64-Bit and the Admin Toolkit Download Trend
[Cross-Referenced from Zach Rosenfield's Blog]
Just over a month ago I announced the release of the second Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit. We’ve been getting great feedback and lots of interest—and I wanted to share our download results:
After 5 months we’re just shy of the 29,000 download mark, but more interesting is the disparity between x86 and x64 downloads. We feel like we often talk about the benefits of going 64-bit with your SharePoint deployments—but the download numbers above make us wonder if he advantages are really understood. I’ll take this opportunity to reiterate why we push all our customers to consider the switch to the x64 architecture.
What is wrong with 32-bit?
We’re not saying 32-bit is bad—it’s just that when Windows, IIS, CLR/ASP.NET, WSS, MOSS Core, SSP, and MDAC binaries are all loaded into memory (this is the initial footprint for MOSS 2007) it can leave a 32-bit address space quite fragmented (not to be confused with “too consumed”). When the CLR or SharePoint services request new memory blocks, it can be difficult to find a 64MB slice in the already loaded address space. Below is a snapshot of such an address space:
In many cases where customers are seeing bad performance—it’s not due to a lack of memory but a lack of enough continuous memory to serve additional requests.
Why 64 Can Help?
64-bit is not a cure-all to every performance issue but it does provide a practically unbounded address space for user mode processes. Therefore memory requests (even in 100’s of MB chunks) will not fail due to a lack of un-fragmented space. Not only will 64-bit significantly lower the problems you could potentially face, but once you get your servers into a constantly stable state mitigating other performance issues becomes a much easier task to achieve.
I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in the SharePoint Administration Toolkit and to remind you all to keep the benefits of 64-bit architecture in mind as you look to improve your SharePoint deployments and plan for the future. If you can’t switch immediately (and even if you can) you can still help yourself today by installing the Infrastructure Update and to look at the Best Practices Resource Center.
Zach Rosenfield
Program Manager, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
Announcing August Cumulative Update for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
The Microsoft Office team has changed the way that it delivers hotfixes for reported problems. This change comes in the form of cumulative updates and critical on-demand hotfixes. The objective is to deliver high-quality fixes in an acceptable time and on a predictable schedule. Cumulative updates are scheduled for every two months, so customers can be better prepared to test and apply new updates. Those who need an emergency fix can request critical on-demand (COD) fix. For information, please refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953878.
The detail of August Cumulative Update (CU) for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 can be found here:
Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package (Wssmui.msp): August 26, 2008
Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package: August 26, 2008
Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package: August 26, 2008
Customers are not needed to install these updates unless they are affected by specific problems described in the KB articles. And these cumulative updates will be rolled in to Service Pack 2.
To keep all files in a SharePoint installation updated, we recommend customers to follow the path below:
1. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1
2. The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1
3. The Windows SharePoint Services Infrastructure Update x86 x64
4. The Microsoft Office Servers Infrastructure Update x86 x64
5.
KB 953397: Excel Server Security Update x86 x64
6. KB 955586: Document Lifecycle Workflow Update
7. August Cumulative Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Global)
8. August Cumulative Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Local)
9. August Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office Servers
After applied all these updates, run SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b” in command line. This need to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.
The version of databases should be 12.0.6327 after all these updates.
For a better guided update process, customers would also like to check out the following guides. These articles provide a correct way to deploy updates, as well as known issues and how to do slipstream builds.
Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx
Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx
Jie Li
Technical Product Manager, SharePoint
SharePoint Evaluation VPC Image will expire 9/30
If you’ve activated and are using the SharePoint evaluation image from http://www.microsoft.com/vhd you’ve hopefully noticed by now that it’s due to expire at the end of this month…!
We’ll be getting a new image with an extended expiry date (Early 2010) uploaded to the same site in the next few days – I’ll update this post when it’s available.
If you have activated the original image and have been using it for demos or a POC you’ll need to download the new image and backup and restore your configuration, there’s no way to extend the expiry date.
And if you didn’t know that this SharePoint VPC existed then I’d recommend heading over to http://www.microsoft.com/vhd and taking a look, they have lots of other images available including Exchange, Vista and Windows Server 2008 – and all of them run fully functional for 30 days before requiring activation.
Share More Community Tips on Office Online
[Cross-posted from the "Get The Point" Team Blog.]
Office Online has a new commenting feature that I mentioned in an earlier post about Community Tips. When you have questions or advice about the content you find, you can sign in with a Windows Live ID and post questions or bits of advice for the rest of the community. It’s similar to comments on a blog, except that Community Tips comments are not actively monitored by the authors. That said, it’s a way to have a conversation that’s focused on content such as articles and templates.
Why mention it again? My earlier post mentioned how you could only comment in select areas of the site. Now you can comment on all types of content from Help articles to training and templates. However, the feature is not on some pages, such as home pages or search results pages. You have to be deeper down, for example, on an actual article page like the Roadmap for using SharePoint Server 2007. If you need a visual, here’s a quick video of how to submit a tip for a template on Office Online:
Office Online Community Tips about templates Go ahead and try it out.
Matt Evans
SharePoint End User Content Team
Announcing the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Specification
Today represents the start of a new era in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) interoperability as Microsoft, EMC and IBM announced a jointly developed specification that leverages SOAP, REST and Atom to enable communication with and between ECM systems. The new specification known as Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) defines a platform and language independent means of accessing ECM repositories and will be submitted to OASIS for advancement through its rigorous standards development process.
As well as enabling communication between ECM systems, CMIS will also enable rich, content centric applications and mashups to be developed independent of the underlying storage repository. For more details, you can download a draft of the specification or take a look at Ethan's post on the ECM team blog.
Ryan Duguid
Technical Product Manager
Microsoft Corp
We'll miss you, Patrick.
Patrick Tisseghem, long time SharePoint MVP and co-founder of U2U, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, suddenly passed away on September 3rd evening in Gothenburg, Sweden due to heart failure. He is survived by his wife, Linda, and daughters, Anahi and Laura.
On behalf of the SharePoint product group, I offer my deepest condolences to Patrick's family. Patrick was a leading figure in the SharePoint community, well known for his standing room only presentations at conferences and user group meetings as well as respected for his often sold out in-depth technical training courses. Over the past few years, I've come to appreciate him as one of the smartest SharePoint people in the world. He developed key pieces of content for MSDN such as Visual How-Tos, wrote the definitive "Inside Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007" book for MS Press, and provided us with plenty of constructive feedback on how to improve SharePoint. Beyond his professional contributions, Patrick was also one of the most humble and sincere individuals I know, always willing to listen and console no matter how busy he usually was.
For all that Patrick has done for SharePoint and our community, we will miss him dearly. If you would like to share your thoughts or memories about Patrick, feel free to leave a comment here or send a private message to his family via inmemoryofpatrick [at] hotmail.com familyofPatrick [at] u2u.be.
For a couple of other perspectives on Patrick's legacy and impact, go here and here and I could go on, but Doug's post really sums it up for me.
[Update 09/06/2008: Mike Fitzmaurice, former SharePoint Technical Product Manager and a very good friend of Patrick's, provides first hand details in this blog entry about Patrick's contributions during the "early days" of SharePoint that became key factors for the product's success.]
<Lawrence />
Just Published! WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 SDK 1.4 Download and Online MSDN Library
[Cross-posted from Randall Isenhour's blog.]
Hello SharePoint Developers!
We are excited to announce the availability of the latest updates to the online MSDN Library + the downloadable SDKs for both MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0!
In our never-ending efforts to improve the customer and partner experience, we are announcing the sim ship of both the online MSDN Library and the downloadable SDK! No more confusion about what’s the latest version: August is August!
> Download the MOSS SDK 1.4 <
> Download the WSS SDK 1.4 <
The August 2008 update is version 1.4 and reflects feature enhancements that were part of the recent Infrastructure Update. For more information on SharePoint Products and Technologies updates, you can start here on TechNet.
Which SDK do I need to download?
If you are only writing code that utilizes the Windows SharePoint Services platform, you can download the WSS SDK. However, if you want the superset of all documentation and samples, you should install the MOSS SDK, and then you’ll get all the platform and technology information as well. You don’t need to download both, but you will need to uninstall all previous versions.
Note The SDK 1.4 downloads are full releases that include all previous tools and documentation.
What’s New in this release?
The SDK updates in 1.4 include:
- New Federated Search Samples:
- Updated documentation files, including updated, offline versions of MSDN Library Technical Articles and Developer Guides
- Lots of new documentation for Records Management APIs.
While you’re updating your SharePoint development tools…
You can also update the Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint Services. Here is the link to the installer: VSeWSS 1.2. The extensions were updated on 7/1/2008 and now work with Visual Studio 2008!
Don’t forget to download the user’s guide: version 1.1
Please keep sending us feedback!
We want to make sure you have all the information you expect to find in the SDK. Please reply to this blog entry with comments if you have a request. And don't forget to use the Community Content Wiki on MSDN to annotate the SDK documentation online with your own insights. Just look toward the bottom of each page online or click the Add Content... button in the top-level menu on MSDN Library pages.
Randall Isenhour, Content Publishing Manager
SharePoint Developer Documentation Team
Announcing the SharePoint Best Practices Series
Over the last few months, the SharePoint product team has released a number of resources, updates and made supportability announcements to help our customers and partners deploy SharePoint solutions. Recently, we released the Infrastructure Update that provides fixes and even a new set of Search Federation features. We also announced support for Virtualization technology like Hyper-V and SQL Server 2008. And most recently, we announced the availability of the SharePoint Administration Toolkit 2.0 which provides functionality to help IT Professionals run highly available and geographically dispersed SharePoint deployments.
Today, I’m happy to announce the SharePoint Best Practices Series. These consumable and actionable guidelines are based on real-world experience from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) and the product team. They are aimed to help our SharePoint customers and partners avoid some of the common SharePoint deployment pitfalls and keep their SharePoint environments available and performing well. The SharePoint Customer Team, part of the core product team dedicated to providing real-world feedback inwardly and outwardly, has put this guidance together working with a number of teams within Microsoft.
The SharePoint Best Practices Resource Center on TechNet highlights the different best practices for IT Professionals and Developers and helps you navigate through the resources. IT Professional topics include Operational Excellence, Team Collaboration Sites, Publishing Portals, Search and My Sites. Developer topics include Common Coding Issues, Using Disposable Objects, Search SQL Syntax Queries and Customization Best Practices. We will continue updating and publishing new Best Practices based on real-world experience.
I encourage each one of you to take a look at these resources proactively!
Arpan Shah
Director, SharePoint
http://blogs.msdn.com/arpans
SharePoint Administration Toolkit 2.0 is Now Available!
[Cross-posted from Zach Rosenfield's blog.]
I’m excited to announce that the second version of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit is available for download! As I said back in April, we would be offering regular updates to this toolkit with new features and functionality for both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services v3.0. With this release we added functionality to address some of the challenges associated with running a highly available and/or geographically disperse MOSS 2007 deployment—particularly aimed at synchronizing user profiles in the Shared Service Provider (SSP). Let’s look at these two areas:
High Availability
In order to provide a highly available Shared Service Provider, your deployment needs two identical SSPs available at all times. While this is easily done with search (each SSP has its own crawler and can create their own index)—keeping user profile data in sync is a bit more involved. You can see detailed instructions on running a highly available environment on Microsoft TechNet:
Geographical Replication
If your company is geographically disperse, you may not want to have a single MySite farm serving your users worldwide since some users may experience significant lag in response times depending on WAN bandwidth and traffic characteristics. Instead, it may be better to have several SSP farms located around the globe. Just like in the highly available environment, this configuration would require that user profile data is kept in sync.
Since synchronizing user profiles is something available in the MOSS 2007 product, some of you might wonder what we’ve done in the toolkit! Well, if you’ve ever tried to use the User Profile web services to achieve synchronized profiles—you’ve noticed it’s a very involved process with lots of code (and therefore a lot of room for mistakes). In this release, we’ve built a supported tool for scheduling partial or full replications of any number of your user profile attributes:
For a full overview of features and instructions see the official Microsoft TechNet articles for MOSS 2007 and WSS v3.0.
The download links for the SharePoint Administration Toolkit v2.0
x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F8EEA8F0-FA30-4C10-ABC9-217EEACEC9CE&displaylang=en
x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=263CD480-F6EB-4FA3-9F2E-2D47618505F2&displaylang=en
Zach Rosenfield
Program Manager, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
Using Excel & Excel Services with SQL Server Analysis Services 2008
[Cross-posted from Excel Team Blog.]
With the recent announcement of SharePoint Server 2007 supporting SQL Server 2008, like you, I was excited to setup my Excel / Excel Services environment to take advantage of the great new capabilities available, and there are many. I encourage you to take a look at how the new SQL environment will benefit your SharePoint deployment, and your Business Intelligence reporting and analysis capabilities.
SharePoint Server 2007 can use SQL Server 2008 as a repository without any extra configuration requirements. What about connecting Excel client to the new Analysis Services environment?
Excel accesses Analysis Services 2008 the same way it does 2005. From within Excel, select the Analysis Services drop down from the Data tab -> From Other Sources drop down, and then walk through the data connection wizard to identify location, cube, and credentials. Ensure that the necessary SQL Server 2008 client components are installed prior to making the connection as the provider for Analysis Services 2008 is MSOLAP.4 (more about this later).
You should now have a connection to a cube within Excel and a pivot table ready.
So far so good right? With a few simple clicks you are accessing the cube on Analysis Services 2008. You've created a great looking report, and now want to distribute it on SharePoint Excel Services. Here's how you go about setting up the connection so that Excel Services can access Analysis Services 2008.
If you take a look at the connection string in Excel, you'll notice that connecting to Analysis Services 2008 uses the following provider, MSOLAP.4. This is not in the list of providers that ships with Excel Services so you will need to add this to the list. You will also need to install the client access components of SQL Server 2008 on each of your SharePoint servers that will require access to SQL Server 2008. For example, you can install the client access components on the Shared Service where Excel Services runs.
To add the provider to the list of approved providers in Excel Services, go to the Shared Services administration page (Central Administration -> Shared Services Administration) for Excel Services. Select Trusted Data Providers from the Excel Services Settings of the Shared Services Administration page. You will see that by default MSOLAP, MSOLAP.1, MSOLAP.2 and MSOLAP.3 are installed by default. You will need to add MSOLAP.4 to the trusted list in order for the connection to work in Excel Services.
Click Add Trusted Data Provider at the top of the list, and enter:
Provider ID = MSOLAP.4
Data Provider Type = OLE DB
Description = Microsoft OLE DB Provider for OLAP Services 10.0.
You are now set. Publish your workbook to Excel Services and you will be able to view, interact and refresh data from Analysis Services 2008 in Excel Services.
Pej Javaheri, Senior Product Manager for Business Intelligence
Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
Announcing the “How to get the Most Value from Social Computing for Business with Microsoft” white paper
I'm very proud to announce that the "How to get the Most Value from Social Computing for Business with Microsoft" white paper is now available for public download here. Over the past 12 months, I’ve met with many customers and received numerous escalations from our field about how social computing capabilities can be used to solve real business problems. This white paper was developed primarily to answer those questions. I had originally planned to release the document at the SharePoint Conference this past March. However, after the countless conversations I had with customers during the conference, I decided to change the focus of the content to include more information that would be useful for business decision makers as well as IT decision makers, resulting in a sizeable document (you will see what I mean when you read it). There was just so much information that was relevant and compelling to include!
I’m sure that you will agree with me when I say “social computing means different things to different people.” Thus, there were challenges in getting the terminology defined clearly. The most common questions I get asked are:
- Is “social computing” and “social networking” interchangeable?
- How do “wikis”, “blogs”, and “discussion forums” differ in terms of usage scenarios?
- What is the difference between “personal sites” and “people profiles”?
One of my objectives with the white paper is to answer these questions.
In addition, I wanted to share stories directly from our customers in their own words about their business reasons, challenges, and successes from their social computing applications. The two customers I chose as references in the document, Accenture and Miami-Dade County School District, are great examples of innovative technology adopters that have embraced social computing and witnessed the successful results it has brought to their organization. Accenture and Miami-Dade County School District are from very different industries and with different business problems, yet they were both able to solve their needs with the same social computing platform - SharePoint.
My overall goals for the white paper were to:
- Describe what is the value of social computing from both business and IT perspectives.
- Leverage real world solutions (with real customer screenshots and quotes) to show practical usage scenarios and business benefits.
- Provide support for why SharePoint is the integrated business productivity platform of choice for social computing applications.
I hope you find this white paper helpful and that it helps clarify some questions or strengthens your ideas about social computing. Please feel free to leave a comment for any feedback or questions that you have. Thanks!
Alina Fu, Product Manager for Social Computing
Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 issue on Windows SharePoint Services v2.0
In case you have installed .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 on a machine which hosts Windows SharePoint Services v2.0 website running on .Net Framework 2.0, you will notice the following problems. Windows SharePoint Services v3 is not affected by the update.
Symptoms
If .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1 is installed on Windows SharePoint Services v2.0 the symptoms are:
Each web part will display the following error:
Web Part Error: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Web Part Page cannot be displayed or imported because it is not registered on this site as safe.
Also, the following NT Events are reported:
NT Event Viewer Application Log displays multiple error warnings:
Event ID: 1000
Error initializing Safe control - Assembly: Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c TypeName: * Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint.SoapServer Error: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Workaround:
Workaround: Uninstall In Add/Remove Programs remove Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1 and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and uninstall Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. Then reinstall .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=79bc3b77-e02c-4ad3-aacf-a7633f706ba5&DisplayLang=en.
At the time of writing Microsoft is investigating this issue but there is no timeframe for a resolution. If you need further assistance with this please contact Microsoft support. http://support.microsoft.com
Jie Li
Technical Product Manager, SharePoint
Updated Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint (with support for Silverlight 2 Beta 2) released to CodePlex!
I'm very excited to announce that we have just released the an updated version of the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint that supports Silverlight 2 Beta 2! These blueprints were designed to provide developers with a better understanding of how to integrate Silverlight with SharePoint. Silverlight is an incredibly powerful technology, and with the increase in SharePoint adoption, we’re seeing greater customer and partner demand for integrating the two in order to provide a richer user experience.
The URL for the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint is http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint or http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP.
In this release, there are five blueprint samples:
- Hello World
- Media Player
- Slider Control
- Custom Navigation
- Colleague Viewer
Also included in the release is documentation for each of the samples along with full source code (just click on the Releases tab in the CodePlex site). Within the next week or two, we’ll publish additional screencasts and other supporting documentation.
Steve Fox, Technical Evangelist
Microsoft Developer Platform Evangelism Group
Update on Licensing and Virtualization Support for SharePoint Products and Technologies
Updated 08/25/08.
Today we’re excited to announce support and licensing updates for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 running in virtual machines. This is part of a larger announcement affecting multiple Microsoft products, including Exchange Server, SQL Server and SharePoint Server.
As of today, we formally support SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 running under Hyper-V through our normal support channels. In addition, we now offer support for SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 running in 3rd party virtualization software that is certified through our Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). The SVVP is an opt-in program that non-Microsoft virtualization providers can choose to participate in. A list of participating vendors is here.
We’re working on performance and deployment guidance for SharePoint Server 2007 running under Hyper-V that will be published in the next few days on Microsoft TechNet. This blog post will be updated with a link as soon as it’s published.
Update: Using SharePoint Products and Technologies in a Hyper-V virtual environment TechNet article has been published.
We have also updated our license terms to allow you to take full advantage of virtualization mobility by waiving the limitation on short-term reassignment (the 90-day license reassignment rule) for SharePoint Server 2007. Effective September 1, 2008, the new rule allows you to move your server licenses and software running instances from one physical server to another as often as you like in the following circumstance – both servers must be located within one or two datacenters within 4 time zones of each other.
We’ve compiled a short FAQ that should help with some common questions.
Q: Do you have any SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 deployment and configuration guidance for Hyper-V environments?
A: We’re working on it now and it will be published on Microsoft TechNet very soon (next couple of days) – this blog post will be updated as soon as the content goes live.
Q: Since SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 require SQL server, is there anything I should know about running SQL Server through Hyper-V in the context of a SharePoint deployment?
A: Follow the Hyper-V guidance provided by the SQL server Product Group, this can be found here.
Q: Do I need to install the recently released Infrastructure Updates for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to be supported in a Hyper-V environment?
A: No, but you need to deploy Service Pack 1. We strongly recommend installing the Infrastructure updates in addition to Service Pack 1 but they are not a prerequisite for Hyper-V support.
Q: Will SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 continue to be supported on Virtual Server 2005 R2?
A: Yes, we are not changing any existing support policies beyond this announcement.
Q: Does this announcement include support for previous versions of SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services in Hyper-V environment?
A: No. The support announcement only covers SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and later, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 and later.
Q: Does this announcement also cover SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites SP1, Forms Server 2007 SP1 and Search Server 2008?
A: Yes.
Q: Does the new licensing rule allow me to concurrently run as many instances of SharePoint Server 2007 as I can on one physical server with only one license?
A: No! You still need to purchase a license for every running instance of SharePoint Server 2007 (or SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites, Forms Server 2007 and Search Server 2008).
SQL Server 2008 Support for SharePoint Products and Technologies
You may already be aware of the recent RTM announcement of SQL Server 2008. We are happy to announce that Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 & Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 now support SQL Server 2008. Our documentation has been updated to include support for SQL Server 2008. Please refer to:
In the next few weeks, we will publish a TechNet article that describes the benefits of running SQL Server 2008 with SharePoint Products and Technologies. Here, we’ve highlighted a few of the benefits that SharePoint customers inherit when choosing to use SQL Server 2008:
1. Improved Manageability
Manageability and governance is important for SharePoint as well as the SQL Server database engine. Now administrators can also benefit from the new management features introduced in SQL Server 2008 – from Policy-based administration to back-up compression. For details, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645579(SQL.100).aspx.
2. High Availability
Availability in SQL Server 2008 has been improved through enhancements in data mirroring. For details, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645581(SQL.100).aspx.
3. Enhanced Data Security
The SQL Server 2008 database engine introduced new encryption functions that enhance security. SharePoint administrators can take advantage of these new encryption features by simply turning on transparent data encryption (TDE). No additional changes need to be made on the SharePoint side. For details, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645578(SQL.100).aspx.
Last but not least, don’t forget to apply SP1 on SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Keep in mind, SP1 is also a requirement for installing on Windows Server 2008.
Stay tuned for the TechNet article!
Jie Li
Technical Product Manager, SharePoint
