April 2008 - Posts

• Receiving 401 Unathorized when accessing Mysites?

  So the other day I encountered this error when I simply tried to delete a personal site from a specific user.  Once I deleted this personal site then tried to recreate the MySite by clicking on the link I was receiving a credential prompt.  Even though I would input the password in correctly I was getting a 401 Unauthorized error after 3 prompts.  It didn’t matter if I clicked the Mysite link for a regular everyday user or for an administrator.  I suddenly could not access any personal sites!  Good thing this was a dev server!  Well let’s cut right to the chase and solve this problem shall we…     The solution was to check the Mysite web application and see if any site collections existed.  The web application that is hosting your Mysites should have a root site collection and in a perfect world that root site collection SHOULD be using the My Site Host template.  So it turned out that yes the web application that was hosting My Sites had a root site collection but was malfunctioning for some reason!  I deleted the root site collection from the web application and now it was officially empty.  I then created a site collection in the My site web app using the My site host template (shown below) found under the Enterprise tab when creating a site collection ONLY.   I created the site collection at the root of the web app which in my case was http://mysite.domainname.com.  I went back to see if the “My Site” link was functioning again and how great it was creating a brand new My Site as expected.  Remember that earlier I deleted the My Site and wanted to create a new one but when clicking on the My Site link and was greeted with a credential prompt and then the page shown below 401 UNAUTHORIZED (shown below).              So the tip of the day if you run into this problem when accessing Mysites throughout your organization is:  Re-create the MySite host site collection by using the MySite Host Template when creating your site collection in the web application that you are using to host your Mysites! I hope this saves some time for people when they run into this issue…and some hair on their head…o:p> Cheers,   Posted Apr 21 2008, 06:22 PM by jmedero with 9 comment(s) Filed under: MOSS 2007

• How do your MOSS/WSS content databases fill up?

  td { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; } Have you ever wondered how you should plan on setting up your content database for your MOSS/WSS farm?  Questions such as:  Should I pre-create my content databases before bringing up my farm?  Is it best to start with just one content database for my web applications?  How do these content databases fill up?  Does the first content database grow until it reaches its site warning or max limit and then SharePoint begins creating sites in the next content database inline?  If you have three content DBs attached to your web application how do they fill up and in what order?   Well today I decided to write up this blog article to describe the process and the logic behind your web applications content databases  It seems that they fill up evenly across all of the content DBs.  Lets jump right into an example as this is the best way to explain this topic.  For example, if you have three content DB’s all set to a warning of 5 sites and a max of 10 sites then SharePoint is going to evenly add sites to each of the content DB’s.  So you have content DB’s named: - Site A  -Site B  -Site C   Each are set to the aforementioned warning and max limits (5 site warning and 10 site max).  You then create three sites one by one and then have a look.  You should now see that one site has been created in each of the content DB’s.    This occurs because each site has been set to the same exact dimensions in regards to site warning limit and max site limit.   Now consider this scenario:   Content DB Site Count Site Warning limit Max site limit Site A 4 6 10 Site B 4 5 10 Site C 4 8 10   If an administrator was to create a site, which content database do you think SharePoint will create the site in?  If you guessed Site B you are correct!  SharePoint will create the site in the content database that is farthest away from its site warning limit.  Essentially SharePoint will try its best to keep the site count to site warning limit between all content databases as even as possible.  This meaning that if you were to pre-create three content databases before you began creating sites all of your sites/site collections would be spread throughout those three databases evenly.   I thought this was very interesting because even though this approach makes sense logically it makes it more difficult to pin point what content database a certain site might belong to.  Luckily enough we now have the option to move and split our content databases up via this new STSADM command line.  What I usually recommend to clients is to start with one content database and have the processes in place (site collection quotas, quota templates) to make sure that your content databases are manageable from a disaster recovery’s perspective.  The one content database at a time approach provides the ability (not the greatest of control) at a basic level to know what sites were created within what content database.  If current records are kept of when content databases are turned offline then this ability can become more accurate. Hope this helps!   Cheers, Posted Apr 07 2008, 07:34 PM by jmedero with 4 comment(s) Filed under: MOSS 2007, MOSS 2007 DR

• Lets go Frankie Edgar and Kurt Pellegrino

  Now to completely change my regularly scheduled program, check out what keeps me busy besides SharePoint.  I have not really posted anything other than SharePoint related topics on this blog but I do have other hobbies that I take part in besides SharePoint. One hobby or sport that I take interest in is MMA (mixed martial arts) man they really have an acronym for everything! Anyways a couple of years ago I began practicing mixed martial arts which is a sport that encompasses all of the different martial arts found around the world. Some of the more popular ones are kickboxing, Thai boxing, wrestling, and juijitsu. In recent years the UFC has made MMA a main stream sport. In fact it now competes with Boxing as far as appealing to men and women in the young to middle age demographic.  Fighters such as Frankie Edgar and Kurt Pelligrino sign contracts with the UFC to fight professionally.  These are sanctioned fights just like boxing with rules to keep the sport clean.  So for the people who think that fighting is simply putting a couple animals in a cage and let them kill each other this type of thinking is very off base.   In fact once you really understand the rules and the different art forms watching these fights you can really appreciate the sport as its own art form (MMA).  Anyways while training at Rhino academy where I used to live I got the chance to work out with Frankie and the guy is just an animal.  He works so hard that I think I got dizzy just watching him.  Not to mention sparring with Frankie I think he hit me 10 times to my one and looked fresh as can be after our 2min sparring session while I thought I was going to die.  Frankie trains extremely hard and its no wonder why he has made it to THE BIG SHOW.  Frankie and Kurt both grew up in nieghboring hometowns from where I grew up so of course I am always rooting for them.  Professional fighting is probably one of the hardest things to do for a living and takes great physical, and mental strength.  These guys have worked hard and have made it.  If anyone is interested they are going to be fighting tonight at 7pm EST on SPIKE TV.  Go check out the fight card.  Ok now back to our regular scheduled program. Posted Apr 02 2008, 06:18 PM by jmedero with 6 comment(s)