Is SharePoint 2013 Slow? Did You Check AV?

Have you ever started troubleshooting a performance issue with an application? Nothing else can be more frustrating that trying to resolve performance issues. Recently, I have been doing this on a SharePoint 2013 Server installation. Pages take a while, up to 5 to 6 seconds, to render the page properly. Sometimes, it was taking up to 20 seconds to render. I have been doing adjustments to the system as well as warming up the application pools. Much of this I will post on here in the future.

I listen to net/podcasts and thanks to Todd Klindt's Netcast, specifically Episode 152 - Splat Bang Click Hieroglyph, I found a possible answer for some of the performance issues I was seeing. He brought up Microsoft Support KB 952167 which is named "Certain folders may have to be excluded from antivirus scanning when you use file-level antivirus software in SharePoint". I had totally forgotten that AV scanning live systems like Exchange, SharePoint or SQL can make them crawl at times. It heavily affects PACS systems in healthcare, the Picture Archive and Communication System, for radiology imaging. I should have known better and went to the AV System Admin and asked to have these exceptions put in. Result was some improvement of the rendering. There's more to do but this did help.

New Year, New Thoughts

So I post again to the blog. Many of you might be asking where I have been. Many of you might not care. I can accept both sides of the coin on that. It is something that I have been coming to terms with for a while now.

Before and after MS TechEd 2013 in New Orleans, I had a fire to get this blog up and rising. I thought I wanted to use this as a platform for my passion around technology and trying to energize people around me. I went to TechEd and learned a lot but also got to network with some of my "chosen tribe" of IT Professionals from around the world. Events like TechEd make me really sit back and acknowledge my spot in the world while enjoying myself. Many people disbelieve me when I say that I pay for it out of my own pocket and use PTO to attend. I feel that strongly about the experience you get there and the training offered through the sessions, labs, vendor discussions and testing opportunities. I came home excited and wanting to share that excitement with the world. Then, it happened.

At first, Microsoft pulled the TechNet subscriptions from IT Professionals. I understand that this is a way used by many pirates to get licenses to illegally sell but it is used by both IT Professionals and IT Departments to setup testing environments for the systems they have and future desired systems. If my company did not have our TechNet licensing, we would not have looked at SharePoint 2010 for some of our internal needs nor would we have done anything on Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2. Luckily, we made monies available to get a MSDN account for that work to continue but other companies may not. The response we get from Microsoft is to use the limited day demos. I am sorry Microsoft, those are not functional enough for companies to create testing environments to test integrations and patching. What became worse was the patching errors that started in August and September. Many products had patches that were rolled back because they damaged environments. If we all had proper testing environments, we could find that out before going to production.

If the TechNet wasn't enough, Microsoft Learning tried to slip out their cancellation of the MCM/MCA certifications on a Friday night before a 3-day holiday weekend. Much has been written about this and many MCM/MCA's are upset to say the least. While I do not hold a MCM or MCA, I was building an education track to get one in SharePoint. Some of you may know that SharePoint is near and dear to my heart. It is an underused technology that gets vilified quickly by users. Many times, the configuration and management of the SharePoint system is what the users hate, not the product itself. But I digress. With this announcement, I put my education and certification plans on hold. I am re-evaluating them as we speak but they are vastly different than when I started.

What I feel through these actions is much like what Rod Trent wrote in his September 2, 2013 piece, "Does Microsoft Hate IT Pros?" and Paul Thurrott wrote in his September 30, 2013 commentary "What's Next for IT Pros?", is Microsoft trying to kill the IT Professional. In a way, yes they are. Microsoft is seeing a new future in the cloud and that IT Professionals should embrace this. In some ways, they should become "cloud developers" using PowerShell to manage systems where the infrastructure is a black box layer they need not worry about. For startups and companies with minimal regulations, that is a wonderful story. But to companies with heavy regulations, like SoX, SEC, HIPAA, Hi-Tech, and such, cloud computing is something that just does not make sense today. I can see that they have something in mind for IT Professionals but they are not saying what and that is the key issue.

They need to communicate to their base users, the IT Professionals. Let us know what is going on, what is coming down the pipe other than just cloud computing. Give us more clarity for that higher level of education. One good thing they have done is things like the Microsoft Virtual Academy. This resource has been a boon for many IT Professionals and I do encourage everyone to run over and check it out. Also Microsoft, remember that while developers can expand your platforms, IT Professionals ensure they get deployed into companies. The free stuff at Build would be nice to see at MS TechEd as well. The Surface offer was a great one but then to see developers coming back with 2 free tablets, that did feel like a solid hit to the stomach. Who ensures that the developers have platforms to develop on? The IT Professionals, that's who.

Now, I have got my words out. It has been 6 months in coming. What I can tell those of you that like to read what I write is that I will be writing again. I hope to write one good article per month that has some length to it. At the same time, I plan to use my blog as a "cheat sheet" for me as well. When I hit a brick wall, I plan to blog how I either worked around or knocked it down. To that end, plan to see a lot of how-to's and reviews as well. I have gotten some fun stuff since July and plan to get more. If you have any ideas, do not hesitate to let me know. I am open for just about anything.

How To: Easy Way to Remove the OneNote “Sent To” App

I write all my blogs on OneNote. I use OneNote on my desktops, Surface RT, XPS laptop and Windows Phones. You might say that I am a OneNote fanboy; you might be right. One thing that I hear as a complaint is how do I get rid of this stupid "Sent To" App that gets installed with OneNote. While I find it useful on some systems, I kill it on others. I am going to explain how to do this on OneNote 2010 or OneNote 2013. As with most Office installations, each version has its own subtle differences. Here's the quick way to get it done on either version.

Steps to perform
Guide in OneNote 2010	Guide in OneNote 2013
1. Open up OneNote
2. Click on the File tab
3. Select Options menu item in the File menu
4. When the Options pop-up appears, select Display from the left menu.
5. Uncheck the "Place OneNote icon in the notification area of the taskbar"
6. Click the OK button to save.
7. Say goodbye to the Icon and App!

Great Alternative to Replace 15K SAS Drives [UPDATED]

One of the most expensive things to replace on servers these days are the 2.5" 15K SAS drives. Having many HP ProLiant servers at my place of employment, getting these drives from HP is a pricy thing for the average small business. Thanks to some clever work by my company's System Administrator, we found a great alternative if you don't care to or do not have warranty coverage for your servers.

It seems to me that the most expensive thing to replace in servers today is the spinning disks. My company has many HP ProLiant servers including the 360, 380 and 580 series servers. The modern generations of these servers, the G6, G7 and Gen8, all utilize the 2.5" 15,000 rpm SAS drives from either Seagate or Hitatchi. When looking at the 146GB sizing of these drives, I typically see pricing from $168 up to $252 per drive for HP name brand drives. Yes, these drives come with HP's warranty but in some cases, that is useless. An example is my company in healthcare. If the drive had ePHI (electronic Patient Health Information), I have to wipe or destroy the drive. If the drive was bad and I can't wipe it, then I have to destroy it. HP will not certify destruction so I have to do it myself thus buying a new drive anyways.

With the majority of warranties covering hardware replacement and the restrictions my team was under, we moved from getting warranties to not getting warranties and just having stores available to change out when problems arise. Now, we needed to tackle the high costs we were seeing. As I said, my Systems Administrator did some digging and searching online and found the Seagate Savvio 15K.2 ST9146852SS Hard Drives. This was an exact replacement for our 146GB 15K SAS drives on our servers. It was a solid replacement spec for spec and the pricing even caught our eye … $96 per drive. You are seeing that correct, $96 per drive. To sweeten the deal even more, I could order these drives off Amazon with my Prime and get them 2 days later in hand. The Amazon vendor selling them, Yobitech, was solid with their customer support and gets my backing for supporting the Prime shipping requirements. They were a pleasure to work with and I will be going back to them with more purchasing.

Are you utilizing your warranties or are other business needs blocking you from using them? What do you think of having stores of spare parts instead of buying warranty programs from vendors? Put your thoughts below in the comments section.

UPDATE: I just noted that the price from Yobitech was $120 per drive. The lower $96 per drive cost is from another vendor. The drives themselves are solid and worth every penny. I am ordering from the new vendor and will update on how the customer service is.

What To Do With These Amazon Gift Cards

I am a hoarder much like anyone else. I have a lot of stuff in my house that needs to be sorted through and probably recycled, sold or thrown out. My server drives are full of information that "I might need someday". Worse yet, I got 3 Amazon gift certificates in the past 3 months and I still haven't spent the money on anything. I was looking all week at a couple of items and thought I would share some of my shopping fun.

First and foremost, when I bought my Nokia 920, I got the recharging plate for wireless recharging of the battery. Thinking at the time that it was "gimmicky", I never put much on it for the long term. Wow, did I make a huge mistake. The wireless charging capability of my Nokia phone is one of the top things I love about it, period! Forget my desired for the Windows Phone 8 OS and Microsoft infrastructure I am solidly held into, the fact that I can recharge my phone without fumbling with cables is a godsend. The only downside, my phone is flat on my nightstand. While shopping for Nokia's new wireless car charger/holder, I found the Nokia DT910 Wireless Charging Stand. This will fit my needs to a tee for my nightstand.

On top of the charging stand, I have noticed that my Nokia 920 is getting small "micro scratches" on the Gorilla Glass. I can't think of what could be doing this to the glass but I need to protect it. Thanks to my friend, Mike Bender, there is a lovely solution for that as well. ArmourSuit makes a screen protector for many cell phones including the Nokia 920. The specific model I want, the ArmorSuit MilitaryShield - Nokia Lumia 920 Screen Protector, is pretty inexpensive and does not interfere with the screen's operations. He seemed to be pretty happy with it and at $9.95, I am willing to take a trial run with it. I might even put a bumper case around it as I notice I am getting a bit more clumsy with this phone that prior ones.

So, these are the two things that have caught my eye as of this week. If Nokia had released their CR200 Wireless Car Charger, I would have added that to my shopping cart as well with no questions asked. I am going to spend some more time perusing some of the games, filters for my Canon camera and lenses, and other gadgets I can't live without.

What are you buying these days? Spending more time and money on technology? Some other craft?