I'm up in Milwaukee this week at a client site, and was bummed about having to miss the Visual Studio 2008 Install Fest that was happening as part of the Dev Cares event at Clarity on Tuesday.
I figured that since I would be in Milwaukee, I would give Larry Clarkin a call to grab a bite/brew. Larry let me know that the WI .Net user group was having their holiday party and Visual Studio 2008 install fest that night. Guess where I would be going?
My first thought was, "Wow, how did they score a space this big?" The event was hosted at a company called Direct Supply who was generous enough to allow the group to use the space. The room we were in could have easily fit more than 500 people! All I can say is that I wish I had access to a facility like that to host meetings ...
In conjunction with the install fest, the user group was sponsoring a toy drive. Anybody who donated a toy would get a special raffle ticket for an Xbox 360 Elite edition. Larry must have a closet stashed with goodies. No, I didn't win :(
All registrants received a trial version of VS2K8 which they could later redeem for a fully licensed version. People got busy installing it on their machines, after all this was an install fest. A couple of people even brought their desktop machines, that's what I call hardcore!
It was funny watching the laptop users hunt down power slots as their laptops ate up their batteries during the install.
Some brave volunteers got up and talked about their favorite new features in VS2K8. A lot of what we saw were actually new features of the .Net Framework itself, but many people were seeing them for the first time.
I'm easy to please; I was won over by the Split View functionality of the HTML Designer. It allows you to edit a web page in the HTML view and see the changes immediately in the Design view. This has got to be awesome when you're running a nice monitor at a pretty high resolution.
Last but not least, the organizers thankfully decided to forgo the traditional developer meal of pizza. Scott Isaacs' wife put together a fantastic spread! Kudos to her, I ate like a champ!
The SharePoint Products and Technologies Team quietly announced the release of Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2007 yesterday. My first impression is that the release of the service pack is extremely well documented. Both the product team and the SharePoint Developer Documentation Team have already provided some great resources for upgrading to SP1.
The SharePoint SDK already has some how-to’s for creating ASP.NET AJAX-enabled web parts. The What’s New in SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 1 page on the Office Developer Center site also highlights some of the new features provided by SP1 such as:
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Windows Server 2008 compatibility
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ASP.NET AJAX support and compatibility
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Support for repartitioning databases via stsadm
Whitepaper: Planning and Deploying SP1
I also downloaded a white paper titled Planning and Deploying Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a Multi-server Environment.
I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself as I read through the first ten pages of this document. I’m sure there are some butchered implementations of WSS and MOSS out there, so it seems like the team took the chance to again preach the value of a cleanly deployed and maintained SharePoint implementation.
The document got pretty prescriptive as far as SQL Server setup, maximum recommended size for content databases, the physical setup of the hardware for SQL Server, even the types of hard disks (and how they are connected) recommended for optimal performance.
I’m sure that a lot of this is common sense to an experienced DBA, but for some reason I get the feeling that experienced DBAs weren’t really consulted on most SharePoint installations :)
Microsoft also seems to be really pushing using 64-bit hardware for this and other server products. A couple of times in the document, I saw: “If you must run 32-bit servers, …”. Seems a little presumptuous to me, there are some serious factors to consider before moving to 64-bit hardware, especially licensing costs!
Installing SP1 for MOSS (Single-server install on a VPC)
To upgrade a MOSS installation to SP1, you first have to install SP1 for WSS 3.0 before installing SP1 for MOSS 2007.
Remember to back up any customizations that you might have made to any files, e.g. modifying a default site template directly. Your changes might get overwritten by the service pack install.
It is also strongly recommended that you do a full backup (directly in SQL Server, or through Central Administration) of your farm.
I performed the install when logged in using the SharePoint service account. The account is a local administrator and also has all the necessary permissions to the SharePoint databases in SQL.
Install WSS 3.0 SP1
After firing up the WSS 3.0 SP1 install, you are first greeted by the good old EULA:
When the service pack is done installing, the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard is immediately launched:
PRESS CANCEL!!!
You only want the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard to run after the MOSS SP1 is installed.
Install MOSS 2007 SP1
The sequence of events is exactly the same as when you install WSS 3.0 SP1. Once the service pack is installed, the Configuration Wizard runs again.
Important: if you are installing the service pack in a multi-server environment, you are prompted to stop here, install the service pack on all your servers, let the Configuration Wizard do its thing on each server, and then click OK. You should do this on computer at a time, not simultaneously.
The wizard does its thing and automatically launches Central Administration when you close it.
Once the Configuration Wizard is done, the Central Administration site is launched. Browse to your portal and check everything out, e.g. make sure the pages are displaying, and your services are up and running.
Verifying Installation
The fastest way to verify that the service pack was applied successfully is to check the version displayed on the Servers in Farm page in Central Administration. Prior to applying the service pack, the version was 12.0.0.4518. After applying the service pack, it's 12.0.0.6219.
Conclusion
A single server installation of the service pack is obviously going to be pretty straightforward. However, when installing this in a multi-server environment, you have a lot more to consider.
Make sure you read the white paper Planning and Deploying Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a Multi-server Environment, there's some excellent information there about preparing your server farm for the service pack.