It’s been well over a year since I passed the SharePoint 2010 70-667 exam and uploaded the first part of this blog series. Since then, the series has had over 30,000 hits and makes up over a quarter of the total visits to this site, leading me to believe that the content is of interest. By far the most frequent question I have had over the last few months is “where is part four“?

There are a few reasons why I haven’t posted part 4 up until now, but the main one is that I took very few notes at the time on the documented skills measured under the heading “Maintaining a SharePoint Environment”, so didn’t think this post would be of much value. However, due to the large volume of comments in recent weeks I wanted to reply with something other than “I didn’t do much revision on this area so there isn’t a part 4”.

As such, this part is a little different to the previous posts in the series. I will simply provide a recommended reading list based on both the skills measured and also Microsoft’s Description of SharePoint Server 2010 SP1 to keep things relevant. As is typical for a Microsoft exam, this exam requires hands-on as well as academic knowledge so simply reading this material won’t mean that you pass the exam.

In case you missed them, here are the other parts in this series:

• Introduction and ” Installing and Configuring a SharePoint Environment (25 per cent)”
• “Managing a SharePoint Environment (26 per cent)”
• “Deploying and Managing Applications (24 per cent)”
• “Maintaining a SharePoint Environment (25 per cent)” – you are reading this.

In part 3 I promised a downloadable PDF that covers the entire series so… here it is. Enjoy!

1. Maintaining a SharePoint Environment (25 per cent)

Back up and restore a SharePoint environment.

From the learning plan:

“This objective applies to on-premise and/or SharePoint Online and may include but is not limited to: configuring backup settings; backing up and restoring content, search, and service application databases; detaching and attaching databases; and exporting lists and sites”

Recommended reading:

• Chapters 9 and 10 of “SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide”, by John Ferringer and Sean McDonough
• How to back-up a Office 365 SharePoint Online site and data
• Back up a farm in SharePoint Server 2010
• Back up a service application in SharePoint Server 2010
• Back up search in SharePoint Server 2010

Recommended learning activities:

• Practice backing up a farm using PowerShell, Central Administration and the SQL Server tools.
• Practice using the end user “backup” tools – i.e. exporting list and document library content, saving sites as templates.
• Backup the Search service application using PowerShell, Central Administration and the SQL Server tools. Ensure that you also backup the index files.

Monitor and analyze a SharePoint environment.

From the learning plan:

“This objective may include but is not limited to: generating health, administrative, and Web analytics reports; interpreting usage and trace logs; identifying and resolving health and performance issues”

Recommended reading:

• Monitoring overview (SharePoint Server 2010)
• View administrative reports (SharePoint Server 2010)
• View health reports (SharePoint Server 2010)
• View Web Analytics reports (SharePoint Server 2010)
• View diagnostic logs (SharePoint Server 2010)
• View timer job status (SharePoint Server 2010)

Recommended learning activities:

• Practicing resolving issues using the SharePoint 2010 health analyser
• Review the SharePoint 2010 diagnostic logs – try using ULSViewer for this.
• Practice reviewing each of the report types mentioned in the recommended reading list above.

Optimize the performance of a SharePoint environment.

From the learning plan:

“This objective applies to on-premise and/or SharePoint Online and may include but is not limited to: configuring resource throttling (large list management, object model override); configuring remote Binary Large Objects (BLOB) storage and BLOB and object caching; and optimizing services”

Recommended reading:

• Understand and Configure Resource Throttling on SharePoint Server 2010
• Install and configure RBS (SharePoint Server 2010)

Recommended learning activities:

• Play with the resource throttling settings – e.g. set the list throttling settings to a low value and view the related error when attempting to add list items.
• Configure Remote Blog Storage using the Microsoft FILESTREAM provider – ensure you test the install by viewing files stored in the RBS data store directory.

Content specific to SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

This is a list based on Microsoft’s Description of SharePoint Server 2010 SP1:

Recommended reading:

• Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Coming Soon…
• Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (white paper)
• SharePoint 2010 SP1 – Site Recycle Bin
• Restore a deleted site (SharePoint Foundation 2010)
• Restore a deleted site collection (SharePoint Foundation 2010)
• Remote BLOB Store Architecture
• Service Pack 1 Move-SPSite w/ ‘shallow copy’
• Service Pack 1 – Storage Metrics (StorMan.aspx)
• SharePoint ContentDB Guidance: Too many shades of gray along with a little brown – not a Microsoft publication but I think reading this is important for a balanced view on RBS.

Recommended learning activities:

• Delete and restore a site (SPWeb) using the UI
• Delete and restore a site collection (SPSite) using PowerShell (Restore-SPDeletedSite cmdlet)
• Perform a shallow copy migration using the Move-SPSite Windows PowerShell CmdLet with the -RbsProviderMapping parameter. This requires RBS to be configured on the content databases.
• Check out the Storage Management feature (StorMan.aspx).

Please let me know if this was useful to you, especially if you have sat the 70-667 exam recently.

Ben