Alpesh Nakar's Blog » SharePoint

Why Office 365?

Alpesh — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 01:59:00 +0000

Why not? To continue on our series on Office 365 and then you can decide if you want to move to Office 365 or not.

In the previous post, we introduced the concept of the ‘in the cloud’ offering from Microsoft namely Office 365 and what is the offering under the banner of Office 365.

The next question that may pop is “Why Office 365?”

In my opinion, there is no competition for Office 365. Simply nothing. If you start looking at some of the freebies or alternatives, it is not justified at all – since no one offers what Office 365 offers – namely

Office Web Apps – Office Suite of Applications in the cloud
Exchange Online - Email and Calendar – in the cloud with Microsoft Exchange 2010
SharePoint Online – In the cloud using SharePoint! PLUS create your web site with SharePoint Online and you can have a presence in minutes!
Lync – Connect, message and meet virtually using Lync Online
Office 2010 Professional Plus – licensed per user, pay by the month [plan dependent]

Can there be any comparison? I won’t even get ‘fruits’ in this equation if you know what I mean…

The benefits to move to the cloud with Office 365 are far too many to list here, but if we look at a high level overview, take either Exchange or SharePoint on premise – design, deployment, maintenance and upgrade overheads your head and wallet will go for a spin!

I’ll take SharePoint as a micro case study…. without going into the detailed planning, design, deployment ….

I’ll skip the planning, design stages of the project – because you need to do that even if you are moving to the cloud, else it will be more messier then on-premise deployment.

So getting down to the deployment, after planning and design stage – it’s very easy to get started with SharePoint Online as compared to SharePoint On-Premise! It’s as easy as signing up for the service, provision the site collection(s) / sites (as per the design), add users (pay as you go for the users accessing the services) and off you go… all these in couple of hours, subject to a very well documented plan and design is in place.

Compute the time and costs involved in the case of

Procuring and commissioning the hardware
Deployment
Maintenance

Compare this with getting started with the online solution

Sign up
Add Users ( I am not taking the federated route here, to keep it simple)
Assign Licenses for Services
Provision site collections / sites

You literally don’t have to worry about scalability, reliability and the infrastructure overheads! It’s all Microsoft’s headache now! If it breaches SLA, you get credit for the same!

Sure, online solution does not offer everything just yet and you could go in for a hybrid solution or wait …

Check out some of the external resources that will clear out the ‘cloud’ of doubt as to “Why Office 365?”

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216887/Why_We_Chose_Exchange_Online_Not_Google_Apps
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/socal-sam/archive/2011/05/12/google-docs-openoffice-versus-office-365.aspx
http://www.lookscloudy.com/2011/05/good-luck-google-docs
http://www.itproportal.com/2011/06/07/office-365-sky-view/

Most geeks I know, have already signed for the small business plan offered in Office 365 – costs $6.00 per month and the value for money well spent is in

Office Web Apps – Office Suite of Applications in the cloud
Exchange Online – Email and Calendar – in the cloud with Microsoft Exchange 2010
SharePoint Online – In the cloud using SharePoint! PLUS create your web site with SharePoint Online and you can have a presence in minutes!
Lync – Connect, message and meet virtually using Lync Online

Sure, you don’t get enterprise features of SharePoint Online, but for $6.00 this is a steal!

I have migrated from BPOS to Office 365 and forthcoming blog posts in a series will help you move to Office 365 from BPOS, because at the time of writing this post, Microsoft don’t have any tools or mechanisms in place to help you move! Stay tuned because I already have scheduled the posts to go live over a span of couple of weeks.

Why Office 365? was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Microsoft Tech.Ed India 2011 Session Videos Available

Alpesh — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:00:00 +0000

This year in March, 2011 I presented two sessions at Microsoft Tech.Ed India 2011 Edition in Bangalore and it was a great to connect with the Indian Tech Community! You can read more about my experience at Microsoft Tech.Ed India 2011 here and I had shared my conference slides here.

The videos are now available to download and view.

Here is the link to download and view all the session videos and presentations.

And here is the link to download and view two sessions that I presented. [Update: Videos are now available]

Session # 1

SharePoint Designer 2010: Top 10 things to know
Download Video
Part1 | Part2 | Part3

Download Presentation

Session # 2

Backup and Restore for SharePoint 2010: Protecting Mission Critical SharePoint Data with new tools and technologies

Download Video
Part1 | Part2 | Part3

Download Presentation

Microsoft Tech.Ed India 2011 Session Videos Available was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Applying WIM To VHD

Alpesh — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:35:00 +0000

This is a continuation of the series Re Imaging SharePoint VMs on the fly.

Now that you have captured your bootable virtual hard drive that was prepared for SharePoint Installation, you can apply that to another active partition or a virtual hard drive and then install whichever flavour of SharePoint you please!

As seen in the earlier post, capturing a virtual hard drive to create a Windows Image File is time consuming (compared to taking a snapshot in VMWare or Hyper-V) and memory intensive as well, however the advantage is that you can leverage on bare metal power – like having dual boot or multi-boot environment on your laptop.

So let’s apply the Windows Image File to the virtual hard disk or you could this another partition as well.

This completes the series & I hope it has been of value to you.

Applying WIM To VHD was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Capturing VHD To WIM

Alpesh — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 06:00:00 +0000

This is a continuation of the series Re Imaging SharePoint VMs on the fly.

Once you have finished with the task of preparing the virtual machine, it’s time to create a Windows Image File (WIM) for re-use at a later stage.

Navigate to the folder where you have imagex.exe

Run this command

D:\Virtualisation\imagex.exe /capture m: d:\justsharepoint.wim “NKR”

Figure here under explains the command

/capture m: = the virtual hard drive where we have installed and configured Windows Server 2008R2, Active Directory,SQL Server 2008 R2 etc. as per the previous post.

Capturing an image is a memory intensive process!

Of course nothing like taking a snapshot, it is slow to capture but then you get bare metal power!

This image took 22 minutes and 24 seconds.

That’s it!

Next post in the series will show you how this can be applied to another partition on the drive or another virtual hard drive.

Capturing VHD To WIM was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Session Slides From Past Conferences

Alpesh — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Yes, I have been very slack in not uploading my slides from last 3 presentations and I have heaps of excuses… but I will keep the good news in the forthcoming post.

These are my session slides from Microsoft Tech.Ed India 2011 sessions and Australian SharePoint Conference 2011.

Thank you for a great feedback received at Microsoft Tech.Ed India. I am particularly pleased with 7.45 / 9.0 for the Backup and Restore session, given the stress I was under with my laptop not working just an hour before my session… read all about it here.

Session Slides From Past Conferences was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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What is Office365?

Alpesh — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:59:00 +0000

Family and friends have been asking me – what does “In the Cloud” mean? To add fuel to the fire, Apple announced iOS5 and the iCloud. First off, these cloud based offerings are not new. Before we get any further, let’s quickly understand this “cloud”.

What is ‘in the cloud’?

In the cloud means your data is stored off-site on a managed infrastructure. In other words, you are out-sourcing your infrastructure team, literally! What out-sourcing?!! Yes, what is wrong with that – it’s just the same with your banks, telcos, insurance companies and any other large conglomerates.

It’s all offshore – not literally, maybe.

In short, not on your infrastructure, not managed by you and no overheads so to speak. Just pay the subscription fees by the month or whatever is on offer and you are ready to go! It’s all hosted for you!

What is Office 365?

Office 365 is the online version of the popular Microsoft suite of products that we all use everyday – Office Suite, Exchange, SharePoint and OCS (now Lync). It’s all bundled together and made available online for the organizations to get started with at will.

Office 365 to suit everyone – small business to enterprises:

Microsoft Exchange Online – Email & Calendar [25GB mailbox per user]
SharePoint Online –
1. Office Web Apps
  1. Microsoft Word,
  2. Microsoft Excel,
  3. Microsoft PowerPoint, and
  4. Microsoft OneNote
2. SharePoint Sites for collaboration within the organization
3. Public facing website on SharePoint
Lync Online – Instant Messaging, Video Calls, Online Meetings
Office Professional Plus – Subscription based Microsoft Office Suite of Applications on your desktop that integrates with the Online offerings – Exchange, SharePoint, Office Web Apps, Lync (Select Plans Only)

Why Office 365 and not the competition? Stay tuned for the next one

What is Office365? was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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Preparing Virtual Machine for SharePoint Installation

Alpesh — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:00:00 +0000

This is continuation of the blog post series on Reimaging SharePoint VMs on the fly.

Quick recap: In the earlier post, we have created a vhd and enabled the vhd to be bootable.

In this post, I am now logged into the vhd and ready to prepare my virtual machine for installing SharePoint 2010.

This is what we need to have configured, before we can even get started with the installation of SharePoint 2010.

Windows Roles and Features
1. Active Directory
2. Desktop Experience
3. SMTP
4. Windows PowerShell ISE
Populate Active Directory with sample users
Create Service Accounts for installation and management of SharePoint 2010
Disable IE Enhanced Security
Enable Remote Desktop
Installation and configuration of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Installation of hmailserver
Installation of SharePoint 2010 Pre-requisite installers
Firewall and Anti-Virus

Windows Server 2008 R2 Features

Active Directory

I will not walk you through on how to install Active Directory Role, but will point out resources that you can refer for populating your active directory with sample users.

Once the active directory is installed on your demo server, next step is to enable features.

Windows Roles and Features

Todd Klindt’s Blog Post – Setup a test environment
Set it up manually

Populate Active Directory with sample users

One of the steps outlined above
Download the batch file to populate dummy users for SharePoint OR
Creating 100 AD Users with PowerShell

Create Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010

All accounts will be domain users. Specific permissions are listed in the next table.

Account	Description
sa-spfarm	Farm Account
sa-spinstall	Installer Account
sa-sql	SQL Service Account
sa-spups	User Profile Services
sa-spshared	Shared Services
sa-spoffice	Office Services [OWA]
sa-spcrawl	Crawler Services
sa-spsearch	Search Services
sa-spcontent	Web Application Pool
sa-spmysite	My Site Web Application Pool

Specific Permissions that you need to assign

Account	SharePoint Server (local machine)
sa-spfarm	Local Administrator & Log on Locally [Only for provisioning User Profile Service Application]
sa-spups	Refer to Spence Harbar’s Articles

Installation and configuration of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Installation of SQL Server 2008 R2 as per these settings

Components	SQL Server Database Services with Full Text Search Analysis Services Reporting Services Business Intelligence Development Studio Client Tools Connectivity SQL Server Books Online Management Tools Complete
Instance Name	SP2010
Service Accounts	SQL Server Agent: domain\administrator All Others: System
Authentication Mode	Mixed Mode sa Password: “pass@word1”
System Administrator Account	Use current account (domain\administrator)
FILESTREAM	Enable FILESTREAM for transact SQL and I/O
Analysis Services Account	Use current account (domain\administrator)
Report Server Configuration Options	Install in SharePoint integrated mode

Sample Databases

Download Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. Install.

SQL Configuration Manager

Open SQL Configuration Manager and under SQL Server Network Configuration, click Protocols and enable Named Pipes

SQL Management Studio

In SQL Management Studio, create a new login for dom
ain\sa-spinstall and add it to the dbcreators and securityadmin roles

Install hMailserver

Download hMailserver

Installation of hMailserver & configuration of hMailserver for SharePoint

Installation of SharePoint 2010 Pre-requisite installers

Installation of Anti-Virus

Earlier, I had blogged on how you can install an unmanaged client of Microsoft Forefront. Refer to the blog post and install the anti-virus.

Quick Recap

That’s it! We are now done creating an image with

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (with Service Pack 1)
Active Directory – Sample Users and Managed Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010
Installation and configuration of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Installation of hmailserver
Installation of SharePoint 2010 Pre-requisite installers
Installation of anti-virus

Now that we have the virtual machine ready for installation of SharePoint 2010, in the next post (which will be really a very very short post compared to this one) we will make the final move before installing SharePoint 2010!

Preparing Virtual Machine for SharePoint Installation was published on Alpesh Nakar's Blog

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