Using PowerShell to Export Your .WSP Packages

During your upgrade from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint Server 2013, we will need to make sure that we have all of the appropriate versions of our deployed WSP files.  If you have ever been a guest (consultant) on another farm, and your client has not been able to maintain a valid history of deployments, you could really run into a big upgrade problem.  Luckily for us, Shane Young, with help from Todd Klindt, wrote up a nice blog post on how to export and import your farm solutions using PowerShell called Using PowerShell to export all solutions from your SharePoint 2010 farm and other fun

I am only really worried about the extract portion of the blog, and have modified the script a bit to fit how I run my scripts.

#Get Backup Path
$bkdir = read-host("Enter Folder Location") # Get Backup Path!

# Set Backup Path if you want to hard code your path
#$bkdir = "\\serverName\Shared\Temp" (optional "C:\Temp")

# Verify folder exists
if ((test-path $bkdir) -eq $false ) # Verify folder else create it...
  {
     [IO.Directory]::CreateDirectory($bkdir) 
  }

# Add Snapin
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -EA 0 

(Get-SPFarm).Solutions | ForEach-Object{$var = $bkdir + "\" + $_.Name; $_.SolutionFile.SaveAs($var)}

Thanks Shane for making life less stressful!

Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Upgrade Planning Template

I have modified the Microsoft Template, and you can find a copy of my upgrade template here: http://sdrv.ms/VqNni7

Getting Your SharePoint Farm Information

As we prepare our upgrade strategy for SharePoint Server 2013, one of the major requirements is documentation of our existing SharePoint 2010 environment.  This is also a good script to run when first getting your hands on an unknown farm.  This should save you a bunch of documentation time.
<Lecture>
In theory, you should be reviewing the output documentation of your environment on a weekly basis.  You could even go as far as importing the results into SQL, and tracking your growth and changes of your SharePoint Farm with SSRS.
</Lecture>
This script will create a folder, go through your farm, and create the appropriate .csv file as long as you have the appropriate permissions to run the script and you have permissions to access the data.

There are several blog posts on how to take all the .csv files and merge them into one .xlsx file.  Here are a couple that I found useful.  You will notice that they call the ComObject Excel.Application, so if you do not have Excel installed or the appropriate Office System Driver Connectivity Components installed, you will get an error.

This post by Jeff Hicks was very informational about how to get everything working:

http://www.petri.co.il/export-to-excel-with-powershell.htm

This page actually has a .ps1 for you to download, but in the Q&A section, imfrancisd has a script that works very nicely as well.

Update (01/10/2012)
Added -Limit All
Update (10/30/2014)
Added a check to see if Backup location ends with "\"
Added URL to Sandbox Solution location for output
Added site structure output for entire farm
Added Disposal of objects
Update (10/21/2015)
Moved Script to Gist
Fixed error in Get Features section thanks to Matthew Bramer (@ionline247)
Cleaned up Get Site Structure section to get ALL webs within each Site Collection by Web Application.

SPSRED: Upgrading your SharePoint and SQL Environments

I was fortunate enough to have scheduled the end of a client engagement to coincide with the start of SharePoint Saturday Redmond.  When I had submitted the topic, I was kind of hoping to not have it selected, as there was a lot of work that would need to be done.  That being said, here is my presentation:

Here is the farm layout:

 Here is the template that I used when creating SQL Cluster and HA Group:

Here is the output file from the Test-SPContentDatabase:

All files are located here:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=8E55AA8C038225F8!4265

SPSNoLA: Augmenting User Profiles with Line of Business Data

The actual file is located here:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=8e55aa8c038225f8&resid=8E55AA8C038225F8!832&parid=root

Upgrade to Server 8 (beta) With SharePoint 2010

With the unveiling of the new Server 8 beta OS, and SQL 2012, I decided to see how I can upgrade my development farm.
Host:
Server 2008R2, 6 cores, 16 GB RAM.
Farm: All running Server 2008R2
OU-01: AD/DNS
SP-01: SharePoint 2010 SP1, August CU
SQL-01: SQL2008R2

I started by upgrading my Host OS via USB.  This was not as much fun as I was hoping, but in the process, I did find a great utility for formatting USB drives made by HP (http://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool/3000-2094_4-10974082.html).  So you will need to download the ISO to USB tool from Microsoft called the Windows 7 USB/DVD, you can download the tool here...  Run the program and follow the directions to create the boot-able USB.

So with the Host OS upgraded and my Snapshots taken, it was time to tackle my SP-01 box.  I did not detach from the farm, or do anything special, I just attached the ISO and ran E:\Setup.exe from the DVD.


With the installation completed, we are going to be looking at my 3 web applications,  a Classic Authentication Application., a Claims based Authentication, and a Mysites Web Application, which is also a Classic Authentication Application type.

Now that we have the OS installed, and without even logging into the server, let's see what our sites look like.
Here is our Classic Authentication Site...

Here is our Claims Site (not a good sign)...

Here is our My Site... 

This is a good sign!

This... not so much...

At this point I figured it is a Claims vs Classic authentication issue and a User Profile Issue.  Let's look at CA and make sure that everything is running.

Logging into my Windows Server 8 box, I notice a lot of errors right off the bat...

So open up the event viewer to see what issues I am truly having...

Since all of our errors seem to stem from the STS having issues, lets take a look at our services and make sure that everything is up and running.

Service on Server

Web Applications

At this point, I decided that the STS will need to be provisioned again.  But how to run PowerShell in Server 8?

Server 8 PowerShell (.Net 4.0) will not run the PowerShell v2.0 cmdlets.  You will need to install a compiled PowerShell application like PowerGUI to run PowerShell v2.0 (.Net 3.5).  Read step #6 in Craig Lussier blog post Install SharePoint 2010 on Windows Server 8 Beta.  You will want to download PowerGUI.3.1.0.2058.msi to run your PowerShell commands.  After downloading and installing, it will open a session of PowerGUI.  Do not upgrade, and close the program.  You will want to run PowerGUI as Administrator.
run the script...

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell -EA 0
$sts = Get-SPServiceApplication | ?{$_ -match "Security"}
Write-Host($sts)
Write-Host($sts.Status)
$sts.provision()

lets verify sites...
Here is our Classic Authentication Site (still working)...

Here is our Claims Authentication Site... 

Here is our My Site...

Add SharePoint Snap-In to PowerShell ISE

Let me start off with saying that I, in no way, came up with this solution.  It was first shown to me by Shannon Bray (http://shannonbray.wordpress.com) when he and Gary Lapointe were maintaining spPowerShell.com.
Since the site is no longer available, I have had to grab the following information from Kirk Evens (Add Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell Snap-In to All PowerShell Windows) and from Spence Harbar (Adding SharePoint 2010 PoweShell cmdlets to your PowerShell ISE).

Open up Windows PowerShell ISE (Run as Administrator), and run the following script:

# set the execution policy to run scripts
set-executionpolicy unrestricted -force

# Create the profile
if (!(test-path $profile.AllUsersAllHosts)) {new-item -type file -path $profile.AllUsersAllHosts –force}
psEdit $profile.AllUsersAllHosts

In the new Tab,
For SharePoint 2010 add the following:

cd 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\POWERSHELL\Registration'
.\SharePoint.ps1
cd \ 

For SharePoint 2013 add the following:

cd 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\CONFIG\POWERSHELL\Registration'
.\SharePoint.ps1
cd \ 

Save the Profile tab (no, you do not run the script)

Again, thanks to Shannon, Kirk, Gary, and Spence for their posts!

UPDATE (01/16/2012)
After speaking with Shannon, he has finally moved over the blog...  you can find his ISE blog here...
http://shannonbray.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/sharepoint-and-powershell-ise/
UPDATE (10/21/2012)
Added the section for SharePoint 2013...

Creating a Central Admin Desktop Shortcut Using PowerShell

While working on a deployment script, I thought it would be nice to add the Central Admin shortcut to the desktop of All Users.  You can get a lot of information from http://ss64.com/vb/shortcut.html concerning creating shortcuts, but if you want to add the shortcut for All Users:

# Add Central Admin Shortcut to All Desktops
$wshshell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
$desktop =  $wshShell.SpecialFolders.Item("AllUsersDesktop")
$lnk = $wshshell.CreateShortcut($desktop + "\SharePoint 2010 Central Administration.lnk")
$lnk.TargetPath = "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN\psconfigui.exe"
$lnk.Arguments = "-cmd showcentraladmin"
$lnk.Description = "Views the Central Administration Web Application."
$lnk.IconLocation = "%SystemRoot%\Installer\{90140000-1014-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}\shcentadm.exe"
$lnk.Save()

RSS Feeds from Google News

Sometimes the news sources you are trying to collect do not have good RSS feeds.  Especially if you are trying to collect information about a very niche subject.  Google has made it very easy to collect news to display as an RSS feed within SharePoint.
1)  Go to http://news.google.com
2)  Type in your search parameters
3)  Modify the results URL by adding "&output=rss" at the end of the URL, and go to the new URL
4)  Verify that you are indeed getting the feed.

4)  Add the RSS Viewer webpart to your page
5)  Under RSS Properties, in the RSS Feed URL, add the modified URL.

Increase Time Before Connection Timeout Between SQL and SharePoint

I have run into an issue with a couple of clients where a Connection Timeout Error occurs on either very large SSRS reports or in some custom web parts pulling data from SQL.   By default, the connection between SharePoint and your SQL servers will timeout after 120 seconds.  My current client just had me create a report that takes about 8.5 minutes to complete rendering...  oops, error!
This is how you fix the timeout issue:
1)  Go to the virtual directory for the site that is timing out.
         C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\yourSite
2)  Make a backup of the web.config file.
3)  Edit the web.config file and add an httpRuntime property called "executionTimeout"

In the example below, my connection will now timeout after 5 minutes (300 seconds).