Tech-Ed 2008 Notes

I had a chance to attend the Tech-Ed 2008 conference for IT professionals recently. It was a great experience. I learned a lot of new architectural details about MOSS and other Microsoft technologies like SQL server 2008. I also had a chance to discuss numerous technical topics with SharePoint MVPs. The best part was the "The case of unexplained" session by Mark Russinovich. He is the Windows God!

I hope to blog about several SharePoint and other interesting topics that I had to chance to explore during the conference.

MOSS Quick Facts:
1. MOSS indexes only the first 16 MB of a file.

2. Recommended (preset) size of the property store DB is 4x index file size.

3. Index server creates the index file with document GUIDs and other information.
The query server uses these document GUIDs to query the database for the document metadata.

4. Index server and Query server hard disk space should atleast 2.8 times the index file.

5. For optimal performance, the network throughput between all the MOSS servers should be at least 1 Gbit/s

6. 12/Logs are called Unified Logging Service (ULS) Logs

7. There is one more log file called WSS_AdminService.log in the c:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp folder. I am not sure of the purpose of this log file. Apparently, this file could potentially grow in size faster at times in some servers. So its useful to know if you run into hard disk space issues. If you know more about this file, please leave a comment.

8.

Cool MOSS tools:
1. LogViewer: Used to view ULS logs (12/logs). It can be downloaded from here: http://www.codeplex.com/features/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2502

2. MSIT Site Delete Capture: Its basically a site recycle bin. It backups sites before they are deleted. It can be downloaded from http://www.codeplex.com/governance


I had a chance to discuss some of the MOSS problems with the SharePoint MVPs and experts that my company is facing.

Here are some of the SharePoint problems and potential debugging options:
1. Problem: Emails don't appear in Ongoing discussion lists
Solution: Check the ULS logs. Search for "Incoming email" to find information regarding this problem. Typical errors include "recipient not found".
2.