Use of digital media in web sites has increased dramatically the last few years and SharePoint has made major investments to support the delivery of digital media in SharePoint sites in the 2010 product.

Introduction of new Video ContentType, Audio ContentType and Image ContentType was a great investment in the area of Digital Asset Support in SharePoint server 2010. Introduction of Silverlight media player and ability to seek, cache and progressive download was the biggest investment in the area of Digital Asset Support.

To have all the above mentioned features, the minimum requirement is installation and configuration of IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling. Though BLOB Cache and Silverlight is not mandatory to have, IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling is compulsory to provide Digital Asset Support in SharePoint Server 2010.

Great, how do we install and configure IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling?

I found following blog post was really interesting and descriptive enough for anyone to get a clear picture about this:

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/148/bit-rate-throttling-configuration-walkthrough/

I thought of posting this based on the no of questions I got from my workshops during past 02 months.

Following are the minimum software requirements for installing SharePoint Server 2010:

• SharePoint Server 2010 is 62-bit only – we will not get a 32-bit version of SharePoint Server like the previous version.
• Windows Server 2008 with SP 2 64-bit or Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit – SharePoint Server 2010 will not support Windows Server 2003. We need the 2008 version of the Windows Server for installing SharePoint Server 2010. Anyway, R2 of Windows Server 2008 will come only in form of 64-bit and that helps us to make the right choice.
• SQL Server 2005/ 2008/ 2008 R2 64-bit – we can use any of the versions listed above as the database server and it should be the 64-bit. If we are going to use SQL Server 2005, we need to make we apply the SP3 and the CU3 (Cumulative Update) or whichever latest. If its 2008, we need to apply SP1 and the CU2 or whichever latest. If its 2008 R2, we don’t have to apply any other things on top of that.

Minimum Software Requirements for SharePoint Server 2010

Month of March was a very busy month for me. I got only 5 days to stay with my family due heavy travelling in India.

I visited 06 cities and conducted 01 SharePoint 2010 training and 05 SQL Server 2008 R2 trainings. I visited Kolkata, Pune, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Chennai.

India Trip March

Are you looking for a Virtual Image for the purpose of evaluating SharePoint Server 2010 and related products?

Microsoft provides you 02 Virtual Images which we can run in Hyper-V and these 02 Virtual Images will have all the required components loaded and configured them with the recommended configuration.

Only problem is, we need more RAM and Hard Disk space and also Hyper-V enabled machines in order to use these Virtual Images. And the biggets issue is the download size. It’s almost 14GB.

Thanks a lot Chandana for getting it downloaded for me on time.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c51819b-3d40-435c-a103-a5481fe0a0d2&displaylang=en

Guys, I’m really impressed with the feedback you gave me for my TechEd sessions.

Thanks a lot for all of you who took some time to give me your valuable feedback.

Having heard that I’m having the 3rd highest feedback rating (among lot of other world-class speakers), I’m ready to do more and more sessions for you guys to stay aligned with the cutting-edge technologies which Microsoft provides.

Following are the feedback ratings I received from you guys:

• Session: New Language Features in C# 4.0 – Rating: 8.6
• Session: SharePoint Development jus got better – Past, Present & Future  – Rating: 8.0
• Session: SharePoint Server 2010 – Rating: 7.4

Once again thanks a lot for who those who gave me your valuable constructive/ destructive feedback and hope to do better in next TechEd.

And thanks Wela, for giving me the opportunity to wave the Sri Lankan flag.

Microsoft Sri Lanka invited me and few other TechEd speakers to present at the event they had organized in Virtusa.

Brian Puhl did a session on Security and I did 01 hour session on Visual Studio 2010 and the enhancements in the area of SharePoint Development in the upcoming release. There was a good crowd around 100 people and apart from the Virtusa guys, there were some invitees from APIIT, Universities, etc…

I managed to showcase most of the IDE features in Visual Studio 2010 and gave them an introduction on how easy it is the development for SharePoint 2010 using Visual Studio 2010.

We started our great Conference – TechEd 2010 today and I presented my 1st session in the evening.

I did “SharePoint Server 2010” session and there were 154 attendees and the room was full. It was very exiting to see such a crowd and I covered few demos during 1 hour session.

My special thanks goes to Wellington Perera for giving me the opportunity to present at this event and also special thanks to Arpan Shah and Inder Rathore for helping me with preparing the PPT.

And the other specialty of this TechEd 2010 Sri Lanka is today 03 SolidQ presenters were presenting and this is for the 1st time in this part of world that 3 SolidQ Mentors participated as speakers in a TechEd.

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Rushabh & Pinal attending Joy's session @ TechEd 2010

Just 01 more days left for the big IT Conference in Sri Lanka after 3+ years. I’m damn busy with preparing for my sessions though I’m suffering with cold.

I though it’s better if I could share the agenda of my sessions just in case if it’s confusing or difficult to locate my sessions in the agenda.

Come and join with me to discover the power of new technologies.

January 1st was a very long day because I was waiting for the email from MVP Administrator but it didn’t not reach my inbox. Oh it came on the 2nd.

As I expected they have renewed my MVP status and this is the 3rd time in a row I’m getting nominated as a Microsoft Most valuable Professional (MVP) and the other important thing is they have changed my MVP criteria from Visual C# to SharePoint Server. So that’s it.

I’m very much proud to say I’m the 1st and only SharePoint Server MVP in Sri Lanka.

Guys, long awaiting SharePoint 2010 Beta 1 was released to public last night. If you are a MSDN Subscriber or TechNet Subscriber why wait anymore?

I have already started downloading and its 3% completed.

If you have a 32-bit implementation of MOSS 2007, you can’t perform an in-place upgrade to SharePoint 2010. Microsoft recommend 1st upgrading from MOSS 2007 32-bit to MOSS 2007 64-bit and then upgrade to SharePoint 2010.

With this best practice, we will be able to identify what assemblies, WebParts, iFilters, 3rd party controls, etc. not supported in 64-bit environment and we can recompile them.

Get ready for SharePoint 2010 upgrade: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155576

If your existing SharePoint environment on Windows Server 2003 and in 32-bit, Microsoft recommend upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit and also from Server 2003 to Server 2008 at the same time and then upgrade from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010 as a separate exercise.

With regard to Database server, if you are using SQL Server 2000 in a 32-bit mode, upgrade it to 64-bit SQL Server 2005 SP2 or SQL Server 2008 at the same time and then upgrade it to SharePoint 2010 as a separate exercise.

Don’t mix up architecture upgrade (32-bit to 64-bit), underline product upgrade (Server 2003 t0 2008 & SQL Server 2000 to 2005/ 2008) and SharePoint upgrade since we will not be able to isolate any issues arises.

Have you ever used Content Deployment tool in SharePoint Server 2007?

Have you eve come across of pain in transferring initial data from Development server to Staging server or Staging server to Production server? How did you do that? Backup & Restore? Recreated the entire solution? Did you know the best approach for that?

Well, Content Deployment in SharePoint Server 2007 is designed for transferring initial content including site structure and the master data from Development server to Staging server or Staging server to Production server.

There were not enough information about this tool and here are some good articles:

Escalation Engineer Stefan’s Content Deployment – Best Practices

I have seen the success of this tool with few of our local clients (MAS, Dilmah ).

How many of you like stsadm command? How many operation you have used from the huge list of operations comes with stsadm?

Here is a Silverlight interactive application for you to get familiar with all the stsadm operations and this a very productive application for SharePoint engineers.

It will show you all the stsadm operations and you can click on an operation to get the description, and a link to the full article in TechNet. And you will be able to use the full-text search to search for an operation and locate the required information very easily.

stsadm Technical Reference for WSS 3.0

stsadm Technical Reference for SharePoint Server 2007

Are you .NET Developer and are you looking to taste SharePoint 2010 Development?

Here you have few videos and 10 Hands-On-Labs to get started:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee513147.aspx

Last October 19th was a special day for entire world. Microsoft unveiled SharePoint 2010 in SharePoint Conference @ Las Vegas.

We were all under special NDA and our hands were bound by that. I managed to keep my mouth shut and finally we are FREE to talk about it.

I did very 1st session on SharePoint 2010 today @ .NET Forum and we had a very crowd. Most of them from different organizations and that was a very good indication for Microsoft Sri Lanka to judge how customers are waiting to see the product.

There were nearly 70 and I gave more focus on the SharePoint Development area using new Visual Studio 2010 Beta. I covered WebPart development & deployment, LINQ to SharePoint, Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and few other general features.

I noticed how enthusiastic they are and they are in real hunger to see the Beta coming.

Joy @ SharePoint 2010 Session

Joy @ SharePoint 2010 Session

Joy @ SharePoint 2010 Session

With the key note by Steve Ballmer today (19th) at SharePoint Conference, Microsoft unveiled SharePoint 2010 and they will be releasing 1st public Beta in November.

I’m waiting to see some exiting events happening locally and getting ready for few sessions. I would recommend all those who love to see what’s there in the new version of SharePoint, here is the best starting place:

http://blogs.msdn.com/arpans/archive/2009/10/19/welcome-to-sharepoint-2010.aspx

I always like to read Arpan’s posts and here yet another useful post.

It’s been a long time Microsoft published 3 videos on SharePoint 2010. I’m not sure how many of you have watched them completely.

Here is you get a chance to download them and watch offline:

• Overview Video: 1001251_SharePoint2010_Overview_SneakPeek_Rizzo_mobile.wmv
• Developers Video: 1001251_SharePoint_SneakPeek_For_Developers_Andrew_mobile.wmv
• IT Pro’s Video: 1001251_SharePoint_SneakPeek_For_IT_Professionals_Riley_mobile.wmv

Guys, go ahead and download them for offline view.