SharePoint Search in a Cloud Deployment

The cloud is all the rage now, and it seems inevitable, as if the gods have seemingly decreed the next phase in the evolution of the continuum of computing.  However, just four short years ago, when Nicolas Carr was writing “The Big Switch” ³ the concept of computing services as a utility was still controversial, but not to all.  In the prologue to his book, he wrote about his visit to VeriCenter’s data center:

“As I stood there surveying the data center, I might as well have been a cartoon figure with a big light bulb flashing above my head. I realized that what I was standing in was a prototype of a new kind of power plant – a computing plant that would come to power our information age the way great electric plants powered the industrial age. Connected to the Net, this modern dynamo would deliver into our businesses and homes vast quantities of digitized information and data processing might. It would run all the complicated software programs that we used to have to install on our own computers. And, just like the earlier electric dynamos, it would operate with the efficiency never possible before. It would turn computing into cheap, universal commodity.

            “This really is a utility,” I said to Sullivan.            “He nodded, grinning.” This is the future.” ³

In just four short years, we have gone from the cloud being the future, to the cloud as being a standard deployment option for IT software services.  One of the key enablers of cloud computing is the drive to virtualize and consolidate hardware. Once your computing environment is virtualized, taking the next step to deploy your virtual machines to an off premise data center, seems like a logical next step.

We support your drive to virtualize your data center services. All our enterprise software is tested running in a Hyper-V Server environment.  For a list of our software and the supported virtualization environments navigate to: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006. This document is updated regularly.

As the march to the cloud continues, the way we define or model this service is typically as an “operations model”.  James Urquhart, summarizes it quite succinctly:  “The cornerstone of everything I believe about the cloud can be summarized in one simple statement:

To read the rest go here.

Building Virtual Machines for SharePoint

With the drive to reduce cost through virtualization of physical systems, the temptation is to virtualize all of your enterprise applications, and why not? Optimization of an enterprise investment in hardware infrastructure is a key driving force behind the movement. When you move from a physical server to a virtual server there are a number of design/build points to take into consideration.  In the recently delivered Jump Start: Exam 70-659: Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization course presented by Symon Perriman and I, we were asked a number of questions on building virtual machines (VM) for various applications. Here are some of the tips we provided:

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Virtualization Exam 70-659 Training

On Thursday October 6 Technical Evangelist Symon Perriman and I will host an online 8-hour deep dive training event for the Microsoft 70-659 Technical Specialist exam, Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization. This virtual event runs from 8am to 5pm PST and will include presentations, demos and live Q&A with the attendees. It costs $99 to attend, but includes a free exam voucher worth $150! It is public so sign up for some great training to help improve your career here: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=272. Register early to make the most of a weekly virtualization coaching newsletter!

• Module 1 – Installing and Configuring Host and Parent Settings
• Module 2 – Configuring Child Settings
• Module 3 – Managing and Monitoring Virtual Environments
• Module 4 – Ensuring High Availability and Recoverability
• Module 5 – Performing Migration
• Module 6 – Configuring Remote Desktop (RD) Role Services Infrastructure

Technologies that we will cover include: Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr), System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM), Windows Server Backup, Failover Clustering, Remote Desktop Services, Active Directory, Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit (MAP), Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (VMST), Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) & more!

Learn More: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=274
Register: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=272
Exam Information: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-659

Thoughts on Search Security

Writing under the nom de plume of Mathais Thurman, in his “Security Manager’s Journal,” Marthais opined on “The perils of enterprise search”. Mathais’s take away comment is “First and foremost, you have to make sure you don’t compromise the rule of least privilege.”
To those of you not that might not know, the rule or principle of least privilege is:
“The principle of least privilege (POLP) is the practice of limiting access to the minimal level that will allow normal functioning. Applied to employees, the principle of least privilege translates to giving people the lowest level of user rights that they can have and still do their jobs. The principle is also applied to things other than people, including programs and processes.” From http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/principle-of-least-privilege-POLP.
So how are POLP and enterprise search intertwined? One of the key goals of an enterprise search deployment is to index content from various enterprise repositories such as SharePoint sites, web sites, Exchange servers, file shares, and many others. If you do not take into account the security access rights of the various repositories, you might be surprised at what can be found using search.

To read the rest, go here.

Technical Tips: All Things Search

It is time for a few short tips on FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint and FAST Search Server 2010 for Internet Sites.

Tip One: Included with FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint is the Advanced Filter Pack. This Pack enables text and metadata extraction from hundreds of file formats, augmenting the document formats that are supported by Microsoft’s Filter Pack. This feature is not enabled by default during the installation of FAST Search for SharePoint. It can be enabled easily using Windows PowerShell, and the included script, i.e. “AdvancedFilterPack.ps1”

With the Advanced Filter Pack enabled, content and meta-data from the additional conversions are now available for mapping into your managed properties.
To read more about Filter Packs go to Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs download and overview. The Advanced Filter Packs are described here.

Tip Two: Do you really want to enable “Stopword Removal” on Queries?

Read the rest of the entry here

Enterprise Search Benefits

In a recent InformationWeek article “Go Rogue with Enterprise Search”, Michael Healey laments “Enterprise search is one of the most powerful but underused technologies available to IT.”

He goes on to articulate why this is the case. “What's getting in the way are internal politics, understaffing, and an unwillingness on IT's part to tackle the bigger requirements that could truly change how employees find information across a company. Too often, enterprise search technology ends up pigeonholed in a single department or used on a single data set--a big but underutilized investment.”

Considering that only about 10% of the companies have deployed what has been called full enterprise search, one can understand the lack of compelling business drivers. What constitutes a full enterprise search solution? That would be the indexing of all of the content inside a company’s intranet. Specifically;

• The unstructured data on file shares, SharePoint sites, websites and Exchange servers.
• Internal “runs the business” applications like CRM, ERP, etc.
• Content from external sources, probably acquired at query time via an Open Search interface.
• Cutting edge linguistic, and relevancy processing, as well as sophisticated presentation of the search results.

In deference to Andrew McAfee, who coined the term "Enterprise 2.0" a few years ago, the above search environment has been termed Search 2.0.

This virtual integration, which enables IT systems to work together through the search interface, should be reason enough to deploy Search 2.0. However, in the InformationWeek article, Mr. Healey, presented a survey of IT professional on the “Benefits of Enterprise Search”. The results are show below.

Read the rest of my article on BornToLearn

Is Linux dead on the desktop?

Having some time off during the holidays allows me catch up a bit on my reading. After reading Mr.Robert Strohmeyer, article on PCWorld titled “Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead” in which he states:

“Despite phenomenal security and stability–and amazing strides in usability, performance, and compatibility–Linux simply isn’t catching on with desktop users. And if there ever was a chance for desktop Linux to succeed, that ship has long since sunk”

Note that he is talking about desktop Linux not Linux in the server market where it continues to grow. Nor is he talking about Linux on mobile devices (like Google’s Android) or on embedded devices. He is looking at the market where Windows OS and Mac OS dominate, while Linux remains around 1%.

I have to say that even with the beautiful Ubuntu distribution, I have to agree, at least for the foreseeable future. At one time when the new category of netbooks first arrived, I thought this was the place that desktop Linux would finally show end users how far it had come. But then Microsoft dropped the price manufactures paid to license XP, and extended it’s support window, and suddenly, all the netbooks were running XP. Why did this transition take place? His reason is as straight forward as it is depressing true.

“Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large.”

At some point developers need to make some money off of their efforts. They don’t need to make a lot on each sell, i.e. reference the robust applications market (current at over 300,000 applications) on the iPhone that cost less than $10.00 apiece. But they do need some revenue to keep them interested in enhancing the software. As James Goshling noted in a recent blog posting:

“Developers follow the money. They aren’t evil, they just need to be fed and housed. Unless the Linux community gets over the whole “free” thing on the desktop, Strohmeyer’s pronouncement of death will hold.”

Again, sad but true.