SharePoint Saturday Twin Cities Fall November 3, 2012 Everybody Lies Troubleshooting SharePoint with House M.D. John L. Ferringer
Dec 13, 2014
SharePoint Saturday Twin Cities Fall
November 3, 2012
Everybody Lies Troubleshooting SharePoint
with House M.D.
John L. Ferringer
About me
• Senior Manager, Sogeti
• My blog: http://www.MyCentralAdmin.com
• Twitter: @ferringer
Who is Dr. Gregory House?
• A diagnostician
• An arrogant jerk
• A cynic
• An observer
What’s House got to do with SharePoint?
• We often have to diagnose (troubleshoot)
• Dealing with SharePoint can make you a
jerk
• Dealing with SharePoint will definitely
make you a cynic
• The more you observe, the better you
diagnose
(just kidding)
Does SharePoint make you feel like House?
SharePoint is….
• Complex
• Vast in depth and breadth
• Made up of many subsystems
• Influenced by many outside factors
• Every farm and use case is unique
• …
• Just like the human body
How does House cure his patients?
• Understand the Issue
• Determine the Root Cause
• Finding a Cure
• Move Forward
Why not do the same with SharePoint?
Before we start, let’s keep this in mind…
UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE
Identify the Problem
• You can’t cure anything if you don’t know
what’s wrong
• Interview the patient
• You also have to ask the right questions
– What is the error?
– How is it happening?
– Who is seeing the error?
– When does it occur?
– What else do we know about the error?
SharePoint 2010’s Correlation ID
• Your users may see it
• You may see it
• It’s a GUID
• It is actually helpful
Let’s get REAL for a minute
• SharePoint 2010 farm
• 1 Web Server, 1 App Server, 1 SQL Server
• Visual Studio on the Web Server
Review the Patient History
• What has the patient done to get here?
• What is their environment?
• What happened before the error?
• What was happening during the error?
• How was SharePoint performing?
• Do you have Change Management?
Know Your Logs!
• They record what’s going on
• Which logs?
– Windows Event, ULS, IIS
– Keep in mind other sources: SQL, DCs, etc
• Know your tools!
– ULS Viewer
– Log Parser
– PAL
– Just to name a few
Why do we care about Change?
• You have to know
what you have!
• How has it changed?
• When were they made?
Back to Reality
DETERMINE THE ROOT CAUSE
Rule Out the Obvious
• Understand what you know
• Every problem is unique
• But, someone’s probably seen it before…
• So check your sources:
– Internal
– External: Google it!
• But be careful…
(with Bing!)
Remember…
• Know your sources
– Who wrote it?
– Are they credible?
• Read the entire post!
– Everything!
– All the comments too
• Was there a follow up post?
• Validate the information
Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice…
Talk to the team
What Doesn’t Fit?
It’s all about me, right?
• Remember the database errors?
• Here, have some SA rights…
• No thank you.
Get a Different Perspective
In the Real World, who do I turn to?
FINDING A CURE
Review Possible Treatments
• Reproduce the issue
• Test it!
• Understand
the treatment
• Always read the label
Back to John’s problem…
Treatments:
• Sysadmin rights in the database
–Oh heck no!
• Local development environment
– Not possible
• Proper rights in the database
– Now we’re talking…
Fully Understand the Cause
Fully Understand the Remedy
MOVING FORWARD HTTP://TINYURL.COM/SPTROUBLE
Questions…