conundrum…we need to give these accounts secure and strong passwords, and you DON’T want to give each account the same password.  If you did, why have multiple accounts?  It totally defeats the purpose.  So I found an awesome tool that helps with this: The PCTools Password Generator.

Quite a heft of options!  And for the paranoid security freaks (I include myself ), it will allow you to generate the password via an SSL secured site.

They also provide a downloadable version of it on the bottom of the same page as above:

 

That is especially handy if you have to do this a lot.  Since I am a consultant, I tend to do this often.

If you have a password policy at your company or organization that requires service accounts have password changes, this offers even more benefit.  Remember if you have to changes passwords for Sharepoint, change the service accounts and app pool accounts via the GUI or STSADM.  For the Central Admin App Pool, you must run the “stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials” command.  It should look like this:

stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin DOMAIN\username -password newpassword

NOTE:  This command also updates the SP Timer service as well.

Hope this helps!

Sharepoint and Windows Server 2008.

The latest project that I have been working on has been a full 64 bit implementation, but not only that, the MOSS servers are running server 2008.  I have to say that the IIS7 interface has taken some time to get used to, but I really like.  The console’s interface is much more robust and feature rich, but I just really like how much more intuitive it is.  There is a bit of a learning curve, but once you get used to it, it makes life much much easier.  In fact, it seems that Sharepoint actually runs faster on IIS7/Server 2008 than on IIS6/Server2003.

Check the links: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/01/25/case-study-amd-deployment-on-windows-server-2008-and-sharepoint-server-2007-is-faster-and-more-manageable.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/08/03/wss-3-0-on-windows-2008-is-hot.aspx

Not only these, but my customers see it, and they are impressed.

If you have a spare server available and it will run Server 2008, get the WSS v3 bit (with SP1, please) and go to town.  The only thing that you need to do before you install WSS is to install the .NET 3.0 role, which will in turn install IIS7 (you will be prompted, and you must allow). When you run the installer, and you have done the minimum steps as described above, the actual install process will take care of the other particulars for you. Once the install is complete, run the config wizard and have fun!

 

Click Add Features…

Tick the .NET Framework 3.0 Features box and then you will be prompted to add the IIS Role.

Click the Add Required Role Services.

Read the text (if desired) about the IIS Role installation and click next.

The default boxes selected here are fine for the installation, Sharepoint will add what it needs.  If you want to select more, that is fine.  You can always add or subtract later.  Be advised that this could adversely affect Sharepoint.  Click next when ready.

 

Now is time to install.  One thing before you click install…notice the hyperlink at the bottom?  Print, email or save this information…how cool is that?  Documentation made simple(er).  Click install.

Now the waiting…

And we’re done! Reboot, double click the Sharepoint installer, and get to playing!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog!  Allow me to introduce myself.  I am Greg Kamer, an IT Professional living in Louisville, KY.  I work for The Mirazon Group, a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner who specializes in infrastructure and information worker solutions.  As for me, my first love in technology is SharePoint.  Both WSS v3 and MOSS…oh yessir.  I plan on making this a place where I can share my professional and sometimes personal experiences in life. 

What I would really like to see here is a community; a community of IT pros and SharePoint junkies alike, coming to share their experiences and thoughts on all things IT.  Heck, even thought I am an infrastructure specialist, I would love to hear from end users and developers.  I hope that this blog will allow for great experience for anyone interested in SharePoint, from the novice to the most seasoned veteran.

Thanks…and enjoy!