Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

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Finally Microsoft released the new WSS package on November, 13. The new system requirements include the .NET Framework 3.0, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SQL Server 2000 with SP3 (or later).

Yesterday I had the time to have a first try to this new platform, so I started a new testing website at http://wss.valsania.it/. What I have first noticed is the setup process, dramatically simplified to guide the administrator through the creation of the first WSS webfarm, the search server role assignment, and the whole IIS configuration (virtual sites, application pools, etc.). It is now extremely simple to manage that OS components by using the Application Management site, under the redesigned Central Administration website.
From the user perspective, the new look and feel is simply awesome, tanks to the new Recycle Bin feature (great stuff!), the redesigned Quick Launch, the new “Site Hierarchy”, the Breadcrumbs and “Top Link Bar”. All these components greatly improve the user navigation experience, by reducing the time needed to reach the contents you are looking for.

I have not so much time to spend in testing, but I wish to try at less the migration of site contents from my current WSS 2.0 environment. Hoping to have the time to post further comments about that.

Windows Live Writer

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After I spent some hours yesterday night to get some information from the Net, I downloaded the latest version of the blogging software from Microsoft.  Currently I post in this personal weblog only by using the web interface provided by the WordPress engine, while I use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to write down the articles I publish on my corporate blog.

Whereas I’ve already tested some blogging tools like the Zoundry Blog Writer, I choose to use Microsoft Word because of the need to send all posts to a person who checks the language before publishing.  Moreover, I’ve told that the Microsoft tool for blogging, almost in its beta release, was something ugly to use and badly integrated with the most of blogging engines.

Yesterday night I read a good review of the latest revision of Windows Live Writer, so I decided to have a try with it, and I realized it is the best blog writer I’ve ever tested since I began to writing and publishing articles in that way! Despite of its beta revision status, it looks like a fully functional and perfectly integrated tool, both with the WordPress and the Community Server engines. Saving local drafts in the user’s personal documents folder is a great feature for persons like me that have it redirected on a server share, since I can start writing a post on a PC and complete it on another.

The only thing I wish, and I think Microsoft will do so, is to get the blogging feature of Live Writer integrated with other writing tools (maybe in the Office System), to make even more simple to edit, print, save and share blog posts, as we do with any other Office document.

New home page

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Yesterday I finally published a first page for the Phoibos blog hosting web site. Since I moved the hosting platform from WordPress µ to a collection of WordPress 2.0.4 sites, the first page has been publishing only a poor list of the active weblogs. By copying some elements of the wp-admin subsite I was able to create in a few minutes a good-looking page referencing all the hosted web spaces. I preferred to use skin elements of WordPress to gain the advantages this brand can bring to impress fist time users.

DNS Server publishing troubles

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Yesterday I realized that my primary public DNS server was not reachable from the Internet. Suddenly I thought it was a firewall rule problem, since I recently had migrated the single ISA Server 2004 virtual machine to a new ISA 2006 high-available array, but I was wrong: nothing about the ISA configuration, neither about the ifconfig on the published BIND server.

It has took me almost one day to realize that the randomly behavior of the publishing service was due probably to the NLB driver running in multicast mode. When it process UDP requests as common DNS lookups, it creates an association between the client and the NLB node: this is called “client affinity”. When the affinity is established between a resolver and the GE1FW02 node, it seems there are problems related with a timeout serving the request.

I have temporary workarounded this problem by publishing the BIND server with a reverse DNS proxy rule, so by making ISA Server change the header of IP packet to show this internal IP as the source address for all the lookups coming from the External network, but that’s not all… I want to know if the problem really show up only with DNS lookups are served by the second NLB node, by stopping the first node but, obviously, without creating any disruption to external Internet clients. I’ll post the results later…

Behind an ISA 2006 array

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Last week I noticed that HTTP/S connections to my primary ISP public address were randomly dropped for short times. Since this little trouble was affecting the user experience of the Phoibos services customers, I worked a couple of days to find a solution.
The cause of the problem revealed to reside in the Web Listener component of ISA Server 2004 Standard Edition: in effect, the configuration of my firewall (that I deployed to workaround my ISPs low reliability) with two external NIC targeted to different gateways and some other tricks, was something complex and obviously unsupported by MSFT… 😉

The best solution was to deploy an array of ISA Servers (only possible with the Enterprise edition) to have them working as a load-balanced gateways both to access the Internet and to publish my servers on the Internet.  Furthermore the bi-directional affinity functionality granted by the new NLB services on Windows Server 2003 was also the best solution to publish the same service simultaneously on both public IP addresses, which was what I needed.

The migration from my old ISA 2004 single-server deployment to the new ISA 2006 array has been a little more complex than I thougth, mainly because the fact that all the ISA machines I wanted to deploy were hosted on two physical Virtual Server 2005 R2 hosts (if you have ever had to configure NLB clusters in a virtualized infrastructure you know what I mean…). After some troubles I decided to setup the NLB services out of the control of ISA services to be able to make NLB working in multicast mode (that’s the best option if you must have virtual guests by different virtual host “converged” in the same Virtual IP).

At the time I’m writing the new solution has been deployed by some hours, and all seems to work very well and, obviously, in a more available and secure way. I think there are a few adjustments I still have to make… hoping to have as few troubles as possible! 😀

VirtueMart laboratory

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Since someone request me an order management solution for a small business, I was looking for a product or technology which could best target the needs with the smaller amount of investment.

The SharePoint solution seems to fit well: first of all, the simple Microsoft Office System interface can be used to easily upload and maintain the whole catalog and moreover, the WSS framework (included by defaul in the Windows Server 2003 license fee) assures the best security, stability and scalability a customer can be ever asked by his/her business.
The fist development lab of the solution founded on the WSS framework can be accessed to this URL http://sharepoint.valsania.it/sites/commerce.

In order to test a product specifically designed to deploy and maintain an E-Commerce solution, I have also deployed a VirtueMart web site (http://commerce.valsania.it), using the same “BSDBOX” which runs the Phoibos hosted WordPress weblogs… try both and say me what you think about! 🙂

Phoibos blog hosting

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Today the testing WordPress-MU infrastructure has been decommisioned to bring online a new free blog hosting service, running under the Phoibos project infrastructure. The root of the weblogs collection is published both for corporate and Internet users under http://weblogs.valsania.it, where you can find the updated list of all active blogs.

Despite the successful WPMU deployment realized during the development phases, the standard WordPress 2.0.4 version was preferred as the core engine of this new service, because of its better user-friendly blog management and isolation.

At the time I’m writing, if you wish to have a free blog on this infrastructure you have to send an e-mail request to webmaster@valsania.it. I hope to succesfully build a more simple provisioning system as soon as possible.

WordPress µ

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This is the first message posted to my personal weblog, only for testing purposes. This new web space has been activated yesterday to try the multi user version of WordPress, and (beside of some setup troubles) it seems to be quite simple to manage. Some complaints about theme management: not all WP skins worked well also in WPMU. The hosted edition seems to run a bit more slowly than the standard WP, but the overall impression is good.

SharePoint is back

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In order to test the new SQL Server 2005 Enterprise failover cluster I decided to bring back online the SharePoint development lab, now running on a production web server. This demo, as a part of the development roadmap of the Phoibos project, is intended to be used by all authorized people for testing purposes, first af all for storing and managing all corporate files which usually reside on their internal file servers, so leveraging them from the need to maintain, syncronize and protect this local source of data for all their corporate employers.

Corporate Community Server

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It seems it has finally been the time to start a production web site to host a blogging community for all our corporate users! From now on, Community Server 2.1 will run on a corporate web server, and will store all contents in a SQL Server 2000 Enterprise database.

All users have been invited to come in, publish informations about any public project and post their ideas and/or personal thoughts. Both from the internal network and from the Internet, all of us have now the possibility to read and write contents of this new community.

An article was published in the Intranet to give you all you need to have your first blogging experience… read it and start! ;)