Jason Medero SharePoint MVP: SharePoint Space for all things SharePoint, OCS, RMS, InfoPath, and Office

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The schema version shows what version number your virtual server (IIS website) is running at.  The version number you see in the image above shows the version that was on the production server.  The version that was shown on my test server was:

Once I applied the hot fix above the restore was successful.  But man this definitely took me some time to do the research and let's just say I have a few less hairs on my head.  While we are talking about DST hot fixes I would like to point to a great blog entry by the man Joel O about all questions you may have with updating your WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 servers.  The October 9 public update for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 includes a fix for security vulnerability (cross site scripting).  The public update also includes the DST patch which will influence your SharePoint environment.  Especially the one time timer jobs will be effected such as solution package deployments/updates, backup and restores, feature deployments, and form services InfoPath forms upgrades or deletions.  I would recommend taking a look at Joel O's blog entry titled SharePoint FAQ on DST and October 9th Public Update. This will be extremely helpful for organizations wondering what exactly these hot fixes will fix and what it protects them against.  My suggestion is to apply the public update ASAP before you begin experiencing the DST issues which affect all aspects of your WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 environments.

 Th

The schema version shows what version number your virtual server (IIS website) is running at.  The version number you see in the image above shows the version that was on the production server.  The version that was shown on my test server was:

Once I applied the hot fix above the restore was successful.  But man this definitely took me some time to do the research and let's just say I have a few less hairs on my head.  While we are talking about DST hot fixes I would like to point to a great blog entry by the man Joel O about all questions you may have with updating your WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 servers.  The October 9 public update for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 includes a fix for security vulnerability (cross site scripting).  The public update also includes the DST patch which will influence your SharePoint environment.  Especially the one time timer jobs will be effected such as solution package deployments/updates, backup and restores, feature deployments, and form services InfoPath forms upgrades or deletions.  I would recommend taking a look at Joel O's blog entry titled SharePoint FAQ on DST and October 9th Public Update. This will be extremely helpful for organizations wondering what exactly these hot fixes will fix and what it protects them against.  My suggestion is to apply the public update ASAP before you begin experiencing the DST issues which affect all aspects of your WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 environments.

Hey guys and gals,

 Just wanted to let everyone know that I will be in Vegas for SharePoint Connections Nov. 4-8.  SharePoint connections has a ton of great speakers and a lot of great sessions.  I consider SharePoint Connection to be the second best conference of the year of course next to TechEd !  So if you read this and are going to be in town leave a comment on this page and I am sure we can discuss any topics that may be on your mind.  I will be accompanied by the entire (well pretty much everyone) B&R SharePoint hit squad and I am sure if I can't answer you question then someone on my team could definitely lend a hand.  I mean we consist of some of the best consultants in the US  guys like Bob Fox, Chris Regan, Michael Lotter, Josh Carlisle and some new secret members as well!  If you would like to ask a question or just say whats up I will be at the Microsoft SharePoint booth on Tuesday Nov. 6 from 330-415 answering questions and chatting away about all kinds of cool stuff!

 Looking forward to seeing some of you loyal SharePointers there!

 Cheers,

 Jason Medero

Hey guys and gals,

 Just wanted to let everyone know that I will be in Vegas for SharePoint Connections Nov. 4-8.  SharePoint connections has a ton of great speakers and a lot of great sessions.  I consider SharePoint Connection to be the second best conference of the year of course next to TechEd !  So if you read this and are going to be in town leave a comment on this page and I am sure we can discuss any topics that may be on your mind.  I will be accompanied by the entire (well pretty much everyone) B&R SharePoint hit squad and I am sure if I can't answer you question then someone on my team could definitely lend a hand.  I mean we consist of some of the best consultants in the US  guys like Bob Fox, Chris Regan, Michael Lotter, Josh Carlisle and some new secret members as well!  If you would like to ask a question or just say whats up I will be at the Microsoft SharePoint booth on Tuesday Nov. 6 from 330-415 answering questions and chatting away about all kinds of cool stuff!

 Looking forward to seeing some of you loyal SharePointers there!

 Cheers,

 Jason Medero

Hey guys/girls,

 As everyone knows Halo 3 has been out for a decent amount of time and I am sure those late nights on work days are really catching up with people!  I don't know about everyone else but I know for sure that I have been playing this game every free moment that I have had.  Of course forgetting about the rest of my social life for the past 30 days without even noticing.  Anyways for those of you who have been going through this Halo 3 coma phase this ones for you!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZOkF0McZKIw

 Cheers!

Hey guys/girls,

 As everyone knows Halo 3 has been out for a decent amount of time and I am sure those late nights on work days are really catching up with people!  I don't know about everyone else but I know for sure that I have been playing this game every free moment that I have had.  Of course forgetting about the rest of my social life for the past 30 days without even noticing.  Anyways for those of you who have been going through this Halo 3 coma phase this ones for you!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZOkF0McZKIw

 Cheers!

Recently I was tasked with leading the capacity planning session for quite a large number of users (25K+).  The organization was going to be heavily utilizing Forms services.  We were in the process of developing and deploying over 800 forms once their current MOSS implementation was launched.  So the team and I sat down to discuss how we were going to accommodate the use of form service without performance implications. This was the first time that I have worked with the Form Services feature within MOSS 2007 at such a scale.  For those of you who are not familiar with what form services is I will quickly summarize and provide some links:InfoPath Form Services is a feature found within MOSS 2007 Enterprise edition only.  In general it allows InfoPath forms to be consumed via the web browser.  This has its advantages and disadvantages the major advantage being that users no longer have to have the expensive InfoPath thick client installed on their machine in order to fill out these forms and submit them.  MOSS 2007 WFE's will render these forms through a web browser and will allow the user to interact with the form as if they were inside of the InfoPath client.  Below are a couple links for anyone who is looking to gain some knowledge on InfoPath Form Services.  This blog entry will not go into the intricate details of how Form Services works but more so of what to be aware of when planning your MOSS 2007 architecture.

Introduction to Form Services:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101672841033.aspx

Configuring Form Services within MOSS 2007:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/3728d1fa-c1db-4445-8d00-e26f9015dd951033.mspx?mfr=true 

Form Services Development:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms540731.aspx

Now that you have thoroughly read through the links above lets jump into the topic at hand.  As far as MOSS 2007 topologies go there are four main layers:

1. Web Front End (WFE)
2. Index/Query
3. Application
4. Database

So the first thing that came to mind is that we would dedicate Forms Server at the application server just like its similiar counterpart Excel Services.  I proceeded to do some digging and it quickly became apparent through the documentation and the help of fellow MVP Spence Harbar that you cannot dedicate machines to take on the Forms Services role.  The documentation makes you think that application means to take on such roles as excel services, document conversion, etc. the exception to this rule is the form services role.  So what does this mean when you are planning to use Form Services very heavily within your MOSS 2007 implementation?  Well plan and simple the load will be taken across your Web Front Ends (WFE's).  Since the load will be taken on your WFE's it may make sense depending on the complexity of your forms to beef them up a bit more than you normally would for a WFE.

WFE minimum hardware requirements is something like:

•  2GB RAM      
• 1 X Dual Core proc @ 2.8GHZ
• 73GB RAID 0

For an organization that is planning on utilizing form services I would suggest hardware requirements of:

•  64 bit OS and MOSS 2007
•  8GB RAM
•  2 X dual core proc @ 2.8GHZ
• 73GB RAID 0
  **Note**  The amount of WFE's will vary depending on a couple other variables (# of users, % of concurrent users at peak time, high availability needs, etc..) 

  The purpose of this blog was to make everyone aware that forms services CANNOT run as its own role which I naively presumed.  Forms services is a service that once enabled will run on every front end in your farm.  You will need to add WFE's if you are experiencing performance issues that have been traced back to the rendering of forms from MOSS 2007 and would like to scale out NOT app servers!

Cheers!

 Jason Medero    

Recently I was tasked with leading the capacity planning session for quite a large number of users (25K+).  The organization was going to be heavily utilizing Forms services.  We were in the process of developing and deploying over 800 forms once their current MOSS implementation was launched.  So the team and I sat down to discuss how we were going to accommodate the use of form service without performance implications. This was the first time that I have worked with the Form Services feature within MOSS 2007 at such a scale.  For those of you who are not familiar with what form services is I will quickly summarize and provide some links:InfoPath Form Services is a feature found within MOSS 2007 Enterprise edition only.  In general it allows InfoPath forms to be consumed via the web browser.  This has its advantages and disadvantages the major advantage being that users no longer have to have the expensive InfoPath thick client installed on their machine in order to fill out these forms and submit them.  MOSS 2007 WFE's will render these forms through a web browser and will allow the user to interact with the form as if they were inside of the InfoPath client.  Below are a couple links for anyone who is looking to gain some knowledge on InfoPath Form Services.  This blog entry will not go into the intricate details of how Form Services works but more so of what to be aware of when planning your MOSS 2007 architecture.

Introduction to Form Services:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101672841033.aspx

Configuring Form Services within MOSS 2007:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/3728d1fa-c1db-4445-8d00-e26f9015dd951033.mspx?mfr=true 

Form Services Development:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms540731.aspx

Now that you have thoroughly read through the links above lets jump into the topic at hand.  As far as MOSS 2007 topologies go there are four main layers:

1. Web Front End (WFE)
2. Index/Query
3. Application
4. Database

So the first thing that came to mind is that we would dedicate Forms Server at the application server just like its similiar counterpart Excel Services.  I proceeded to do some digging and it quickly became apparent through the documentation and the help of fellow MVP Spence Harbar that you cannot dedicate machines to take on the Forms Services role.  The documentation makes you think that application means to take on such roles as excel services, document conversion, etc. the exception to this rule is the form services role.  So what does this mean when you are planning to use Form Services very heavily within your MOSS 2007 implementation?  Well plan and simple the load will be taken across your Web Front Ends (WFE's).  Since the load will be taken on your WFE's it may make sense depending on the complexity of your forms to beef them up a bit more than you normally would for a WFE.

WFE minimum hardware requirements is something like:

•  2GB RAM      
• 1 X Dual Core proc @ 2.8GHZ
• 73GB RAID 0

For an organization that is planning on utilizing form services I would suggest hardware requirements of:

•  64 bit OS and MOSS 2007
•  8GB RAM
•  2 X dual core proc @ 2.8GHZ
• 73GB RAID 0
  **Note**  The amount of WFE's will vary depending on a couple other variables (# of users, % of concurrent users at peak time, high availability needs, etc..) 

  The purpose of this blog was to make everyone aware that forms services CANNOT run as its own role which I naively presumed.  Forms services is a service that once enabled will run on every front end in your farm.  You will need to add WFE's if you are experiencing performance issues that have been traced back to the rendering of forms from MOSS 2007 and would like to scale out NOT app servers!

Cheers!

 Jason Medero    

Hey guys!

 As of yesterday I was awarded a renewal of my Microsoft MVP for Windows SharePoint Services for 2008!!  I feel very honored to receive this award for the second time and I thank everyone for their awesome support.  I really enjoy being a part of such a great growing community.  A lot has grown in the SharePoint world over the past year and I will due my best to keep that trend going in the right direction !

 Looking forward to March for the MVP Summit and some serious paintballin!! 

 Heres to another great year!

 Cheers! 

Hey guys!

 As of yesterday I was awarded a renewal of my Microsoft MVP for Windows SharePoint Services for 2008!!  I feel very honored to receive this award for the second time and I thank everyone for their awesome support.  I really enjoy being a part of such a great growing community.  A lot has grown in the SharePoint world over the past year and I will due my best to keep that trend going in the right direction !

 Looking forward to March for the MVP Summit and some serious paintballin!! 

 Heres to another great year!

 Cheers!