Tag: SharePoint 2010

Office Web App default cache size is 100 GB

Earlier today I noticed some fairly innocuous commentary in the Features that influence the size of content databases section of the Storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration (SharePoint Server 2010) TechNet guidance:

“If Office Web Apps are being used, the Office Web Apps cache can significantly affect the size of a content database. By default, the Office Web Apps cache is configured to be 100 GB. For more information about the size of the Office Web Apps cache, see Manage the Office Web Apps cache.”

100 GB? Surely that can’t be right. So I followed the link and found that:

The Microsoft Word Web App and Microsoft PowerPoint Web App generate a series of images to create a rendition of a document that is viewable in the browser. If Microsoft Silverlight 3 is installed, XAML is used to create the rendition. Creating the rendition can consume large amounts of computer resources. To reduce resource consumption, the Word Web App and PowerPoint Web App store the renditions in a cache, created as part of a SharePoint content database. Renditions in the cache are then used for future requests of a view of the same document. In an environment where most documents change infrequently, but are viewed regularly, maximizing the space dedicated to the cache or the expiration period, can improve performance and reduce resource consumption. In an environment where most documents frequently change, you can optimize performance by reducing the space that is dedicated to the cache, or by reducing the time documents are stored in the cache.

So… make sure to plan SQL database disk space accordingly (nb: this is an update to the original post – I originally thought this was front-end disk space). Also note that you can pin the cache to a specific site collection’s content database. Either reduce the cache size (instructions in that link above) and adjust according to performance needs or invest in SQL storage accordingly.

And don’t forget to plunder the enormous investments Microsoft are making in SharePoint 2010 documentation. It’s the only way you’ll find out about all of these considerations.

Publishing a network-isolated virtual machine with RemoteApp

To understand the development environment design choices that this article pertains to, it may be worth glancing at the design section of my SharePoint development series before diving in, if you haven’t already followed those posts.

Cloning isolated VMs vs. scripted installation

One of the challenges we’ve always faced with SharePoint development has been the tension between cloning actually identical environments versus automating the deployment across distinct environments (or worse, repeating the installation manually). In the first case we save time by eliminating reconfiguration and this ensures a consistent experience for each user. This is particularly beneficial for software development. These benefits can also be obtained by scripting installation/configuration/deployment but there’s a considerable overhead associated with developing and testing those scripts. As SharePoint 2010 is still quite new and we’ve been working on projects for some time now, we didn’t have the luxury of waiting for those refinements and we needed to take advantage of these efficiencies as we had done with SharePoint 2007 projects.

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How Azure improved Groove -> Microsoft Sync Framework

This Microsoft case study reveals how Microsoft’s SharePoint WorkSpace revamps Groove for 2010 using the Microsoft Sync Framework, an Azure technology that can also be used for systems integration – not just off-line synchronisation. This should yield a more reliable synchronisation experience, improve scalability and customisation. It’s worth a quick read. Oh, and did you know SharePoint WorkSpace is also a part of Office 2010 Mobile?

PDF iFilter performance benchmarks, in which FoxIt performs nearly 40x better than Adobe

I’m not usually keen on re-posting other blog entries here, but I think this is quite important. Jie Li from Microsoft has been releasing some good guidance on SharePoint 2010 recently. In his most recent posts he’s been looking at FoxIt’s PDF iFilter 2.0 and comparing performance against TET and Adobe. Both TET and FoxIt are optimised for multicore processors while Adobe will only use a single CPU. This has massive performance implications. In his tests a full crawl too 13 minutes with FoxIt versus 8 hours+ with Adobe. http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2010/02/09/pdf-ifilter-test-with-sharepoint-2010.aspx

SharePoint 2010 IT-Pro Ignite Training

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. Sorry about the long delay. The holidays kind of took over for a bit and I lost track of this mostly-completed post in my drafts.

Anyway… In early December I attended a virtual SharePoint 2010 IT-Pro Ignite training that coincided with a physical session in Bangalore. For those who aren’t aware, Microsoft offered a limited number of these slots to select partners, with IT Pro and Developer tracks. This is approximately 40 hours of training provided by Microsoft free of charge (for the physical sessions, travel and accommodation need to be provided by the student). Note: none of this is under NDA. There were additional Virtual Ignite slots made available to a wider audience in early 2010, but I’m not certain what availability of those slots is looking like now. We were told in the training that all of the collateral (or similar) will be made public by RTM.

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Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment – Part VI: Issues and Results

In the first five parts of this series I covered the project objectives and the system design, then turned my attention to the Hyper-V host image build, automated deployment and the guest virtual machine build. In this post I review some of the questions and issues we’ve encountered after a few months of working this way and some overall reflections on the approach. Continue reading “Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment — Part VI: Issues and Results”

Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment – Part V: Guest Build

In the first four parts of this series I covered the project objectives and the system design, then turned my attention to the Hyper-V host image build and automated deployment. In this post I describe a SharePoint 2007 virtual machine build.

Where’s the SharePoint 2010 build?

In short, we’re working on it. I’ve produced a new SharePoint 2010 beta virtual machine for this environment but we’re not yet ready to publish build guidance. Stay tuned. Additionally… Continue reading “Building a SharePoint 2007/2010 development environment — Part V: Guest Build”

Can a hardened server play a SharePoint 2010 Silverlight Media Web Part?

The answer, obviously enough, is that it can if it has Silverlight installed. Read on if you’re interested in how the web part will behave in its absence.

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