Suppress PowerShell output

I wanted to suppress the output of PowerShell on deploying a new SharePoint farm, particularly when executing Install-SPFeature -AllExistingFeatures

The simple solution was to pipe the output to the Out-Null object

Install-SPFeature -AllExistingFeatures | Out-Null

This SharePoint farm currently has pending upgrades using New-SPConfigurationDatabase

Scenario

Creating a new SharePoint 2010 farm with PowerShell cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase on a virtual machine that contain SharePoint and Office Web Applications (OWA) binaries.

Error

New-SPConfigurationDatabase : This SharePoint farm currently has pending upgrades. The cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase cannot be executed until the upgrade is completed.

Resolution

Execute PSConfig as below
psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait –force

Explanation

The installation of the Office Web Application binaries sets certain registry entries that trick the system to believing the system is in the middle of an upgrade when running New-SPConfigurationDatabase.

Thanks to Maxime’s solution blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/maximeb/archive/2010/10/13/this-sharepoint-farm-has-pending-upgrades-error-when-running-new-spconfigurationdatabase-for-a-new-sharepoint-2010-installation.aspx

SharePoint Enterprise Search – scripted PowerShell build

In the PowerShell script build for SharePoint 2010, references to the different components (query servers, component servers, administration component) should NOT be FQDN.

I wonder if this means

• Enterprise Search is restricted to being scaled out within a single domain
• PowerShell scripted builds need to be executed in the context of the same domain as the servers

Set-SPEnterpriseSearchAdministrationComponent -SearchApplication $searchApp -SearchServiceInstance $serverName
New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlComponent -SearchApplication $searchApp -CrawlTopology $crawlTopology -SearchServiceInstance $serverName -CrawlDatabase $crawlDB
New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryComponent -IndexPartition $partition -QueryTopology $queryTopology -SearchServiceInstance $serverName

POSTSCRIPT: I found that the URI for publishing farms also does not contain FQDN server names. That is, the publishing URL is
https://appServer:32844/Topology/topology.svc
and not
https://appServer.domain.net:32844/Topology/topology.svc

Managing User Profile Service Application Permissions in a Claims Based Authentication Environment With Powershell

The User Profile Service Application provides default permissions so that all NTLM authenticated users can create a personal site and use other features.

The script below removes the access to create personal site for All Authenticated Users. Credit to Aaron Saikovski for providing.

$upaproxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | Where-Object {$_.DisplayName -eq "User Profile Service Application Proxy"}
$upasecurity = Get-SPProfileServiceApplicationSecurity -ProfileServiceApplicationProxy $upaproxy
$authuser = New-SPClaimsPrincipal -Identity 'c:0(.s|true' -IdentityType EncodedClaim
Revoke-SPObjectSecurity -Identity $upasecurity -Principal $authuser -Rights "Create Personal Site"
Set-SPProfileServiceApplicationSecurity -Identity $upasecurity -ProfileServiceApplicationProxy $upaproxy

SharePoint 2010 Health Rules Used To Monitor SQL Databases

SharePoint 2010 introduced the Health Analyser feature which is designed to enable

administrators to schedule regular, automatic checks for potential configuration, performance and usage problems in the server farm.

Awesome. But also

in some cases, errors are repaired automatically as soon as they are found, and farm administrators are informed of the repairs.

Now the health analyser is a cool feature, but “repaired automatically” makes me nervous.

I found no currently existing Microsoft documentation on the detail behind the out-of-the-box health rules, whether that be a comment on how serious Microsoft treats this function or my search engine skills I’ll leave comments for another time.

This post is to show what the health rules do, at least those concerning maintenance of the SQL database layer. But first a little background.

There are two types of health rule, those that are capable of automatically repairing certain situations (SPRepairableHealthAnalysisRule) and those that simply flag a warning (SPHealthAnalysisRule). Both rule types implement a method called Check() which is executed by a timer job at the scheduled time.

The SPRepairableHealthAnalysisRule also implements a method called Repair() which is executed when the Check() method returns a fail status code.

There are a number of timer jobs provided out-of-the-box that are used to execute the health rules.

Each health rule defines its scope to match one of these timer jobs, which can then be scheduled according to your maintenance plan.

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Databases used by SharePoint have fragmented indices

TechNet reference

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.DatabasesAreFragmented
What does Check() do?	Always returns fail status
What does Repair() do?	After checking the farm is available, online, the DB is not current process, etc then it makes a call to [dbo].[proc_DefragmentIndices]
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Daily at 12:00am
Repair Automatically	Yes

NOTE: the Repair() method does not seem to attempt to reorganise database indices, but rather waits for fragmentation to exceed 30% and then rebuild. This is also done with table locks rather than page or row locks and so is effectively an offline exercise. For more information read Reorganizing and Rebuilding Indexes (for SQL Server 2008 R2)

Databases used by SharePoint have outdated index statistics

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.StatisticsAreOutOfDate
What does Check() do?	Always returns fail status
What does Repair() do?	After checking the farm is available, online, the DB is not currently in a backup/restore process, etc makes a call to [dbo].[proc_UpdateStatistics]
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Daily at 12:00AM
Repair Automatically	Yes

Databases exist on servers running SharePoint Foundation

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.DatabasesAreOnAppServers
What does Check() do?	After checking the farm is not a single server count the number of DBs per service instance on local
What does Repair() do?	n/a
Timer Job Run Location	ALL application servers
Default Schedule	Weekly on Sunday 12:00AM
Repair Automatically	No

Search – One or more property databases have fragmented indices

TechNet reference

Assembly	Microsoft.Office.Server.Search
Namespace	Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Health.PropertyStoresAreFragmented
What does Check() do?	For all property DBs not currently in a backup/restore/upgrade process makes a call to [dbo].[proc_MSS_DefragSearchIndexes] with a parameter indicating no repair will be made
What does Repair() do?	Makes a call to [dbo].[proc_MSS_DefragSearchIndexes] with a parameter indicating repair will be made
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Weekly on Sunday 12:00AM
Repair Automatically	Yes

Note: see this KB article released for an issue related to this health rule and resolved in the June 2011 cumulative update.

Search – One or more crawl databases may have fragmented indices

TechNet reference

Assembly	Microsoft.Office.Server.Search
Namespace	Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Health.CrawlStoresMayBeFragmented
What does Check() do?	Always returns fail status
What does Repair() do?	Makes a call to [dbo].[proc_MSS_DefragGathererIndexes]
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	On Demand
Repair Automatically	Yes

Databases require upgrade or not supported

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.DatabaseUpgradeRequired
What does Check() do?	Checks if the DB has been flagged as “NeedsUpgrade” and is not “IsBackwardsCompatible” per build number
What does Repair() do?	n/a
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Daily at 12:00AM
Repair Automatically	No

Databases running in compatibility range, upgrade recommended

TechNet reference

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.DatabaseUpgradeRecommended
What does Check() do?	For all SP databases check if the DB has been flagged as “NeedsUpgrade” but “IsBackwardsCompatible” per build number
What does Repair() do?	n/a
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Daily at 12:00AM
Repair Automatically	No

Databases within this farm are set to read only and will fail to upgrade unless it is set to a read-write state

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.ReadOnlyDatabase
What does Check() do?	For all SP content databases SELECT TOP 1 is_read_only FROM sys.databases WHERE database_id=XXX
What does Repair() do?	n/a
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Daily at 12:00AM
Repair Automatically	No

Content databases contain orphaned items

TechNet reference

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.ContentOrphans
What does Check() do?	For all SP content databases count orphan SPSites, SPWebs, SPLists, SPItems via a call to [dbo].[proc_DetectOrphans] Orphans are objects where ParentID is null
What does Repair() do?	For all SP content databases repair orphan SPSites, SPWebs, SPLists, SPItems via a call to [dbo].[proc_DetectOrphansFix]
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Monthly on 1st of the month at 12:00AM
Repair Automatically	No

Some content databases are growing too large

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.ContentDbsAreTooLarge
What does Check() do?	For all SP content databases in each web application check if the DB is larger than 100GB
What does Repair() do?	For all SP content databases found to be larger than 100GB Change the DB status to Offline for new SPSite creation
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Hourly at 0 minutes past the hour
Repair Automatically	No

Database has large amounts of unused space

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.DatabaseCanBeShrinked
What does Check() do?	For all online SP databases not currently in a backup/restore process calculate the size of the DB and amount of unused space compare this with a threshold (internal) and AutoGrowth setting to determine if the DB can be Shrinked
What does Repair() do?	For all DBs identified as can be Shrinked DBCC SHRINKDATABASE (0,{0})
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Weekly on Sunday at 12:00AM
Repair Automatically	No

Drives used for SQL databases are running out of free space

Assembly	Microsoft.SharePoint.Health
Namespace	Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.SqlServerDrivesAreNearlyFull
What does Check() do?	For all SP databases get drive space [sys].[xp_fixeddrives] and check space available [sys].[sp_helpfile]
What does Repair() do?	n/a
Timer Job Run Location	Any application server
Default Schedule	Hourly at 0 minutes past the hour
Repair Automatically	No