MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Designing a Maintenance and Monitoring Plan 13-15 Guidelines for Configuring Diagnostic Logging Key Points SharePoint 2010 collects data in the diagnostic log that can be useful for troubleshooting. The default settings are sufficient for most situations. However, you may want to customize the settings depending upon the business requirements and the life cycle of the farm. If you are deploying a new feature or making large-scale changes to the environment, you can change the logging level. You can change it to a more verbose level to capture as much data as possible about the state of the system during the changes. You can also change it to a lower level to reduce the size of the log and the resources that you require to log the data. You can set the level of diagnostic logging for the event log and for the trace log. This will limit the types and amount of information that will be written to each log. Best Practices The SharePoint 2010 environment may require configuration of the diagnostic logging settings after initial deployment and throughout the system’s life cycle. Use the following guidelines as best practices: • Change the drive that logging writes to. By default, diagnostic logging is configured to write logs to the drive and partition where SharePoint 2010 is MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 13-16 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure installed. Diagnostic logging can use large amounts of drive space, and writing to the logs can affect drive performance; therefore, you should configure logging to write to a different physical drive. You should also consider the connection speed of the drive; if verbose-level logging is configured, many entries are written to the log. Consequently, a slow connection may result in poor log performance. • Restrict log disk space usage. SharePoint 2010 does not limit the amount of disk space that diagnostic logging can use. You should limit the disk space that logging uses to make sure that it does not fill the disk, especially if you configure logging to write verbose-level events. When the space that is available to the log file is used, the oldest logs are removed and new logging data information is recorded. • Use the Verbose setting sparingly. Verbose logging logs every action that SharePoint 2010 takes. Verbose-level logging can quickly use drive space and affect drive and server performance. You can use verbose-level logging to record a greater level of detail when you are making critical changes and then reconfigure logging to record only higher-level events after you make the change. • Regularly back up logs. The diagnostic logs contain important data. Therefore, back them up regularly to make sure that this data is preserved. SharePoint automatically deletes when you restrict log drive space usage, or if you keep logs for only a few days. When the threshold is met, the oldest logs are deleted first. • Enable event log flooding protection. You enable this setting to configure the system to detect repeating events in the Windows event log. When the same event is logged repeatedly, the repeating events are detected and suppressed until conditions return to a typical state. Unified Logging Service Office SharePoint uses the Unified Logging Service (ULS) to write content to log files. In SharePoint 2010, by default, the ULS log is located at C:\Program Files \Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS. When you plan file permissions for farm administrators, you should consider allowing access to this folder so that the farm administrator can read the log directly. The ULS log can be difficult to interpret in text form, so you should make the ULS Viewer available to those who must read the log. The ULS Viewer enables users who have access to ULS log files to view the logs by using a user-friendly interface. You can filter, sort, highlight, and append logs to help to locate data that is relevant MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Designing a Maintenance and Monitoring Plan 13-17 to the issue that you are attempting to resolve. You can use this information to diagnose problems with machines running ULS services or to monitor machines and the events that they create. SharePoint 2010 uses correlation IDs, which are identifiers that are internally associated with every request and are displayed with error messages. By searching the ULS log for the correlation ID, you can identify the request that caused the error and resolve the issue. Additional Reading For more information about how to configure diagnostic logging for SharePoint Server 2010, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=200913&clcid=0x409. For more information about the ULS Viewer, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=201257&clcid=0x409. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 13-18 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure Considerations for Deploying Software Updates Key Points SharePoint 2010 has improved installation and management features that provide a better end-to-end administrative experience when you install a software update. The process of deploying software updates has two distinct phases: updating and upgrading. Update Phase The update phase has two steps: the patching step and the deployment step. The first step is the patching step. During the patching step, SharePoint 2010 copies new binary files to the Central Administration server. You must update all servers that are running SharePoint 2010, but you should begin with the Central Administration server to ensure that Central Administration reports the most up- to-date information. Services that use files that have to be replaced are temporarily stopped, reducing the requirement to restart the server. However, there are some instances when you must restart the server. The second step in the update phase is the deployment step. In this step, the installer copies support files to the appropriate directories on the server that is MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Designing a Maintenance and Monitoring Plan 13-19 running SharePoint 2010. This step ensures that all of the Web applications are running the correct binary files and will function correctly after the software update. The update phase is complete after the deployment step. The next and final phase to deploy software updates is the upgrade phase. Upgrade Phase After you finish the update phase, you must complete the installation by starting the upgrade phase. The upgrade phase is task-intensive and therefore takes the most time to finish. The first step is to upgrade all of the SharePoint 2010 processes that are running. The next step is to upgrade the databases. The upgrade process can run on a single server, so other servers in the farm can continue to service requests. You can postpone the upgrade phase. However, inconsistent farm behavior may result from postponing the upgrade for more than several days. If you postpone for a longer period, you increase the risk that farm behavior issues will occur. Planning Considerations When you plan the deployment of software updates and service packs, you should consider the following features: • SharePoint 2010 supports backward compatibility between update versions on different servers. This enables you to install the update binary files and postpone update completion to a later time. • You can use a staging environment to ensure that the software update will function correctly in your SharePoint 2010 environment. • There is full support for automatic updates that use Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), Windows Update, and Microsoft Update. An automatic update will install the binary files on the farm servers, but you must complete the software update by running the upgrade on the servers. • Administrators can monitor the status of the update by using the Central Administration Web site or Windows PowerShell. Additional Reading For more information about software updates in SharePoint Server 2010, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=200914&clcid=0x409. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 13-20 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure Considerations for Maintaining Staging and Development Environments Key Points When you develop a maintenance plan for SharePoint 2010, you should consider the different environments in your organization. Large organizations may have a number of SharePoint 2010 environments, including production, staging, and development. Each environment has a different role to play in the maintenance of the SharePoint 2010 infrastructure as a whole. Many organizations implement various environments to meet their business goals. Depending on the environments that your company implements, you will need to ensure that they are managed in an appropriate manner. Staging Environment Staging environments provide a safe environment for testing changes to your SharePoint 2010 infrastructure before you deploy them in the production environment. A staging environment should therefore mimic at least the key features and configuration of the production environment to provide a useful testing platform. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Designing a Maintenance and Monitoring Plan 13-21 You should use staging environments to perform final tests on the solutions and content before they are published to content consumers and end users. Consider using a staging environment to test: • Incremental updates of data. • Deployment of software updates. • Service packs. • Custom components. • Add-ons and integrations. Development Environment Development environments are used by developers who create custom components such as Windows Workflow assemblies, Web Parts, and event handlers. The development environment is not usually identical to the live production environment, because it typically includes developer tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005, and Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. You should use development environments to provide a platform for the development of SharePoint 2010 solutions, custom code, and other development features. Consider using a development environment for: • The distribution and management of development virtual machines (VMs). • License management. • Source control. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 13-22 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure Discussion: Developing a Maintenance Plan Key Points Question: You must develop a wide-ranging maintenance plan for your SharePoint 2010 infrastructure. What categories would you use to organize your maintenance tasks? Question: What is the next step in developing a maintenance plan? Question: Give examples of tasks and activities for each category that you have defined. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Designing a Maintenance and Monitoring Plan 13-23 Lesson 3 Creating a Monitoring Plan for SharePoint 2010 The monitoring features in SharePoint 2010 help you to check how the SharePoint 2010 system is running. Monitoring tools such as SharePoint Health Analyzer and Performance Monitor help you to analyze and resolve problems, and view metrics for the sites. Objectives After completing this lesson, you will be able to: • Describe considerations for using SharePoint Health Analyzer. • Describe considerations for logging usage and health data in SharePoint 2010. • List guidelines for monitoring search. • List guidelines for using Performance Monitor to monitor SharePoint 2010. • Discuss how to develop a monitoring plan. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 13-24 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure Considerations for Using SharePoint Health Analyzer Key Points SharePoint 2010 includes SharePoint Health Analyzer, which is a new analysis tool that enables you to check for potential configuration, performance, and usage problems. SharePoint Health Analyzer runs predefined health rules against servers in the farm. A health rule runs a test and returns a status that tells you the outcome of the test. If any rule fails, the status is written to the Health Reports list in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and the Windows event log. SharePoint Health Analyzer also creates an alert in the Health Analyzer Reports list on the Review problems and solutions page in Central Administration. You can click an alert to view more information about the problem and see steps to resolve the problem. You can also open the rule that raised the alert and change its settings. You can edit Health Analyzer Report list items, create custom views, export the list items into Microsoft Office Excel®, subscribe to the RSS feed for the list, and perform many other tasks. Each health rule falls into one of the following categories: Security, Performance, Configuration, or Availability. . PROHIBITED 13-18 Designing a Microsoft SharePoint 20 10 Infrastructure Considerations for Deploying Software Updates Key Points SharePoint 20 10 has improved installation and management features that. Designing a Maintenance and Monitoring Plan 13 -23 Lesson 3 Creating a Monitoring Plan for SharePoint 20 10 The monitoring features in SharePoint 20 10 help you to check how the SharePoint 20 10. Considerations for Using SharePoint Health Analyzer Key Points SharePoint 20 10 includes SharePoint Health Analyzer, which is a new analysis tool that enables you to check for potential configuration,