By Donna Hemmert
AIS Network Vice President, Strategic Development
If you are looking for events at which to network and learn more about the Cloud and related topics, whether you are a newbie or an expert, there is an excellent source to find (and broadcast) those events. Check out Cloud Events (sponsored by @TheCloudNetwork), who hosts a calendar for the industry. They gather events from the community through email here.
You can find their calendar here.
CATEGORIES:
By Laurie Head
AIS Network Vice President
SharePoint managers everywhere are asking themselves, “Why should I spend money on SharePoint servers?”
Well, with on-premise IT costs soaring, they’re absolutely justified in asking that question. On-premise hosting has become much less cost effective than outsourced hosting. Quite simply, hosting SharePoint 2010 with an experienced hosting provider saves you money and worry.
It's important to ask yourself a few key questions when you're weighing moving your SharePoint from an on-premise environment to an outsourced hosting environment.
In belt-tightening times, the combined expense of SharePoint 2010 servers, technical staff and data security can be painful to a company. Why have the IT staff spend half their day fixing, patching and managing SharePoint servers, when they could utilize their time in better ways to help grow the company? Hosted SharePoint, which typically comes with a team of SharePoint hosting experts, is simply “better, faster and cheaper.” What’s not to like about that?
That’s my opinion, anyway, but how do you decide for yourself? Well, ask yourself a few questions first.
With fully managed SharePoint hosting services, you’ll never again have to buy another SharePoint server and figure out where to locate it in-house. You’ll never have to hassle with a flawed SharePoint deployment or wait months to deploy new features. You’ll never have to deploy, patch, update, troubleshoot, monitor or administer your SharePoint infrastructure again. You’ll never have to shell out big bucks for storage or staff training. Moreover, licensing is so much easier when you’re working with a hosting provider. And, it’s highly unlikely that you will have to worry about bad storms, physical security, performance and reliability.
Most of all, however, doing it all in-house can be cost-prohibitive. Hosted SharePoint can be a much cheaper alternative.
For example,our SharePoint hosting plans can help you get off the SharePoint-spending treadmill and save you up to 91% in hardware and support costs when compared to in-house SharePoint deployment. Have a look at this brief chart.
A Comparison of Major SharePoint Hardware & Support Costs.
Hosting With AISN Slashes Your Hardware and Support Costs Significantly.
| Hosted Solution | On Premise | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| SharePoint Deployment | SharePoint Deployment | ||
| Hardware | Servers (each) | Included ! | $15,000 |
| Software | Included ! | $5,000 | |
| Backup | Included ! | $5,000 | |
| Connection | Multi – Gigabit Internet | Included ! | $25,000 |
| Staff | Expert Staff | Included ! | $75,000 |
| Support | Redundant Equipment | Included ! | $ ? ? ? ? |
| Monitoring | Included ! | $ ? ? ? ? | |
| Total | One Low Monthly Cost! | $125,000 or more |
Now, need help comparing your costs? Bill Peters, who is in our Chicago office, is great to work with and can offer you expert guidance in this area. Contact him now for a free hosted SharePoint quote.
Further information about hosted SharePoint is also available in our whitepaper.
CATEGORIES:
By Laurie Head
AIS Network Vice President
How successful are private clouds, anyway?
That’s the question asked by a recent research report from Information Week. The survey reveals that most companies with private clouds in place are pleased with the results and are experiencing heightened efficiency and lower costs.
I find this report particularly interesting, since we’re building more and more private clouds — and particularly SharePoint private clouds — every day. While it’s not entirely clear to me how many of the companies surveyed are hosting their private cloud with a hosting provider or building their private cloud on premise, I think that the takeaways are broadly applicable.
Network Computing editor Mike Fratto, who wrote the 66-page report, said in his abstract:
The big takeaway? Those with private clouds experience more efficient use of hardware and superior scalability and reliability, and they make better use of IT’s time. These are all measurable benefits that can make your IT department shine in the eyes of users and the CFO. Those with private clouds also report success in lowering capital and operational costs and total cost of ownership.
There are some keys to success, though: Have a well-thought-out migration plan. Make sure new software can leverage the scaling and reliability features of your private cloud, and be prepared to train employees on the new systems. They’ll love you for it, and you’ll get better results.
A majority of the 414 IT professionals surveyed said they aren’t running private clouds yet. However, 21 percent of respondents said they have private clouds in place, and 30 percent more said they’re beginning private cloud projects. Of the respondents with private clouds, 72 percent described their implementations as “very successful” or “a complete success.” Another quarter said they were “somewhat successful,” while only 1 percent chose “somewhat unsuccessful.” Most reported having successfully lowered capex and opex.
The report digs deeper into cloud expectations, cloud costs, cloud maintenance, challenges, obstacles, vendor choices, best practices, keys to success and more. You can download the report here.
CATEGORIES:
By Terry Engelstad
MCP, MCSE, CCNA, MCDBA, MCTS, MCITP
AIS Network Operations Manager
Recently, a SharePoint hosting customer asked us to perform routine maintenance on his SharePoint site. As part of that, he asked us to clean out the Recycle Bin and have the automatic deletion mechanism disabled for the Recycle Bin. He said that his company hadn’t cleaned its SharePoint Recycle Bin in over one year.
There are some things you might find interesting about the Recycle Bin, which is the first line of defense in recovering data. As you probably know, SharePoint uses a two-tier Recycle Bin. The first tier is at the User level where an item deleted from a List or Library will drop into the User Recycle Bin. This way, the Users can recover deleted items themselves. Then after a period of time, items will be moved from the User Recycle Bin to a Site Collection Recycle Bin. The duration for which an item sits in the User Recycle Bin is determined by a parameter in SharePoint Central and is specific to an entire Web Application. The duration for which items will sit in the Site Collection Recycle Bin is determined by the amount of space available to hold these items and is also configurable via a parameter in SharePoint Central.
Currently, our customer’s User Recycle Bin is configured to never delete items. There are quite a few items in various User Recycle Bins. There are two ways to clean them out. First, somebody can go to each of the User Recycle Bins and remove items manually. Or, second, the retention configuration parameter could be changed to a very low value, and after a period of time, the items will flush out on their own.
The difference between these two techniques is that the first one requires human intervention to find all the Recycle Bins and to make decisions about which items should be deleted or not. The second option is global and will affect all items in all Recycle Bins.
Naturally, if our client wants us to clean out the User Recycle Bins individually, they would also need to define the rules for deletion of those items (i.e., delete everything older than 30 days, for example).
On the other hand, if the customer wants us to change the configuration parameters, we’d be happy to do so. That’s easy.
More questions about your hosted SharePoint? Leave your comments below.
CATEGORIES:
By Laurie Head
AIS Network Vice President
As we embark on a path toward cloud hosting for state government, I’ve been in search of solid resources that will help inform our new role as a contracted hosting provider to support Virginia’s eGov Services.
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers has been very helpful in this regard. If you haven’t seen their site, take a look now. NASCIO is an excellent resource for information about state government and technology, and they have made available a wide range of publications for download.
I particularly like NASCIO’s series of reports about leveraging cloud technology. These reports — four so far — are designed for state chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior IT decision makers, and they highlight the cloud’s potential for reducing costs, optimizing system efficiencies, and enhancing overall service delivery. They are as follows:
For a discussion of issues related to cloud privacy and security, last month’s report (May 2012) is excellent in its examination of how individual agencies within the state infrastructure are coming together and how “all of this activity is converging on a developing government strategy for maturing and harvesting the value of cloud computing.” The authors use Delaware and Michigan as examples.
Further, the report outlines 12 recommendations for state CIOs moving toward the cloud. According to NASCIO, state IT leaders must:
Thanks to NASCIO for offering some very valuable research. I encourage you to read the report. Let me know what you think by commenting here.
CATEGORIES:
By Jay Atkinson
AIS Network CEO
We love SharePoint 2010 but we are still keen to know, “When is the next edition of SharePoint scheduled for release?”
It’s still unknown whether the next edition of SharePoint is destined to be called SharePoint 15, SharePoint 2012, SharePoint 2013 or something entirely different. I am guessing it will be “SharePoint 2013,” given that the release is planned for much later this year. The beta will be released this summer, we’re told. The Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2012 is November 12th-15th in Las Vegas, so releasing SharePoint 2013 then would make complete sense from a marketing standpoint. But again, nothing has been announced beyond “Q4.”
SharePoint 2010 is something we love but we're still keen to ask when the next release is coming.
What will the new edition include? Microsoft is mum at the moment and everything is pretty much scuttlebutt right now. Mary-Jo Foley, who follows Microsoft and writes for ZDNet, indicated in her blog on February 22nd that this next edition of SharePoint will include a new SharePoint Apps Marketplace. According to her, SharePoint Apps “will support multi-tenant installations so that hosting providers can make available the same set of applications to multiple customers.” And, “SharePoint 15 gets a new education module/option, making the product more of a head-to-head competitor with Moodle, which is an open-source course-management system.”
There will be a lot of additional activity at Microsoft this year. Reading Redmond Channel Partner magazine is a great way to keep up with this type of information. According to the publication, a number of new releases are expected this year. Here’s a rundown:
SQL Server 2012
Release scheduled: April 1, 2012 (Now Released – updated 4/2/12)
Windows 8
Anticipated release: Between Q3 2012 and early 2013 (updated 8/15/12)
Windows Server 8
Anticipated release: Between Q3 2012 and early 2013 (updated 8/15/12)
System Center 2012
Anticipated release: Early 2012 (Now Released – updated 6/19)
Internet Explorer 10
Anticipated release: Between Q3 2012 and early 2013 (updated 8/15/12)
“Office 15″ (Codename for Sharepoint 2013/Office 2013)
Anticipated release: Q4 2012 or early 2013
(Download SharePoint Foundation 2013 Preview now. – updated 8/12)
Exchange 2013 (code for “Exchange 15″)
Anticipated release: Q4 2012 (updated 8/15/12)
Visual Studio 2012
Anticipated release: Q3 2012 (updated 8/15/12)
Windows Phone “Tango” and “Apollo”
Anticipated release: Q2 and Q4 2012, respectively (Tango Now Released, and Apollo On Track – updated 8/15/12)
Dynamics ERP Online
Anticipated release: September or October 2012 (updated 8/15/12)
Office 365
Anticipated update schedule: “Almost weekly” (updated 8/15/12)
Windows Azure
Rumored CTP release: Spring 2012 (updated 8/15/12)
What do you think SharePoint 15/SharePoint 2012/SharePoint 2013 will look like? Share your thoughts with us below.
CATEGORIES:
By Terry Engelstad
MCP, MCSE, CCNA, MCDBA, MCTS, MCITP
AIS Network Operations Manager
There is a security feature in Windows 2008 called Loopback Checking. It’s a security feature in IIS, which is a way of stopping some denial of service attacks. Since SharePoint 2010 runs locally on the server, and accesses its own databases by way of Communication Foundation service calls through IIS, technically, SharePoint is performing what could be construed as a self-denial-of-service-attack. There is a registry hack to turn off the feature.
This feature is only an issue on servers which are domain controllers and running SharePoint and SQL Server at the same time. Loopback Checking is not a problem on servers which are not domain controllers, nor in multi-server farm scenarios where SQL Server is not running on the same server as IIS.
For more information about disabling the loopback check, see Microsoft Support Article 896861.
CATEGORIES:
7,500 attendees gathered for the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 in Anaheim this week.
By Jay Atkinson
AIS Network CEO
The Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 has officially kicked off!
For those who are unfamiliar with it, the conference has been billed as “the most comprehensive event on SharePoint and related technology.” SharePoint is a robust business and one of Microsoft’s best-selling products.
This year, 7,500 attendees make up the sell-out crowd in Anaheim. They are gathering to participate in more than 240 sessions presented by Microsoft, SharePoint experts and customers — panels that focus on how SharePoint customers “can use the product as a platform for critical business applications, collaboration, content management, search, enterprise social networking, and more.” Microsoft intends to use this opportunity to “reflect on 10 years of redefining collaboration and look ahead to where the cloud and a growing SharePoint ecosystem will take the product next.”
This morning, conference attendees heard from Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft Office Division; Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of SharePoint; and Jared Spataro, senior director of SharePoint product management. Their combined keynote address examined “the current state of the SharePoint business” and its bright future.
Below are some key talking points:
We eagerly await the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2012 (November). See you then in Las Vegas!
CATEGORIES:
By Michael Emrich – Associate, Marketing & Sales.
Undoubtedly, cloud computing is the future. According to the “2010 IMB Tech Trends Survey” published in October 2010, 91% of 2,000 IT professionals surveyed across 87 countries expect that cloud computing will overtake on-premise computing as the primary means that organizations acquire IT over the next five years.
Cloud computing has emerged only within the last few years and is rapidly gaining acceptance by organizations of all sizes due to its inherent flexibility in both price and capacity. Cloud hosting providers essentially offer customers convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources such as network connectivity, servers, storage, applications, servers, and more. These resources are rapidly provisioned with minimal management effort.
Cloud computing solves numerous technical problems that on-premise dedicated servers create. First, it removes the need for organizations to keep their own internal data centers, which require office space, power, cooling, bandwidth, high levels of maintenance, networks, servers, and storage – not to mention the applications that are run on them.
With cloud hosting, companies are placing their applications on servers that reside in fully staffed, purpose-built data centers; have redundant power supplies and internet connections and are fortified against an array of natural or man-made failures. This cannot easily be replicated in an on-premise environment. Cloud customers have anywhere-access to their data as long as they have a compatible device with an internet connection. In the end, the deployment model choice depends upon the organization and its unique requirements.
To read more about the cloud, check out AIS Network’s white paper here.
CATEGORIES:
By Terry Engelstad
MCP, MCSE, CCNA, MCDBA, MCTS, MCITP
AIS Network Operations Manager
I recently published a blog post entitled, “SharePoint and Disaster Recovery Options,” but it did not specifically address SharePoint failover scenarios.
I began to give more thought to failover scenarios when a prospective customer asked us to devise a SharePoint environment that has the option for a fully redundant, geographically dispersed disaster recovery plan. After being asked to break out the cost for a direct failover time of a few seconds, 15 minutes and 4 hours, I was asked about our options to accommodate the few seconds, 15 minutes and 4 hours with no data loss incurred.
Failover of SharePoint is implemented differently depending on which version of SharePoint and SQL Server a client is using. There are usually two components to “recovery” – RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point-in-Time Objective). RTO is how long does it take to recover. RPO is what point-in-time do you want to recover to.
Breaking out the cost pertains only to RTO. However, the second question, regarding options to accommodate time lapses, also needs to be considered and is probably more important in determining a solution than RTO. If your RPO is “recovery with no loss,” then the only solution is to use SQL Server Enterprise Edition with multi-threaded Mirroring enabled.
The failover dilemma with SharePoint 2010 is that there are many more databases than in previous editions. For example, in MOSS, fully implemented, there are only four databases. In WSS 3.0, there are only three databases. In SharePoint Foundation 2010, there are 12 databases. In a SharePoint Server 2010 bare-bones installation, there are 22 databases.
The number of databases in SharePoint 2010 is directly tied to the number of features which get implemented. If, for example, Excel Service gets implemented, then that’s another database. If Access Services gets implemented, then that’s another database. That said, you could get away with doing Log Shipping in previous versions, but with SharePoint 2010, it is a royal pain in the butt. Each database needs a separate Log Shipping configuration. However, some of the databases will not recover properly with Log Shipping, because they are tied to SharePoint’s always-running Timer activity.
That said, here are my recommendations assuming RPO is immediate (i.e., no data loss):
For recovery in a few seconds:
- SQL Server Enterprise Edition with multi-threaded Mirroring implemented
For recovery in 15 minutes:
- SQL Server Enterprise Edition with multi-threaded Mirroring implemented
For recovery in 4 hours:
- SQL Server Enterprise Edition with multi-threaded Mirroring implemented
As I mentioned in my previous blog, the SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide by John L. Ferringer and Sean P. McDonough is a good resource. I would be interested in your thoughts on this too. Leave a comment, please.
CATEGORIES:
