Archive

A while ago I was trying to create a farm at a client site and ran into an issue where I couldn’t create the farm because I would receive the error message “Could not obtain exclusive lock on database ‘model’. Retry the operation later.” Just to note, after having gotten past this step (which I’ll …

Join me and piles of others in the MVP vConference (online). See below for more details. Here is a high level overview of the event: World-class free online conference that features technical content presented by Americas’ region MVPs that is open to the public More technical content (Level 200, 300, 400), less marketing 5 tracks: …

A while back a customer wanted to combine external data sources and SharePoint together, and they thought the best way to do it was with Excel PowerPivot. Their intentions were in the right vein, but the possible path of execution didn’t actually exist. The idea being that they wanted to use a tool (Excel PowerPivot …

I recently was working with a customer and trying to get a PowerPivot workbook working. We were running into the following error. I found the following blog post, which helped me get past the issue. http://www.bidn.com/blogs/DevinKnight/ssis/5362/dealing-with-power-pivot-to-tabular-upgrade-errors The recommendation in the blog post is as follows: Translation: The Service Account that is running the SSAS Tabular …

I made a similar post about this for SharePoint 2010, but I wanted to update it (and make it more clear) for 2013.  Using a SQL Server alias, you’ll be able to change the database server in your SharePoint farm behind the scenes, without anyone in your SharePoint universe even knowing you’ve made a change.  …

The following is a great article outlying the difference between the preferred SharePoint 2007 (SP1) method of using External Blob Storage (EBS) and the SharePoint 2010 method of using Remote Blob Storage (RBS). http://blogs.alachisoft.com/storageedge/external-vs-remote-blob-storage/

As posted by Eric Ligman (Microsoft Sales Excellence Program Manager) https://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2013/06/18/huge-collection-of-free-microsoft-ebooks-for-you-including-office-office-365-sharepoint-sql-server-system-center-visual-studio-web-development-windows-windows-azure-and-windows-server.aspx?Redirected=true [Below is a copy of Eric’s post] Last summer I put up a post that offered a collection of free Microsoft eBooks across a variety of topics and the response was incredible. Because of the phenomenal response, I followed it up with a second …

I recently got Access Services (2013) in place in our internal SharePoint 2013 environment.  The following is what I learned from trying to go through this install (for the second time — the first time was a failure because we hadn’t setup Apps properly). NOTE: In this article, unless otherwise stated, all references to Access …

This document available from Microsoft is a great reference point to know what each service application, content DB, system DB, and every other SharePoint 2013 DB is all about, and the estimated sizes each one can grow to.  The document is very large (over a meter tall – that’s over a yard for you American …

I ran into this today at a customer, where they had SharePoint 2010 with PowerPivot/Analysis Services and Reporting Services installed on SQL Server 2012.  They were trying to view an Access Services Report, which takes advantage of the SharePoint Reporting Services integration – this was throwing an error in the UI.  However, as they were …