SharePoint Extranet Solutions with ISA Server 2006 – Part 1: Teaser

Over the next few weeks, I plan to publish a series of posts describing how to publish a SharePoint Extranet solution using ISA Server 2006. The Objectives are:

Access and URLs:

• partners use https://extranet.sharepointnotes.local at all times
• internal users use http://extranet.sharepointnotes.local when sitting on the internal, trusted LAN 

Authentication

• Internal users authenticate the corporate AD
• External users authenticate using an AD in the DMZ
• The ISA Server is member of the corporate LAN

URLs 

• The public URL must always be http://extranet.sharepointnotes.local or https://extranet.sharepointnotes.local regardless of what web application / zone the user is redirected to internally

The ingredients include – but are not limited to – the following:

• ISA Server 2006
• Active Directory
• DNS
• Stand-alone Root CA
• Multiple ISA SharePoint Publishing rules
• At least one web application extended to use multiple zones
• Alternate Access Mappings

The inspiration for the series are the following articles:

• What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings (Part 1 of 3)
• How to use WSS v3 with ADAM for user authentication  

Tag along – it should be good fun

Update: Initially, I wanted to do this series using ADAM, and although ADAM works with MOSS – it doesn’t seem to be supported combined with ISA Server 2006. So we are using a stand-alone Active Directory instead.

ISA Server 2006 Enterprise – Quick Installation Guide

Quick guide to install ISA Server 2006 Enterprise Edition:

Prerequisites:

• Make sure your ISA Server has at least two NICs and that IP addresses, default gateway, DNS, WINS etc are configured correctly. Name one interface Internal and the other External
• Create a user account in Active Directory and grant it local administrative permissions on the ISA Server

1. Login as a domain user with local administrative rights
2. Start the installation
3. Select Install ISA Server 2006
4. On the Welcome Page click Next
5. Accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next
6. Enter User Name, Organization, and Product Serial Number and click Next
7. On the Setup Scenario page select Install both ISA Server and Configuration Storage server and click Next
8. On the Component Selection page keep the default selections and click Next
9. Select Create a new ISA Server enterprise on the Enterprise Installation options page and click Next
10. Click Next when faced with the New Enterprise Warning 
11. On the Internal Network page click Add
12. Click Add Adapter or Add Range to add the IP addresses that are included in the internal network 
13. Click OK and Next 
14. On the Firewall Client Connections page click Next
15. Click Next in the Services Warning page 
16. Finally, click Install. Since we are installing ADAM you might get asked for CD2 of Windows Server 2003 R2
17. Select Invoke ISA Server Management when the wizard closed and click Next

That’s it.  We are now ready to publish SharePoint sites – more on that later!

Quick Tip: Windows Server 2008 as Workstation

Another Windows Server Quick Tip, you say? Well, here you go!

Take a look at this post to learn how to turn your Windows Server 2008 into a workstation.

Quick Tip: The Hyper-V service is not available

I have been using Hyper-V on my virtualization host since Windows Server 2008 RTM was releases and I am so happy about it, that I wanted to install Windows Server 2008 on my laptop as well. I have a Dell Latitude D830 that should be meet the requirements.

However, after installing Hyper-V it failed to start and all it told me was: “The Hyper-V service is not available“

I found a great article that describes what could be wrong! I followed the steps and sure enough, Hyper-V became available. I just wonder why I didn’t see this when installing the server. Anyway, once Hyper-V was installed correctly, I could change all the locale settings back to being localized and Hyper-V was still OK.

SharePoint Advanced Content videos and whitepapers now available on TechNet!

Announcement on the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog:

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve just released some extremely useful SharePoint Advanced Content videos and whitepapers on TechNet!!

This includes streaming videos of SharePoint experts presenting and demoing a selection of advanced ITPro topics. Also available are white papers that support the videos.

The topics include:

• Overview: Office SharePoint Server server farm architecture
• Overview: Configuring server farms
• Securing server farms
• Configuring Performance Options
• Capacity planning
• Backup, Restore, High Availability and Disaster Recovery
• Operations and management
• Search architecture and configuration

This content will help you plan, deploy, and configure server farm solutions with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

We’re hoping to roll out more advanced topics in the upcoming months.

Enjoy the new content,
Michal.

Adding an extra index server

OK, so Microsoft tell us SharePoint is higly scalable and although that is true, the indexing role is not scalable and cannot per se be made high available. When using multiple query servers you can obtain some high-availability since the popagated index is still available and is thus searchable. You loose the ability to index new content, though.

I want to be able to spread the load by using one index server index the MOSS farm, another to index file shares, yet another to idex Lotus Notes and so on.

Here’s how that can be done:

1. First, add the extra server as described here (Windows Server 2003 R2) or here (Windows Server 2008 )
2. From Central Administration -> Operations -> Services on Server select the new index server and Custom
3. Stop Windows SharePoint Services Incoming E-Mail and  Windows SharePoint Services Web Application
4. Start Office SharePoint Server Search. Select Use this server for indexing content, enter username and password and start the service
5. Start Windows SharePoint Services Search.  Enter the appropriate information and start the service.  

Create a new SSP to use for search

1. From Shared Services Administration choose New SSP
2. Name the SSP and click Create a new Web application
3. Create the Web App with your preferred settings (port number, user name/password, database name etc) and click OK
4. Back in New Shared Services Provider create a new Web App for MySites or use the newly created Web App if you wnat. I choose to use the newly created Web App, although it may not be best practices.
5. Put in your credentials and database names
6. Remeber to specify the newly added index server as the Index Server for the SSP. Now reate the SSP by clicking OK. You may see a warning if you didn’t create a seperate MySite Web App for this SSP
7. That’s basically it. You can now use the new SSP’s Administration Page to configure Search or any other SSP-related functionality.

Adding an extra server to an existing SharePoint farm – Windows Server 2008 RTM edition

A few weeks ago, I described how to add a new server to an existing MOSS farm based on Windows Server 2003 R2. Since then Windows Server 2008 has been released and it is time to repeat the guide with instructions for Windows Server 2008 RTM

Step 1: Install and prepare the server

1. Install your favorite flavour of Windows Server 2008 (x86/x64, Standard/Enterprise)
2. Change administrator password at the initial login
3. In Server Manager set time zone, IP-address, and domain member ship. Reboot if needed.
4. Still in Server Manager, enable automatic updating and feedback if you feel like it.
5. It is always a good idea to Download and install updates.
6. Now, let’s add the IIS Role:
   • Select Add Roles
   • Click Next
   • Add the Web Server (IIS)-role
   • Add Required Features
   • Click Next three times
   • Click Install be begin the installation
   • Click Close once completed
7. Time to add the -Net Framework 3.0:
   • Click Add Feature
   • Select the .Net Framework 3.0 Features
   • Add the Required Role Services
   • Click Next three times
   • Click Install be begin the installation
   • Click Close once completed
8. Close Server Manager
9. Add the MOSS installation account to the local administrators group

Step 2: Slipstreaming MOSS installation files

Why not have the MOSS/WSS service packs applied automatically  when installing the new server? I recommend using the slipstreaming method described here. However, if you plan to add the server to a farm that is not on SP1 yet, slipstreaming is not recommended!

Step 3: Installing MOSS 2007

1. Install using the MOSS installation account
2. Start the MOSS installation by running setup.exe in the x86 or x64 directory depending on your architecture 
3. Enter your license key and accept the license agreement
4. Select Advanced and Complete install
5. Run the SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard
6. Connect to an existing farm
7. Enter the MOSS database server end click Retrieve Database Names. The Database Name and User Name fields are automatically populated. Enter the password and click Next
8. In Advanced Setting make sure that this server will not host the Central Administration site and click Next
9. In Central Administration navigate to Operations and use Servers in farm to verify it was indeed added to the farm and that the Version match the other servers.
10. That’s it. All that remains is to configure the new server for the purpose it is intended (Web Front-end, indexing etc)

Quick Tip: Complete Install

Always choose the Complete Install option when installing MOSS servers in a farm environment. It will place all the binaries on the server which will allow you to easily change the roles of the server after the initial install.

A common blunder is to install Web Front-ends as Web Front-ends. It may seem like a good idea at the time but doing so will prevent you from placing the the query role on a Web Front-end since the needed binaries are missing. You cannot even add the missing binaries later without reinstalling the MOSS software.

Vista Service Pack 1 finally available on techNet

The long awaited first service pack for Windows Vista is finally available on TechNet. It can be found in the Top Downloads section as described here

Quick Tip: move index file location

Want to move your indexes without having to re-crawl content? It can be done with stsadm.exe:

On the query server:

stsadm -o osearch -propagationlocation <path> 

On the index server:

stsadm -o osearch -indexlocation <path>