Thinking through Exchange and SQL Virtualization (high level intro - more to come)

This won't be a deep dive on the technical issues that you need to cover in a virtualized Exchange/SQL solution. Rather, this is an initial caution to those people thinking about virtualizing those typically high-transaction systems.

First off, PLEASE remember that Microsoft simply doesn't support Exchange 2003, SQL 2000 or older in a virtualized system. SO DON'T DO IT! With that said, I am all about virtualizing those newer versions as long as you keep these primary things/questions in mind (I will dig in on these in later posts).

• What will be the new ('cause you don't want to keep using the current one) availability/recoverability strategy?
• How will you migrate existing servers and data? Just because you can P2V that server, doesn't mean you should! There are serious performance reasons we just don't do that all the time.
• Do you have an overall virtualization strategy for your datacenter? If not, then I would advise you take a step back and hold off on the tactical SQL/Exchange projects. Also, check out www.vmetc.com for some REALLY good info on virtualization from one of the most experienced VMWare experts around.
• How are your current performance metrics and what is your growth expectation for the next couple of years?

Well, this morning I just got really miffed at what I thought was my bad decision on buying a laptop a little over a year ago. I bought a really sweet 64 bit, 4GB RAM Gateway.

Today I finally loaded up XP Mode on the new load of Windows 7 Ultimate. Wouldn't you know it, it said I didn't have hardware virtualization enabled. So, I figured I messed up and didn't think ahead when I bought the laptop. But NO! It wasn't me, it was GATEWAY! Eventhough my Intel processor indeed does sport the VT-X feature, Gateway in their infinite wisdom decided to disable in their BIOS. THEN...they even removed the flag from the BIOS editor to let me enable it myself!

Of course now my PC is "out of warranty" and I will have to pay their support to "hope" somebody can help me out with this. Hmmm. I think not. Bye Bye Gateway - I am back to buyin a more corporate friendly PC from now on.

Moral of story: Be careful with the OEMs. They think they know better than you what technologies you should use. Don't believe them!

This might give some indication as to why it has been a while since the last post. I am trying my best to help my sales team, customers, and even myself become more educated on the many different editions of the Microsoft products.

It was bad enough before Vista, but now with the way too many numbers of Vista editions and the 32/64 bit differences, it is just getting to be too much to keep in one persons brain. So, I am at least going to dump some of the major points here. So you know, this is as much for my benefit as for anyone who actually reads my junk here.

Windows Server 2003 R2 Major point here - it moves to "extended support" 7/13/2010
32 bit Standard: 4GB RAM max, up to 4 procs, 2 node cluster
64 bit Standard: 32GB Ram max, up to 4 procs, 2 node cluster
32 bit Enterprise: 64GB Ram max, up to 8 procs, multi-node clusters
64 bit Enterprise: 2TB Ram max, up to 8 procs, multi-node clusters

SQL Server 2005 http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/features/compare-features.mspx
32 bit Standard: 4 procs, OS max for memory, 2 node cluster support
64 bit Standard: um, yeah, it's the same for SQL - at least something is easy
32/64 bit Enterprise: unlimited procs, OS Max on Memory, multi-node clusters

With SQL there are a few additional features you get with Enterprise: Indexed views, database partioning, parallel index operations, and some good integration tools. Check the link above for the full set of feature diffs.

Office SharePoint Server
This one is kind of like SQL Server; it's pretty easy. There is actually no difference in Enterprise/Standard as far as the server goes. Also no difference in price tags. That the server though. The CALs (client access licenses) are where the differences come in.

The Standard CAL gives you all the workspaces, doc libs, lists, enterprise search, Records management, workflow, publishing features, profiles/my sites, and a bunch of the other well known SharePoint features.

The additive Enterprise CAL brings along Excel Calc Services, Froms Server, Report Center and the Business Data Catalog (BDC - not to be confused with the depricated backup domain controller).

Other Product CALs
Here is another cool link to see what features the CALs for the different products include: http://www.microsoft.com/calsuites/enterprise_product.mspx

I will try to add OCS and Exchange edition information a little later. I'm not too sure I will EVER add the Vista editions.

In the last post, I was clearly overjoyed with my new HTTP handler to deal with some PDF display issues. This thing worked exactly as I had hoped it would on my development box running from the IDE. Unfortunately, once I copied my code base up to the test server (um, actually that was my production server, but that's another issue) I no longer had a working HTTP handler. In fact, the test server (prod) simply dropped a 404 error where it should have shown a PDF via my handler.

So, the first thing I was thinking was that my abstract class for the handler was not being reconized on the test/prod box. So, strong named it, recompiled, updated the reference, added it as an assembly to the web.config, and finally (just for good measure) installed it into the GAC. Guess what? None of these things worked. Still getting the stupid 404.

Searched on Google, found little help. Searched on Google again, still found little help. Finally, found this little gem on the ASP.Net Forums: http://forums.asp.net/t/1177230.aspx. In case they drop this thread in the future, let me give you the gist: IIS has a little area that no matter what your web.config says to do, it just won't care. So, I opened up IIS on my problem machine, went to the properties of my web site, clicked on the "Configuration" button on the Directory tab, and finally added a new entry for PDF to point it to the aspnet_isapi.dll like all the other extensions listed in that box.

SOLVED and my lovely handler now renders my dynamic PDF files like a champ on my test (prod) system as well as in my IDE.

Well, as my previous post lamented, I had to do some clever CSS/HTML/JavaScript work arounds in a solution I am building to prevent undesirable user interaction with my site. And, it worked pretty well. Unfortunately, the PDF Viewer control I was using in there didn't!

Actually, let me be fair, it worked, just not completely for what I needed it to do. I need the users to laod a PDF into the IFrame by selecting the document in the list box right? No problem, that works. Now, if the user then selects the Save button in the PDF window, it needs to actually show the PDF file name in the Save text box on that window. This is where the 3rd party viewer tool and I completely disagree on things. It wants to ONLY use the base file name in the SRC property of the IFrame. This would be just fine and dandy if I were using static PDF files, but I am most certainly NOT. I have to render these PDF files out from a Database (by the way, this system is WAY cool). So, what happens is that the Save As shows my ASPX page name in the Save As text box. Not good. I don't want users seeing my page names unless I put them on that page myself. And, again to be fair, it isn't the controls fault, it is actually the Adobe Reader.

The solution: throw away that 3rd party tool, write my own HttpHandler, register the handler to cover all PDF files, and then fake the SRC tag of the iframe to point to a bogus PDF file with the name I want to show in the Save As box.

This solution gets my issue resolved, but it also gives me the ability to do SO much more. Now I can do all kinds of cool stuff with parameters on a PDF file that wouldn't have really been possible without that HttpHandler. And the best part: those handlers are a breeze to write. I will share some of that later.

Yes, I think I might just be. I recently went out to Best Buy and grabbed a brand new Gateway laptop. That right there comes close to qualifying me as crazy. I just haven't been a huge fan of the cow for a long time, so it hurt a little to buy that one. But, it was the ONLY 64 bit, 4GB RAM, 250GB HD I could find for under $800. So, it's mine.

The second issue is it has a Red outer shell. I am a Georgia Tech guy, so this too hurts too much to discuss further.

Next crazy thing, it came preloaded with (gulp) Vista Home Premium 64 bit. I like the 64 bit. Not too sure about Vista and REALLY not sure about Home stuff and not being able to join domains. OK, so I actually like the Vista OS now. And I REALLY love the 64 bit and 4GB RAM on it. And, hate the home premuim. It doesn't support Virtual Server 2005.

And finally, the thing that really makes me crazy: I am now watching my brand new PC, now loaded with all of my great tools/data already (about 2 days worth of effort), attempt to "upgrade" itself to Vista Ultimate 64 bit. Yep, taking a perfectly working Vista machine and screwing with it. I am TOTALLY nuts. The stuff I do just to have Virtual systems. I really am crazy.

I have been a huge fan of IFrames for a long time, but have recently steered clear of them due to "cross-browser issues" with how they are rendered. Well, a solution I worked on recently basically required that I use an Object tag for PDF display inside of an IFrame - actually this is the way the tool worked, I would have done away with either the IFrame or the Object tag.

Anyway, I ended up with a simple list box that worked as a document selector. Select a document and on the post back the page loads your selected PDF into the Object tag in the IFrame. No problem. Well, one problem, that led to another.

If you get high energy users that want to click on three different documents before the page actually posts back you get big problems. The selector might indicate you should be viewing one document, but the PDF shows another.

So, this is easy to fix. Obviously, my first choice was to write a little javascript to disable the list control when the user selects a doc. Hmm, yeah, well that works so long as you don't actually want the value selected posted back to the server. The browser is so smart that it doesn't post back values from disabled controls. Ok, so I dropped to method 2 and add a little more JavaScript, some extra DIV tags and new CSS based on this from 4 Guys. Really cool and simple and mostly worked.

This got me almost there, but I suddenly had a really odd problem that I wasn't sure of what to do. I placed my new divs at z-index 999, but it was still showing behind the stupid IFrame/Object with my PDFs. I did some searching and found that most browsers render IFrames/Objects at the very top of the stack no matter what you do. I wrote JavaScript to try to override it; no luck. I just didn't have control.

The only thing I could do, and I did, was to actually set the iframe to visibility='hidden' when I show my new DIVs. What a pain. Why not just let me control where the IFrame is in the stack? Wouldn't that be much better?

The most ironic part of my lost session problem (see previous post) is that it reared its ugly head on me on Thursday night, May 29, 2008. What's the problem there? I MISSED THE SEASON FINALLY OF LOST!!!!!! Totally unfair. BTW, if you ruin the episode for me before I see it, you might die. So, you are warned. Lost session = Lost LOST = I HATE SESSIONS NOW.

I have been writing web applications for several years now. Whether you like sessions or not, I have made REALLY good use of them in classic ASP, .NET 1.1, 2.0 and now 3.5. Oddly enough, I never had an issue where my session was lost unexpectedly in one of my applicaitons until now.

It seems (according to lots of posts out there - and MSDN) that sessions are treated a little differently in .NET. Hmm, really, no kidding! But, the changes made to session management shouldn't cause my user to hit the page and immediately lose their session, right? If so, I am really in trouble, becuase like I said, I likes the sessions.

After reading about a thousand posts that didn't fix my problems and trying every combination of session state management (SQL, StateServer, InProc, BiteMyProc) nothing was working. I actually gave up on it at about 9:30 at night after working on it for 3 hours.

I came back to it yesterday after a not so great night of sleep, but still with a fresh mind. Suddenly it popped into my head that MAYBE the browser/IIS were being somewhat intelligent for me (thanks). MAYBE, since I was only wanting to track the SessionID and didn't store anything into that session as a variable, the system ASSUMED I didn't need that session to stick around. Yep, I put a line of code in my landing page that looked like this: session("hold") = "I cannot believe it was this stupid" and ran my site. There it is, sessionID is persisted.

I wouldn't really care too much about that except that I have done similar things in classic ASP and the session was always maintained even without information stored in it. It would have been nice, and I am pretty sure I have said it before, for Microsoft to document this one a little better (or maybe at all).

I have tried my best to avoid JavaScript as much as possible. Primarily, it is because it just looks too much like C and C++ (YIKES!). Yes, I LOVE VB. Anyway, over the last couple of weeks I was introduced to the YUI (Yahoo User Interface) tools/libraries. This toolset is simply incredibel. What's more, is this stuff can be rather easily retrofitted into your SharePoint Layout Pages to do some REALLY cool stuff.

Today, we (by we, I mean I watched as some User Interface guys worked) implemented the Panel and animation libraries. Literally in a matter of about 2 hours, we had a rocking fly-out set of web parts. All we had to do was copy/paste in some of the YUI tags and point them to our DIV wrapped around the web part zone hosting our webparts. In our case, this was just the Right web part zone. So, now there is this awesome little tab sitting over on the right of the screen that when you click it, it slides out to the left with all the web parts there. Talk about a real-estate saver. Let me repeat the best part - 2 HOURS! That was it.

I am sure we (spoken lightly) will spend a little more time tweaking the CSS to style that panel, but for the most part, the YUI took care of everything for us. You HAVE to check it out!

http://developer.yahoo.com/

One of the things I absolutely love about my job these days is the ability to meet with new customers to talk about what SharePoint does and what it is. I had the pleasure last year of putting on a "Deminar" as part of my company's (Optimus Solutions) quarterly online educational events. This was my first live online demonstration, so it was a completely new experience for me. I have to say, it was fun, but I prefer the face to face interaction. Give me a room full of people any day over little green dots. ;-)

Anyway, I thought I would share it with you. It really just talks about the document management features and the benefits they offer an organization.

http://www.optimussolutions.com/Deminar/Media/collaboration_11-16-2007.wmv