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Upgrading to SharePoint 2013 from MOSS 2007.

As we all know SharePoint 2013 is bundled with all new features which give extendibility to the existing business processes.  Notably, the SharePoint platform is also be improved with some great new features. The new version promises updates to Claims-Based Authentication, Business Connectivity Services (BCS), eDiscovery, Business Intelligence and Workflows, among other features.

You’ll also notice several new Service Applications bundled with SharePoint, such as App Management, Machine Translation and the Work Management Service Application

The SharePoint user interface is also getting a design makeover, with cues from Microsoft’s Metro UI design principles

And there are a couple critical points here, which we need to consider before we plan to upgrade to SharePoint 2013.

1.      There is no direct upgrade path from SharePoint 2007 to 2013. You must have a current version (SharePoint 2010 Foundation or Server) in place before upgrading to the next version. Is your organization still using a 2007 version of SharePoint (WSS or MOSS)? Or perhaps even using SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (v. 2.0)? Well, you’re not alone. If you’re considering SharePoint 2013, now may be the perfect time to start migrating from your older installation to SharePoint 2010. That way you’ll be prepared for a smooth transition to the new software.

2.      The underlying server components for SharePoint 2013 are also being upgraded. Earlier this year Microsoft released its new database server, SQL Server 2012. And Windows Server 2012 is anticipated for public release before the end of this year. So, if you want to be ready when SharePoint 2013 rolls out, this is an ideal time to start considering migrating to the newest versions of Windows Server and SQL Server while you’re at it.

So, in a sense, upgrading to SharePoint 2013 is also going to be kind of a big deal. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a big hassle.

If you need any assistance with the SharePoint 2013 upgrade or its plan, do let me know. It would be my pleasure to help you out with that.

 

Expiration Policy or Information Policy Management: Aborted

Few days back I have noticed that in our environment the Expiration Policy started successfully, however aborted after few min. This was happening for few days. There were no Event logs, no service drop alert.

The depth was left to be searched, yes correct the USL logs. In ULS logs we found some of the references form Information Policy Management service failed due the access blocked on the site.

ULS logs entry: Error message

10/23/2012 23:03:18.48             OWSTIMER.EXE (0x2D7C)                       0x22B4  DLC Server                                Information Policy Management        5016     Critical  Expiration Service for site https://SharePointServer.com/sites/SharePointSitecollection failed. Access to this Web site has been blocked.  Please contact the administrator to resolve this problem

Why this happen

While processing the information Policy Management configured on some of the lib., the expiration policy service don’t find reference of the site because its access is blocked. Hence aborted or terminates its execution.

Resolution: 

Go to central admin -> Applications Mgt. tab -> Site collection quotas and locks -> Check if the site is locked and change status to not locked and see next time if expiration policy works or not.

If you have any questions/queries, do let me know, I would be try my level best to answer those.  

SharePoint Logs Showing Unexpected Error Related to CMS/Cached Values?

Error: While taking a look at our SharePoint logs, we noticed a very large number of entries similar to the following:

11/06/2012 08:23:11.47  w3wp.exe (0x276C)                        0x1BF0 CMS                            Publishing                     0 Unexpected Cached Value found.  Value is False 
11/06/2012 08:23:11.47  w3wp.exe (0x276C)                        0x1BF0 CMS                            Publishing                     0 Unexpected XXX / is a descendent of / - False)

By looking at this we see one of these for each site/subsite in the site collection, as well as individual pages, but we are unsure of what process would be going through the entire site like this.

Resolution:

Some people were suggesting that this error occurred only after you upgrade your environment with June 2011 or Aug 2011 cumulative updates. It’s been one and half year since MS had releases 2011 cumulative updates and surely this could not be the possible cause of issue in our environment. So far MS has been suggesting disabling logging for the "Publishing" category as that's what has been suggested in other similar cases as well.

With Microsoft Support it goes by like this:

"As discussed earlier today, this issue is a bug. A bug request is filed for this to the product group and we are waiting for an outcome. This may however take some time. In the meantime the workaround is to go into the Diagnostic Logging section and set the option to NONE for the Publishing category. I have also checked around to see if there is other way to work around this but there does not seem to be any for the moment”.

Finally MS suggested us change the logging method in our environment which had fixed the issue for us. Below are the stsadm commands for your reference.

Set Publishing to none.

stsadm  -o setlogginglevel -category “Publishing” –tracelevel none windowslogginglevel none

stsadm  -o listlogginglevel

Restart the Tracing Service

net stop sptracer

net start sptrace

If you have any queries \ questions, do let me know, I would be happy to answer those.  

Event ID 7888 Runtime Exception Thread was being aborted and Event ID 5538 an error occurred in the blob cache

Errors: You will see the below error messages in the event viewer.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Office Server General
Event ID: 7888
Date:  9/14/2010
Time:  2:31:08 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: SPSMOSS20071
Description:
A runtime exception was detected. Details follow.
Message: Thread was being aborted.

Techinal Details:
System.Threading.ThreadAbortException: Thread was being aborted.
   at System.Threading.ReaderWriterLock.AcquireWriterLockInternal(Int32 millisecondsTimeout)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.BlobCache.<>c__DisplayClass14.<>c__DisplayClass17.b__11()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Publishing Cache
Event ID: 5538
Date:  9/14/2010
Time:  2:31:08 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: SPSMOSS20071
Description:
An error occured in the blob cache.  The exception message was 'Thread was being aborted.'.

Resolution 1:

Flush the blob cache to ensure that the fix can take place on a new, fresh cache
- set the NTFS permissions for "WSS_WPG" group with "full permissions" of the defined Blobcache folder
- change the values in web.config as recommended in this sample here:
BlobCache location="E:\blobcache" path="\.(gif|jpg|png|css|js|htc|)$ " maxSize="10" max-age="86400" enabled="true"/

Resolution 2:

This could also be a database permission issue.

Write down the name of the content database of the Sharepoint site, on which we are receiving this error from Sharepoint Central Admin -> Application Management
-> Sharepoint Web Application Management -> Content Databases ->  Select that URL or Web Application from the list

Go to SQL 2005 Management Studio -> select that  database - properties - write down the location

If you are using SSEE, we may need to download the SQL 2005 Management Studio Express (SSMSE) , to perform this operation

Go to that location, go a level up, i.e. if the location is something like
d:\SQLDATA, go to D:\ level and add ‘Authenticated Users’ with default permissions,

i.e. ‘Read & Execute’, ‘List Folder Contents’ and ‘Read’

If  you have any queries/questions do let me know.