Food for thought: my favourite #ISCLondon quotes

I have spent the last 3 days at the International SharePoint Conference in London, organised by Combined Knowledge.

The event was well attended and by all accounts was a big success. Interestingly the organiser (a friendly chap named Steve Smith) made a decision to structure the event in such a way that each session was a continuation of the previous one, allowing an overall story to evolve over the course of the event. Personally I think the format worked and from what I have heard the speakers enjoyed collaborating to achieve this (I wonder if they used a SharePoint site?). It certainly allowed a more in-depth look at topics that might have otherwise been skimmed over (this was particularly the case for the PowerShell sessions that kicked off the IT PRO track).

Although I did take a bunch of notes, I thought that a concise, albeit slightly terse way of documenting the highlights would be a list of my favourite quotes from each of the sessions that I attended. This is really for my own future reference but hopefully it’s useful for those that weren’t able to attend too. You will notice that the sessions aren’t purely technical – I dipped into a few “fluffy” (read: business) sessions to see what all the fuss is about.

The number of bullet points is not representative of the quality of the sessions – it really depends on the speaker style, whether the sessions were demo heavy and whether or not a point could be generalised to avoid misinterpretation.

Let me know if you spot any mistakes or have any queries.

PowerShell (IT101-IT102)

Gary Lapointe, Spencer Harbar, Chandima Kulathilake

Utilising a combination of PowerShell with a separate XML input file allows for “static scripts and dynamic parameters“, avoiding the need to re-test for each environment.
“Using SQL aliases is a no brainer“. – you can’t point to a specific SQL instance using DNS

SQL (IT103-IT104)

Wayne Ewington, Ben Curry, Neil Hodgkinson

When troubleshooting disk performance issues, always ask “what else is on the SAN?”
“Different LUNs does not mean different spindles” – when troubleshooting disk throughput issues
“A large number of smaller disks will perform better than a small number of large disks”
“Disk performance is about throughput, not capacity“
“Say NO to virtual disks for SQL server” – mount LUNs directly
Ask yourself “What specific problem are you trying to solve?” – when considering RBS
“The closer your RPO/RTO numbers are to 0, the more expensive your solution will be“
“Consider multiple farms” when naming databases – e.g. SP_Farm1_Content_Intranet
“It depends on the provider” – the answer to most RBS questions
“SQL indexes are based on GUIDs” – which contributes to fragmentation in SharePoint

User Profile Service (IT105)

Spence Harbar, Kimmo Forss

“User profiles can be augmented using BCS” – e.g. to add data from a HR databases
“Identity management is primarily a political discussion, not technical”
“AD assessments should be performed up front, prior to a SharePoint project starting”
“You cannot do identity management without a metadirectory” – FIM being an example of a metadirectory solution
“Logging on as the farm account is one of the top 5 worst practices in SharePoint administration”

Delivering Business Applications (CS706)

Ian Woodgate

“SharePoint is typically a higher up front cost but lower long term cost, meaning it’s a strategicinvestment” – compared to traditional custom built apps.
“Sometimes scoping the problem is more work than solving it”

Building a new Intranet (IW507-IW508)

Mark Orange

Your Intranet should be a “many sites experience” – as opposed to one monolithic portal
“Analogous to a shopping mall” – i.e. food labels (metadata), “get in, get out” ideal
“Focus on definitions, not labels” – e.g. not “How we work”, focus on “The place to find out what I need to perform my role”
“SharePoint is not a solution – it’s a dirty word that should be removed from our vocabulary”
“Enable people for solutions, not SharePoint”
“Consider content publishers, not just consumers” – how will the content be edited?
“Bend > buy > build” – start with bend, only build if absolutely necessary.
“Prove before you move” – through prototyping, to justify moving from “bend” towards “buy” and “build”
“Train the trainer allows for scalable education”
“Searching everything doesn’t work” – use scopes.

Search (IT109-IT110)

Neil Hodgkinson

“The default search config is not recommended – split it” – 1 schedule and 1 content source is inflexible.
“Instant indexing is not possible” – it takes 1 minute to spin up
“Crawler impact rules are an easy way to DOS a farm”
“Search results removal is instant” – URL is dropped from the index
“Configuring search with PowerShell can be invasive” – e.g. due to DB moves

Capacity planning and performance testing (IT112-IT113)

Steve Smith and Ben Curry

“Try to break your farm to establish a baseline and thresholds” – obviously not in production hours J
“Visual Studio 2010 is a great tool for load testing and is not just for developers”
“An old client may not be able to tax a new server” – ensure your test rig(s) have enough hardware
“Build in think times” to ensure more accurate testing.
“Test search queries when load testing” as more developers start to utilise search in custom code
“Additional hardware can have an order of magnitude improvement” – in the demo we added an additional CPU core to each WFE, which drastically improved our RPS figures
“Test third party products too”

Exploring SharePoint Enterprise features (BUS314)

Andrew Woodward

“It’s difficult to partition Enterprise and Standard functionality” – e.g. site templates that include Ent features
“Best bets are analogous to search engine ads”
“Put effort into reviewing search queries, especially failed ones”
“Don’t buy Enterprise just for chart part Web parts”
“SPD is a great BA prototyping tool” – e.g. for workflows
“InfoPath is great for validating user input”
“The Microsoft BI stack delivers functional, zero vanity output – PerformancePoint adds shine” – for flashy exec dashboards J
“SharePoint should not be considered mature yet” – compared to some other products/vendors

What’s next? (BUS315)

Bill English

“Business requirements should always be technology agnostic“
“SharePoint will surface business dysfunction” – probably my favourite quote.
“Politics can screw up a great technical design“

Office 365 (IT116)