SharePoint Saturday Dayton, Ohio
June 30, 2012
Everybody Lies Troubleshooting SharePoint
with House M.D.
John L. Ferringer
General Information
• Tweet it Out!!
– Hashtag for this event: #SPSDayton
– Follow us: @SPSDayton
– Include your presenters
• Check out SPTV
– Tweets will display throughout the day on the
screens.
– Footage will be shown at http://mysp.tv
About me
• Senior Manager, Sogeti
• My blog: http://www.MyCentralAdmin.com
• Twitter: @ferringer
What’s House got to do with SharePoint?
• We often have to diagnose (troubleshoot)
• Dealing with SharePoint can make you a
jerk
• Dealing with SharePoint will definitely
make you a cynic
• The more you observe, the better you
diagnose
(just kidding)
SharePoint is….
• Complex
• Vast in depth and breadth
• Made up of many subsystems
• Influenced by many outside factors
• Every farm and use case is unique
• …
• Just like the human body
How does House cure his patients?
• Understand the Issue
• Determine the Root Cause
• Finding a Cure
• Move Forward
Why not do the same with SharePoint?
Identify the Problem
• You can’t cure anything if you don’t know
what’s wrong
• Interview the patient
• You also have to ask the right questions
– What is the error?
– How is it happening?
– Who is seeing the error?
– When does it occur?
– What else do we know about the error?
SharePoint 2010’s Correlation ID
• Your users may see it
• You may see it
• It’s a GUID
• It is actually helpful
Let’s get REAL for a minute
• SharePoint 2010 farm
• 1 Web Server, 1 App Server, 1 SQL Server
• Visual Studio on the Web Server
Review the Patient History
• What has the patient done to get here?
• What is their environment?
• What happened before the error?
• What was happening during the error?
• How was SharePoint performing?
• Do you have Change Management?
Know Your Logs!
• They record what’s going on
• Which logs?
– Windows Event, ULS, IIS
– Keep in mind other sources: SQL, DCs, etc
• Know your tools!
– ULS Viewer
– Log Parser
– PAL
– Just to name a few
Why do we care about Change?
• You have to know
what you have!
• How has it changed?
• When were they made?
Rule Out the Obvious
• Understand what you know
• Every problem is unique
• But, someone’s probably seen it before…
• So check your sources:
– Internal
– External: Google it!
• But be careful…
(with Bing!)
Remember…
• Know your sources
– Who wrote it?
– Are they credible?
• Read the entire post!
– Everything!
– All the comments too
• Was there a follow up post?
• Validate the information
It’s all about me, right?
• Remember the database errors?
• Here, have some SA rights…
• No thank you.
Review Possible Treatments
• Reproduce the issue
• Test it!
• Understand
the treatment
• Always read the label
Back to John’s problem…
Treatments:
• Sysadmin rights in the database
–Oh heck no!
• Local development environment
– Not possible
• Proper rights in the database
– Now we’re talking…
SharePoint Saturday Dayton has been made possible because
of generous sponsorship from the following friends…