So I set out to fire up a fresh SP2010 install with the new BETA bits today... Since I wanted to do a "Complete" install using SQL 2008 (not Express), I promptly referenced Neil Hodgkinson's "From the Field" blog top on "Single Server Complete Install of SharePoint 2010 using local accounts."  Excellent post Neil!  It was VERY helpful. But being the control freak that I am, I wasn't content going back to the world of GUID laden Administration databases.  So I did a little digging in the New-SPConfigurationDatabase powershell cmdlet and I found a handy extra parameter. Instead of using just "New-SPConfigurationDatabase", try...

Ok, so I have to get this off my chest if for no other reason to add my voice to what I hope will be a loud shout from the SharePoint development community. So follow me through a logic exercise here... REQUIREMENT - Multiple VM Based SharePoint Development Environments: Due to the nature of being a consultant, I work on a wide variety of projects in a relatively short period of time. I develop on or otherwise support a large number of SharePoint instances. It is not practical for me to

So here it is... The new home for my blog. (For those of you who just navigated over from my old host... THANKS!) First of all... yes, the layout is a bit boring.  I can do better.  I didn't have time to work out the CSS for a unique theme for my blog.  So this is just one of the out-of-the-box themes provided by SubText, the software I'm using to power this blog.  I'll try to work on that in the near future if I get some time (yeah right  :) ). Anyway...  I'm working on some updates to the SharePoint Scalability whitepaper that...

So after a season of study and training, I'm getting back into the swing of things. I thought that as I wrap up projects going forward, I might jot down solutions to things that hang me up along the way. I figure that by writing them down, I'll remember a little quicker next time! And of course... the hope is that someone else may benefit. So I'll start off with lessons learned during a sweet gig in Bermuda (more on that later) that I just wrapped up. As usually, I hit my head on a couple o

This is way cool. So as I'm preparing for this SharePoint Master training, I'm working through some site customization. I started playing with a hosted WSS 3.0 site to see what I could do without writing a single line of compiled code. I hit a big roadblock when I wanted to use a picture library as a source for an animated slideshow. I can't upload custom webparts to the site because I don't have the rights to deploy solutions or features or to manipulate the web.config. So I figured ther

What can I say about this past week! It was a great ride and I'm not even talking about The Mummy at Universal! I spent this last week at TechEd 2008 in Orlando. It was such an amazing event that I don't even know where to begin! So I'll start with the facts. Microsoft's new hypervisor technology "Hyper-V" is set to storm onto the scene. I saw some excellent demos this week. So good in fact, that I'll probably have Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V running on my laptop and/or my desktop

In the storage whitepaper that I recently released, I talked a bit about the SPDatabaseStatisticsJobDefinition timer job and the fact that it can, in most cases keep SharePoint running smoothly. However, I recently had to research a bit further into what exactly this timer job does. This is what I discovered: