My IT Experiences - Microsoft 365, SharePoint & Azure

We have a SQL Server 2005 cluster with two nodes, one active and the other passive. We had to remove an 1 TB storage volume from the cluster and release it to the storage pool. Before removing any cluster resource we need to remove the dependencies. To remove this drive we have to remove the dependency of this drive from SQL Server service. Here are the steps: 1. Open cluster administrator 2. Right click SQL Service and select Properties 3. Click Modify and remove the resource from Modify Dependencies window 4. Now we can go back to Cluster Administrator and delete the resource/drive volume. If we delete the drive or resource without removing the dependency, the SQL Service might fail to start. The following errors might occur: TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x103, status code 0x1. Could not start the network library because of an internal error in the network library. To determine the cause, review the errors immediately preceding this one in the error l...

I cleared the SharePoint 2010 configuration exam 70 - 667 the other day. I got 91% of the questions correct this time. There were some questions that were confusing but the test was not very difficult. I believe the set of questions around search and Powershell is what wrong for me. I plan to do 70 - 668 next!

I cleared the Microsoft certification exam for SharePoint 2007, the MCTS for MOSS 2007 configuring 70-630 on Monday this week. The score was 1000 out of 1000 :) There were 76 questions and I had to go for the best answer for around 15 of them because it was bit tough, but I made it through.

I got some inspiration reading the Technet article Deploy by using DBA-created databases (SharePoint Server 2010) the other day. We can deploy SharePoint 2010 without the central administration (CA) database having the annoying GUID. If we run the SharePoint configuration Wizard after installation it will create content database with GUID. However, if we create CA content database using PowerShell we can have the database name of our choice. I have also referred to the SPModule PowerShell Scripts available from Microsoft. Here are the steps: 1. Run Setup on each server computer in the farm. You must run Setup on at least one of these computers by using the Complete installation option. 2. Do not run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard after Setup finishes. From the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, use the New-SPConfigurationDatabase command to create a new configuration database,,for example: New-SPConfigurationDatabase -DatabaseName "SharePoint_Config" -Database...

We used to receive this error while deploying "wsp" files on our MOSS farm. This happened only on one WFE and not on the other. I was sure there was some process blocking the file deployment because this was happening only on one WFE. After hours of head banging we figured out that we had a SharePoint backup third-party application configured on this WFE. This application was installed on this WFE. We had our production deployment window normally in the afternoon on weekedays and weekends. This error would not normally happen on the weekends. Combining all these we figured out that backup application was not running on weekend afternoons. We checked with the storage management team here to pause or kill all backup jobs on a weekday that we had a scheduled "wsp" deployment. Amazingly we did not receive this error. Then we rescheduled the backup jobs accordingly so that it does not conflict with our code deployment window and the issue was solved.

I was receiving this error on the "Report Server Web Service URL" on our SharePoint farm: Report Server has encountered a SharePoint error. ( rsSharePointError) Access to this Web Site has been blocked. Please contact the administrator to resolve this problem. This site URL is configured via Central Administration > Configure Reporting Services Integration > Reporting Services Integration if Reporting Server feature/Add-in is installed on the farm. After doing some research I found out that this page somehow enumerates through entire site collections before it throws this error. As part of troubleshooting step I checked if the domain user configured for reporting service is has sufficient privileges in the farm and also as local admin of the sql box, but this did not solve the issue. We raised this issue with the vendor and they made us update our SQL Server 2005 to latest SP and CU; still we had the error. The reason was nobody was sure if this er...

I was implementing a new SharePoint farm and I observed that web application that I create in Central Admin site was not getting created in the IIS of WFE servers. The sites would be created in the WFE if I restart the WSS web application service through stsadm command. But this was not an option. I ran the stsadm execadmsvcjobs and it thew this error: T he SharePoint Worker Process Group Update job failed with the following error. This job will be skipped. Failed to connect to an IPC Port: The system cannot find the file specified . It turned out that the service "Windows SharePoint Services Administration" was stopped on all my MOSS servers. Once I started this service the issue was solved.