SharePoint Install for ConfigMgr Dashboard

When I was setting up my Config Mgr dashboard I ran into a few gotchas. First, we don’t use the default port for SQL and our DBA team keeps a close eye database name length and relevance. No problem right? With most application installs you can specify your SQL connection settings and database name. Well this is almost true when installing Windows SharePoint Services. During the initial SharePoint install you are prompted for the SQL server and database name which is fine except if you need to specify a non-standard port. The SharePoint installer prerequisite check allows you to specify non-standard port in the following format:
servername, port

However once you get past this step the installer will fail with an error about an invalid loopback address and then it references your server name and the port. A quick way around this is to create an ODBC data source for your SQL server on the SharePoint server:

• Open the Data Sources (ODBC) Administrator console (Administrative Tools)
• Create a new SQL System DSN
• Specify a name, description and your SQL server (Do not specify a port)
• In Client Configuration uncheck Dynamically determine port
• Enter your SQL port in the space provided
• Test your connection (Note you need to be logged in with an account the has the appropriate permission on the SQL server)

Note: If you are running a 64-bit operating system such as Server 2008 R2 then you will also need to launch the 32-bit version of odbcad32.exe (Found at C:\Windows\SysWOW64) and create your DSN there as well. The 64-bit install for the ConfigMgr dashboard will look at the ODBC connections listed at HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\ODBC\ODBC.INI during the install and will fail if your connection settings aren't listed.

Now when you run the SharePoint installer you don’t have to specify the port for SQL which will allow setup to complete successfully. The next problem that I ran into is once SharePoint is installed it creates an additional database called SharePoint_AdminContent_GUID. With this naming convention it made it difficult for our DBA team to manage and support it. Think about if you have multiple SharePoint farms that you have to manage the databases for and they all have databases called SharePoint_AdminContent_GUID it could get confusing pretty quick. We decided to change the name of this database to something a little more descriptive. Due to the fact that this is the database Central Administration web application there are few extra steps that you must complete.

• Have a DBA backup the database and restore it with a more appropriate name
• From your SharePoint server open the SharePoint Central Administration console and navigate to Application Management \ Content Databases and find the one you are looking for. In this case it’s the Central Administration web app.
• Select the database and then check “Remove content database” (Located at the bottom of the page once you have opened up the content database)
• Since this is the content database for the Central Administration site you can no longer use the GUI to manage the settings
• Open up a command prompt, change the directory to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN and then run the following command

stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://servername:port number -databasename database name -databaseserver database server name

At this point you should be able to go back into the GUI and manage your SharePoint farm.

ConfigMgr OSD App Tree

There are many ways of deploying applications during a task sequence but I wanted to give my deployment guys the ability to assign applications on the fly and from within the task sequence. This is especially handy for bare metal deployments. Thanks to Jason Sandys and his OSD App Tree utility this can be done very easily. The OSD App Tree is a small utility that provides user interaction during the task sequence by referencing an XML file to assign applications. You have the ability to set up application groups, organize them in a tree view, make them optional or mandatory, use conditions, etc. Check it out here…

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jsandys/pages/osdapptree.aspx