Multiple User Profile Applications and People Crawl

Man it’s been a while since I posted.

Recently I had a requirement to have more than one UPA in an Enterprise-wide SharePoint Environment. I ran into a snag with crawling People from both the UPAs and this is blog post explains how I got around it. If you have more than one UPA, by default, your people content source will only fetch people profiles from the default UPA.

The UPAs in my architecture reside on a resource farm with other Cross Farm Services such as Managed Metadata Service, Web Analytics, etc. Furthermore, I have two Application Servers in the Resource Farm and I have a separate instance of the User Profile Service running on either application servers since the UPS and UPA have a 1-to-1 relationship, i.e. only one UPA can be hosted on a single UPS instance.

In summary I have:

Application Server 1 à Hosts User Profile Service 1 à Hosts User Profile Application 1 (UPA1)

Application Server 2 à Hosts User Profile Service 2 à Hosts User Profile Application 2 (UPA2)

In my case UPA1 is crawling specific OUs in Active Directory and UPA2 is crawling another set of OUs. Each UPA has its own set of profile, sync and social databases in SQL Server.

My Content Farms hosts Search and the Content Source for People. First time I ran the crawl on the people content source it only crawled people profiles from UPA1, but the people profiles from UPA2 were not crawled. The My Site host on both the UPAs was identical.

SOLUTION:

Long story short what I found out was that UPA2 needed its own dedicated shadow (dummy) web application with a site collection host. Then this had to be added to the people content source as the second target endpoint for crawling. I ran the People Content source crawl again on the content farm and now I was able to see people from both the UPAs.

Our Patio Project – Before and After

Here is a timeline of our Patio Project that began June 21, 2011.

Here is a picture of our previous deck -

 

And this is what was left of it –

 

(T) Laying the gravel on the designated surface for the patio -

(B) Worked on sump pump return and gutters -

(T) Building the unified return for 2 gutters and sump pump return –

(B) Stone dust, water, compactor compacting down the surface –

Progress of first week 6/21 – 6/24.

• Foundation for deck and steps built out.
  
• Foundation for patio laid down.
  

Pavers started going in on 6/28. Detailed work, laying down one-brick down at a time.

End of week progress. Laying the stone down and covering the edges.

And finally, done on the 4^th of July

Troubleshooting FIM Portal Issues

Due to my SharePoint experience I got stuck putting up FIM Portal at a client site. I started digging into FIM Portal, FIM Service and FIM Sync. FIM Sync reminds me a little of my BizTalk days. The whole product is interesting, you have pay close attention to details otherwise things do not work I setup 2 labs to test various scenarios involving different FIM components. My deployment path included 2 WSS Servers (FIM Portals load balanced), both running FIM Service, separate FIM Sync Server and a common SQL Cluster for all FIM components.

I am posting on the issues you run into when adding a new WSS server to the Farm and here are the issues I ran into and the resolution:

1) Only add/install FIM Service to the 2nd WSS Server. No need to install or add the FIM Portal feature.

2) The 2 FIM WSPs found in solution management through CA should get deployed to the second WSS server as soon as the timer job executed to synchronize the web application(s) and solutions (WSPs) to the newly added server. If WSPs don’t get installed on the 2nd SharePoint server you will receive some weird SharePoint errors.

3) Make sure the firewalls between the servers are off if the WSPs aren’t getting deployed to the new WSS Server.

4) If the problems with bringing up the FIM Portal site persist then you can try to do a REPAIR on the first server which will retract the WSPs and deploy them again GLOBALLY (to all WFE servers in the Farm) by removing and adding the FIM Portal solution pack.

5) The other major thing that needs done is changing the FIM Service URL in the second WSS Server’s web.config file found in %INETPUBDIR%\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\. The way SharePoint works is once the 2nd WSS Server comes online (added to the Farm through the PSConfig tool) the timer jobs in SharePoint starts deploying the Web Application to the second server. In the process the same web.config file from the 1st WSS Server gets deployed to the 2nd WSS Server but it has the first server’s FIM Service URL.

The config entry to change in the web.config file is the following and it needs to have the 2nd server in :
<resourceManagementClient resourceManagementServiceBaseAddress="http://:5725″ timeoutInMilliseconds=”60000″ />

NOTE: The above is true is if you followed the deployment path of 2 WSS Servers (FIM Portals load balanced) and both to run the FIM Service.

Thats it folks!

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 23 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 159 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 8mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was October 8th with 41 views. The most popular post that day was PerformancePoint Dashboards in SharePoint 2010 VHD.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were linkedin.com, google.com, slashingtongue.com, google.co.in, and forex-expose.co.cc.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for sharepoint 2010 dashboard, sharepoint 2010 dashboards, performancepoint 2010 demo, and there is no business data connectivity service associated with the current web context.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

PerformancePoint Dashboards in SharePoint 2010 VHD June 2010
2 comments

2

User Profile Synchronization stuck on ‘Starting’ September 2010
1 comment

3

Google Calendar Sync woes and a workaround July 2010
8 comments

4

Troubleshooting Business Connectivity Services April 2010

5

SharePoint Designer Control in SharePoint 2010 April 2010
1 comment

Dream Job

You know, someone put it really nicely. In the form of a simple graphic for that matter on what a dream job is. At first I looked at it purely from an IT perspective but then I started thinking of other professional fields and deemed this to be true in the universe of professional fields. Here it is:

 

 

Sadly, majority of the people end up in the red circle on the right representing “stuff someone will pay you to do”. Other times you end up in the intersection between “stuff you’re good at” and “stuff someone will pay you to do”. The ideal spot obviously is as the graphic shows would be where all 3 circles intersect.

So how do you get to the sweet spot without drastically changing career fields (e.g. switching from IT consulting to taking up art as fulltime gig)??

1) Is it that you have to put in your dues and do the hard labor to get to the experience level to be employed by your dream company(or the big giants) like a Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.?

2) Is it that you work as an employee to eventually get out and do your own thing? But not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, right? Some people are happy being employed and are comfortable with the steadiness of a paycheck and stay challenged? But that could be someone’s thing and seeing a lot of it. Some people love the independence and not working for the “MAN”.

3) Is working for the Government a dream job? Could be for someone out there.

4) I know some military folks who are very passionate about serving their country and would not fathom another career.

5) Maybe you are perfectly happy with your crappy job and don’t really care about finding a dream job and spend your paycheck on other things in life that keep you happy and keep returning you back to your crappy job to get more paychecks so you can keep doing the other things in life that keep you happy. –Panting– Sorry about that.

I don’t know the answer and I don’t know if anyone else does. Any recruiter who tells you that the next gig they will be placing you on is your dream job is just doing their job Whatever the answer may be I feel a dream job is relative to the individual. You are probably saying “Well of Course it is“.

Only YOU can answer what your dream job MIGHT be. Notice might in caps. But even then it’s a long shot unless you have a crystal ball. I think the best one can do is look at their past and after try to answer what they would like in their next job and hope that the employer can keep you ENGAGED and provide you the support when you need it.

And let me not forget the entrepreneurs, may the steady customers retain you and may you find the correct balance of winning more business and having the right resource pool to support it. Amen!

So, the real QUESTION is: DO YOU HAVE YOUR DREAM JOB? If NOT what the HECK are you doing about it?!?

FAST People and Content Search

When I set up FAST in my SANDBOX/DEV SharePoint 2010 environment I was having some issues with search not returning any people results. Troubleshooting the issue let me dive deeper into understanding the roles of the Content Search Service Application (SSA) and Query SSA that are setup when configuring the FAST Search Connector and FAST Search Query Service Applications.

Visual representation spells this out:

So the Content SSA is responsible for all Web Application content and the Query SSA is responsible for People Content (represented by the sps3 prefix which is a SharePoint specific code for people profiles content) and both these SSAs have their own Full and Incremental crawl schedules.

When you provision new web application(s) the URL will get appended to the Query SSA which will need to be moved to the Content SSA properties screen (see highlighted area in the Content SSA screenshot).

RESOLUTION TO NO PEOPLE RESULTS:

Run a full/incremental crawl on the Query SSA. I kept running the Content SSA crawl thinking it was responsible for all content including People. Once the Query SSA crawl ran I was able to see People Results:

 

Windows and McAfee Updates not working, i.e. Malware

So my wife has been telling me that she has a virus on her laptop and I have been ignoring it until this weekend. I decided to spend part of my Saturday and Sunday to investigate it before the kids get exposed to something inappropriate.

And the troubleshooting and investigation began by running McAfee and of course it didn’t find anything. So I tried to get McAfee updates and it failed. Then I tried to run Windows update and that failed as well with error codes: 80072efd, 80072efe. Something was definitely wrong. I googled these error codes and found that computer was infected with the TDDS Rootkit malware.

I tried combofix.exe which was recommended and that didn’t work.

Kaspersky’s free tddskiller saved my butt. The tool detected removed the Rootkit.Win32.TDSS.tdl4 malware but the first time I got a blue screen of death so it didn’t remove it completely. I rebooted and tried removing again and this time it went through. The tool requested a reboot. I tried the Windows Update and voila! No errors, got updates.

McAfee was still not working. Chatted with McAfee’s tech support who told me to uninstall and re-install the software and that did it.

I hope this helps some poor soul out there.

User Profile Synchronization stuck on ‘Starting’

I have been exploring the User Profile Service Application configuration for a few hours and finally figured out why the User Profile Synchronization service hangs and remains in the “Starting” status as such –

1. User Profile Service Application configured with the correct databases and application pools
2. User Profile Service Application started fine.
3. User Profile Service Synchronization Service stuck on “starting”

The reason why this happened to me specifically is because I started the “Managed Metadata Service” after Step1 was completed. User Profile Service application relies heavily on the Managed Metadata Service so even if it is started the User Profile Service Synchronization will get stuck. In addition, the Forefront services in the Services Panel will remain “Disabled” or won’t start as expected –

 

Solution:

To correct this issue:

1) I de-provisioned my User Profile Service application as such (NOTE: I am doing this in a pilot environment so make sure to back up your data because this will remove the existing “Sync DB, Social DB, and Profile DB” –

2) Configured and started the Managed Metadata Service

3) Reconfigured the User Profile Service by re-creating the databases, application pool.

4) Start the User Profile Service

5) Start the User Profile Synchronization Service.

6) Restart IIS – command prompt IISReset.

The results:

“Manage Services on Server” page in CA

Services Panel:

User Profile Configuration page:

And I now I have profiles –

IMPORTANT OBSERVATION:

If you are using Virtual Machines and your domain controller is running on a separate virtual instance then make sure the SharePoint 2010 virtual instance has not loss connectivity with the domain controller machine. The forefront identity services (especially the Forefront Identity Manager Services) relies on this. The way I check connectivity between SharePoint 2010 server and the DC is intact is by doing a “people picker” directory search. If results are returned then I know SharePoint is communicating with the DC.

This got me scratching my head for a bit but it’s finally working now!

This solution worked for me and your mileage may vary.

Create and boot from VHD with Windows 7

Useful article on the usage of WIM2VHD which lets you create bootable VHD files. I have used this to create a dual boot to a Windows Server 2008 R2 instance for SharePoint 2010 testing. Its nice because it does not mess around with my OS files and everything is isolated to a single VHD. The other good thing is that when you boot into a VHD the machine resources (memory, CPU) is competely dedicated to that instance because you have booted into it. As opposed to virtualization this lets you dedicate your system resources.

The cons of this approach are most of your productivity programs (email, word processing, etc.) are on the primary boot.  

I still like this option and have had good performance with this approach.

Create and boot from VHD with Windows 7.

Want to learn the correct body motion for a better golf swing? Karen Palacios-Jansen tells you how

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via Want to learn the correct body motion for a better golf swing? Karen Palacios-Jansen tells you how.

Concise, brief but very good article on correcting your golf swing. Great tips.