As Microsoft showcased its new SharePoint 2013 and the SharePoint online upgrades to its Office 365 service this week, it raises the question of how far organizations are willing to go to phase out their premises-based software in favor of shifting everyday work to a service-based model.

That's not to suggest that organizations will or should scrap their SharePoint deployments in favor of Office 365 or some other instantiation of Microsoft's collaboration platform that's subscription-based or hosted elsewhere. It's not an either/or proposition. But Microsoft left little doubt it wants you to gravitate to the SharePoint Online component of its Office 365 service.

"We really recommend moving to the cloud for the best experience overall," said John Teper, the Microsoft corporate vice president known as the "father of SharePoint," speaking in his opening keynote at the annual SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas Monday. "We understand not everyone is there yet. This will take time. People who want to run their own servers, that's great. We have the best server release we've ever done in SharePoint 2013. The thing you should take away from our cloud focus is all we've learned about optimizing the system and deployment and monitoring, we've put into the server product and put into the deployment guidance."

SharePoint 2013's "Cloud-First" model follows in the footsteps of Microsoft's promise that it will deliver infrastructure software and applications as a cloud service first or simultaneously with the release of the on-premise version of its key products. That came to life with last year's CRM Online Dynamics CRM duo. Now Microsoft is employing the same approach with the latest version of SharePoint Online in the Office 365 service and SharePoint 2013.

One of many distinctive new cloud features in SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online is the new SkyDrive Pro, an evolution of the SharePoint Workspace. SkyDrive Pro raises the bar in synchronizing content between SharePoint Sites and workers' various devices. SkyDrive Pro is modeled after the consumer-based SkyDrive service, except it's built into SharePoint, which allows IT organizations to manage it.

Experts are predicting more rapid than usual uptake for the new release of SharePoint and Office 365, primarily due to the major overhaul of the SharePoint experience, which brings enterprise social networking to the forefront.

A Forrester Research poll of 153 clients who already have SharePoint found 68 percent of respondents planned to introduce the new version within two years (37 percent within the first year and 31 percent within the second). What's interesting about that finding is 70 percent of that sample said they already have upgraded to SharePoint 2010, which is unusual since organizations typically skip subsequent releases to amortize their investments.

"This is conjecture here but it could be around the social experience," said Forrester analyst Rob Koplowitz in an interview. "The feedback on the social facilities in SharePoint 2010 was pretty dismal. That might be the driver but others include the need for improved document and records management. Also, it could be they're trying to move to a more stable development environment."

Speaking of social networking, that's where Yammer comes in, the popular social networking company Microsoft just acquired for $1.2 billion. Microsoft announced it's bundling the popular cloud-based enterprise social networking service, into SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 in addition to offering it as a standalone offering and plans further integration.

In the annals of Microsoft's cloud transition, 2010 will be remembered as the year CEO Steve Ballmer proclaimed the company is "all-in." With the revamp of SharePoint and Office, we may get our biggest sense yet how many Microsoft's customers are all-in.

Sometimes, when you are playing with SharePoint 2013, you will encounter this error message: “Unable to retrieve topology component health states.  This may be because the admin component is not up and running.” You will see this error message on your Central Administration page -> Application Management -> Manage Services on the server -> click on the “SharePoint Search Server”




This article provides resolution on SharePoint 2013 that is installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP 1 and SQL Server 2008 R2. The server is not a domain controller or hosting SQL either.
 
To resolve this issue, please download the following fixes on Microsoft website

KB 2554876
KB 2708075
KB 2472264

If after installing the above hotfixes and you still encounter issue, you need to run Windows Update and installing all patches/hotfixes reported as critical.

Once this had been done (and a reboot or two later), the problem will be resolved!

The updates in installed are below (so it’s one or more of them?)

ASPHostCentral.com has a strong commitment to provide global access and service to all our new and existing customers. To meet this commitment, ASPHostCentral.com proudly launches the latest and newest data center located in Singapore (Asia). Starting from 15th Oct 2012, ASPHostCentral.com opens an opportunity to everyone to host their websites on our Singapore Data Center.

Our Singapore data center is supported with Multiple connections to major Internet backbone carriers via SingTel, SingNet, NTT Communication, Deutsche Telekom AG, Hurricane Electric and PCCW with OC-12 connections using BGP-4 routing protocol. This Singapore Data Center hosting is suitable to anyone who plans to do an online business in Asia. If you are targeting Asian market or if you like to mirror your US-based or Europe-based website or if you are located in Asia and want to host your site in Asia data center, our Singapore server is certainly suitable for your needs

Our Singapore Data Center Network Advantages

- Multiple and geographically redundant dedicated connections to Tier-1 Internet backbones from the largest ISPs in South East Asia, Europe and USA

- Multiple connections to major Internet backbone carriers via SingTel, SingNet, NTT Communication, Deutsche Telekom AG, Hurricane Electric and PCCW with OC-12 connections using BGP-4 routing protocol

- Peering relationships are monitored and maintained 24x7x365 and upgraded as needed

- All Data Centers deploy Border Gateway Protocol (BGP4 Routing Protocol) that enables a multi-homed provider to setup a truly redundant network. By connecting to multiple backbones, ASPHostCentral.com data center distributes data out quickly in the shortest possible path. In the even of a failure in one circuit, our network automatically re-routes data to another backbone, ensuring uptime and redundancy for our customers

Singapore (Asia) Windows Hosting with ASPHostCentral.com

- New Customer - You can start from as low as $6.99/month to start hosting your website on our newest Singapore Server. If you do not have a domain name, please do not worry as we will give you one FREE domain name (worth $14.99/year) if you register for any of our hosting plans for 12 months service(*). We will do our best to help you create your first web presence on the internet and we will continuously support the growth of your business.
- Existing Customer - For all existing customers, a migration to a server located on our Singapore data center is required and hence, a migration and setup fee apply. Starting from 15th Oct 2012, we have offered Windows Server located on our Singapore data center and for clients who registered before this date is required to pay this setup fee. Thank you.

ASPHostCentral.com offers the latest SQL Server 2012 database to all our new and existing customers.

You can always start with our Standard Plan (from @$4.49/month) to have your SQL 2012 database hosted on our environment. Should your requirement changes in the future, you can always request for an upgrade without causing any downtime. Remember, everything is just one-click away from your mouse! So, why wait longer? Please register your interest here.




Microsoft SQL Server 2012?

This latest release of the SQL Server presents new features and improvements that increase the power and efficiency of architects, developers, and administrators who design, develop, and maintain data storage systems

Features of SQL Server 2012 Hosting

SQL Server 2012 delivers several primary benefits:          

Always-On Availability Groups (AAG) - As for some Exchange administrators this feature is very similar to Database Availability Groups (DAG) in Exchange 2010. Configuring SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups involves creating and constructing one or more availability groups. An availability group is a global container that defines a set user DBs (availability databases) to fail-over in case of disaster, and a set of database replicas to host multiple copies of each DB. An each group requires at least two replicas exist: the primary replica and one secondary replica.

Always-On SQL Failover Cluster
Failover clusters across subnets - A SQL Server multisubnet failover cluster is a design where all failover cluster node is connected to a different networks or different set of networks. These networks can be in the same physical location or in phsicallydispersed . Clustering across global sites is sometimes referred to as Stretch-clusters. As there is no need for shared storage that all the nodes can access, data should be replicated among the data storage on the multiple networks. With data replication, there is further than one copy of the data available. Therefore, a multi-subnet failover cluster offers a disaster recovery solution in addition to HA

Flexible policy for cluster health detection - In a SQL Server failover-cluster instance, only one node can own the cluster which is sometimes known as a single copy cluster. The client demands are served through this primary node for that failover cluster instance. In the case of a hardware failure, the group ownership is moved to another node in the failover cluster node. In this case the process is called failovering over a cluster

Indirect checkpoints - This new feature offers a database-specific substitute to automatic checkpoints, which are shaped by a server property. An indirect checkpoint implements a new checkpointing formula for the DB Engine. This offers a more accurate assurance of database recovery time in DR event or a failover than is provided by automatic-checkpoints. To guarantee that database recovery does not top allowable downtime for a given db, you can stipulate the maximum acceptable downtime for that database

Our Special SQL 2012 Hosting Complete Features

New Customer - You can start from as low as $4.49/month to start hosting your SQL 2012 on our environment. If you do not have a domain name, please do not worry as we will give you one FREE domain name (worth $14.99/year) if you register for any of our hosting plans for 12 months service(*). We will do our best to help you create your first web presence on the internet and we will continuously support the growth of your business.

Existing Customer - For all existing customers, a migration to a server that supports SQL 2012 is required and hence, a migration and setup fee apply. Starting from 15th April 2012, we have offered the latest SQL Server 2012 version and for clients who registered before this date is required to pay this setup fee. Thank you.

ASPHostCentral.com, the leader in ASP.NET and Windows Hosting Provider, proudly announces that we have supported the latest ASP.NET MVC 4.0 BETA Hosting.   

To support Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 4.0 BETA Framework, we gladly inform you that we provide this beta account FREE of charge for a limited time (* terms and conditions apply). 



New Features in ASP.NET MVC 4

This section describes features that have been introduced in the ASP.NET MVC 4: 
- Enhancements to Default Project Templates
- Better Support for Mobile Project Template
- Enhancement in Display Modes
- Mobile Project Template support for VB.NET
- Dependency Injection Improvements    

Terms and Conditions in Using this ASP.NET MVC 4.0 BETA Account 

The followings are the features you will get under this FREE ASP.NET MVC 4.0 BETA Account: 
- ASP.NET MVC 4.0 Beta Framework
- 1 Website/Domain
- 100 MB disk space
- 100 MB bandwidth
- 50 MB SQL 2008 space
- 24/7 FTP access
- Windows Server 2008 Platform

If you want to participate in this BETA program, there are several rules you need to understand: 

- As this is a beta version, not all the features are available. They may be some issues on this beta framework, which will be fixed upon the full release of ASP.NET MVC 4.0 Framework

- ASPHostCentral.com does not guarantee the uptime of the sandbox solution. Additionally, we do not keep/store any backup of your files/accounts

- ASPHostCentral.com does not guarantee rapid response to any inquiries raised by a user

- This free account is only meant for testing. Users should not use it to store a production, personal, e-commerce or any blog-related site

- This free account is used to host any ASP.NET MVC 4.0 beta website only. Any questions that are not related to ASP.NET MVC 4.0 BETA will not be responded. A user shall not host any non-ASP.NET MVC 4.0 site on this free account either

- ASPHostCentral.com reserves full rights to terminate this beta program at any time. We will provide a notification on our Help Desk System prior to the termination of this program

- ASPHostCentral.com reserves full rights to terminate a user account, in which we suspect that there is an abuse to our system

- Once this beta program is terminated, your account will be completely wiped/remove from our system.

- This offer expires on 31st May 2012

If you wish to participate in this FREE ASP.NET MVC 4.0 BETA Program, you must register via https://secure.asphostcentral.com/BetaOrder.aspx

ASPHostCentral.com, the leader in ASP.NET and Windows Hosting Provider, proudly announces that we will support ASP.NET 4.5 Hosting.

To support Microsoft ASP.NET 4.5 Beta Framework, we gladly inform you that we provide this beta account FREE of charge for a limited time (* terms and conditions apply).



The followings are the features you will get under this FREE ASP.NET 4.5 BETA Account:                

- .NET 4.5 Beta Framework
- 1 Website/Domain
- 100 MB disk space
- 100 MB bandwidth
- 50 MB SQL 2008 space
- 24/7 FTP access
- Windows Server 2008 Platform

 If you want to participate in this Beta program, there are several rules you need to understand:              

- As this is a beta version, not all the features are available. They may be some issues on this beta framework, which will be fixed upon the full release of ASP.NET 4.5 Framework
- ASPHostCentral.com does not guarantee the uptime of the sandbox solution. Additionally, we do not keep/store any backup of your files/accounts
- ASPHostCentral.com does not guarantee rapid response to any inquiries raised by a user
- This free account is only meant for testing. Users should not use it to store a production, personal, e-commerce or any blog-related site
- This free account is used to host any ASP.NET 4.5 beta website only. Any questions that are not related to ASP.NET 4.5 beta will not be responded. A user shall not host any non-ASP.NET 4.5 site on this free account either
- ASPHostCentral.com reserves full rights to terminate this beta program at any time. We will provide a notification on our Help Desk System prior to the termination of this program
- ASPHostCentral.com reserves full rights to terminate a user account, in which we suspect that there is an abuse to our system
- Once this beta program is terminated, your account will be completely wiped/remove from our system.
- For details, please check http://www.asphostcentral.com/ASPNET-45-Beta-Hosting.aspx
- This offer expires on 31st May 2012

If you want to participate on this FREE ASP.NET 4.5 Beta Program, you must register via https://secure.asphostcentral.com/BetaOrder.aspx

We will now look at the setup required on our Exchange server to complete the task; this is the same in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.

The first step is to create a new send connector so in Exchange Management Console navigate to Organization Configuration|Hub Transport and click the send connectors tab. In the actions pane on the right click “New send connector”


Enter a descriptive name and select internal from the dropdown list then click next on the next screen you will have to enter the FQDN’s of your SharePoint server.


Click next; on the next screen enter the IP address of your SharePoint server and make sure that Route mail through the following smart host radio button is selected.


Click next; the next page asks about your authentication settings leave this at the default “None” selection.


Click next; At Twynham we have all the Exchange roles on one Exchange box so the next screen asks for the address of the hub transport server which should be picked up automatically during the setup of the send connector but you can add one manually


Click next and then new and finish your send connector for SharePoint is now setup and we can continue to the next step.

We will now look at the setup required on our Exchange server to complete the task; this is the same in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.

The first step is to create a new send connector so in Exchange Management Console navigate to Organization Configuration|Hub Transport and click the send connectors tab. In the actions pane on the right click “New send connector”


Enter a descriptive name and select internal from the dropdown list then click next on the next screen you will have to enter the FQDN’s of your SharePoint server.


Click next; on the next screen enter the IP address of your SharePoint server and make sure that Route mail through the following smart host radio button is selected.


Click next; the next page asks about your authentication settings leave this at the default “None” selection.


Click next; At Twynham we have all the Exchange roles on one Exchange box so the next screen asks for the address of the hub transport server which should be picked up automatically during the setup of the send connector but you can add one manually


Click next and then new and finish your send connector for SharePoint is now setup and we can continue to the next step.

We are working on a continuing SharePoint 2010 support project for a group of school one of the features they require is the ability for students to be able to have a drop box to submit their work to teachers, this is a perfect example of the use of mail enabled document libraries in SharePoint so I thought while I am writing this up I may as well share how to setup this function. This post will be divided into five parts:-

1)      Configuring SMTP on the SharePoint Servers
2)      Configuring Exchange 2010 to route mail to SharePoint
3)      Configuring Active Directory
4)      Configuring SharePoint 2010 Central Admin
5)      Document Library Configuration

Configuring the SMTP service on SharePoint 2010

The first step we need to do in the setup is to add and configure the SMTP service on one of our SharePoint web front end servers. I will be setting this up on a farm configuration with 2 web front end servers and 1 application server.

The SMTP service is vital for mail flowing into SharePoint so your first port of call is to log onto your chosen SharePoint server and open server manager and navigate to features here we can add the SMTP service



As you can see from the illustration below after the service is installed the server MAY require a restart in my case this was not needed but it may be needed on your server so please be aware that you may have to have some down time in your setup so plan accordingly.




As you can see from the illustration above the setup of the service is now complete and no restart was required. The next step is to configure the service through IIS manager on the server, for this you will need to use IIS manager 6 here at Twynham we install this role during the setup of our servers but you may not, if not installed open Server manager|Roles|Add Roles|IIS 6 Management Compatibility through this interface which you can see below we can manage SMTP



Right click on SMTP Virtual Server and choose properties once open click on the access tab and then click the Authentication button “Anonymous Access” should be ticked.



Next step click OK and then click the Connection button and ensure that “All except the list below” radio button is selected and click ok



The final button to click is the relay button and make sure that “Only the list below” radio button is selected and also make sure that you see a tick in “Allow all computers which successfully authenticate to relay regardless of the list above”



You can also fine tune the permissible message size by going into the messages tab this could be crucial for students sending in attachments via email so please make sure this is set to a reasonable limit.



You will find that all the settings are pre-set out of the box the only setting that you will really need to check is the Start-up type on the SMTP service by default this is set to manual so obviously change this to automatic



"A quick Note from the field is that I have found that if you restart your exchange server you will need to restart the SMTP service on your SharePoint servers, we route our internal mail from an ISA server to Exchange 2010 and this needs to be done after each restart of the Exchange box.”