My SharePoint Server 2010 is fast!

Finally! Manage to get SharePoint Server 2010 to run (fast)!! As an attempt to try SharePoint Server 2010, and to avoid multiple servers (at this moment), I decided to setup SharePoint Server 2010 in standalone mode (using SQL Express). Tried it on a Hyper-v VM with Windows 2008 R2 (with Hotfix: 166231), the server is crawling (like a turtle that is, not crawling as in FAST indexing) with 1GB ram setup.

I guess it would be correct to assume that SharePoint 2010 will run a lot faster if I just assign more RAM to the VM. [UPDATE (27 Dec): Yeap, confirmed, assigned 2gb to the VM, SharePoint 2010 works quite fine] However, why stop here? I tried a totally radical approach instead: BOOT-VHD. Now my SharePoint 2010 is literary flying in my Laptop of 4GB ram with direct hardware access! summary of steps I did as following:

1. Prepare Windows 2008 R2 VM using Hyper-v
2. Use BCDEDIT to mount the VHD into boot menu.
3. Boot into the vhd [note 1]
4. Install relevant drivers
5. Install pre-requisites for SharePoint Server 2010
6. Install hotfix 166231
7. Install SharePoint Server 2010 (standalone)
8. SharePoint 2010 flies :D Nice!

Anyway, Reza Alirezaei’s article is a great source of reference:
http://blogs.devhorizon.com/reza/?p=989
I followed his steps and success except that I did not Sysprep (as I am running the VHD in the same laptop, and it works in my case without sysprep).

note 1: In step 3, I got a 0x00000136 Blue Screen, (“VHD does not have enough free space to expand the vhd”) after select to boot into the VHD in the boot menu. Now this is an interesting one, seems like when you boot into vhd, the disk size you specified for the VHD will be ‘virtually’ pre-allocated in the drive. Note, it is the size you specified during creation of the VHD, not the actual disk space it uses. My VHD is ‘virtually’ 120GB, but physically only around 7GB, but i still need at least 120GB free on the drive that i stored the VHD for it to boot success… Also worth notice, when I booted into the VHD, other drives (physical harddisk drive) are also visible, and I notice the drive storing the vhd have 120GB less of space, which is ‘virtually’ pre-allocated. When i booted back to my host OS, those spaces are still available for use.

You can uninstall VM Additions version 13.813 and later from Hyper-V!

Okay, I admit, maybe its just me amusing myself.

I always remembered (from the old days of Hyper-V…) that we are not able to uninstall VM Additions installed by Virtual PC when the VM is running in Hyper-V... I had to hack Windows 2008 to boot into non-hyper-v, to run Virtual PC, so that I can uninstall the damn VM additions!

Today, after installing Win2k8 R2, I imported some old VPC’s VM into Hyper-V, and go to Add/Remove programs to try my luck... And it works this time round!!

Some digging into TechNet found out that we actually can uninstall certain version of VM Additions directly in Hyper-V. Not sure when this was out, but it sure is news to me! (and a time save too!)

Improvement in Importing VM in Hyper-V on Windows 2008 R2

Had recently ran out of space in my dev laptop’s old 250GB hard disk. Just moved-in to the new Windows 2008 R2 with Seagate 7200.4 320gb hard disk, and, of course first thing to do is to fill it all up again with with tons of Hyper-V VM. To my amazement, I get some cool new options in the Import VM screen:

Now this is some real improvement! Especially the ‘Duplicate’ check box!!! Can’t count how many times I accidentally imported my archived Hyper-V VM in the old Hyper-V and found out that it cannot be imported anymore!! Now at least the options are clear and able to ‘duplicate’ sure helps! Was a shamed that these are not able in the ‘old’ Hyper-V, everyone, just update to R2 already!

No Luck on SharePoint Server 2010

Well, my installation of SharePoint Server 2010 failed. It is not supported in Windows Server 2008 R2 yet... found out the hard way, sigh...

Required some sort of service pack for Windows Server 2008 R2

http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/16/installation-notice-for-sharepoint-2010-public-beta.aspx

Time to roll back to good-old SharePoint Foundation.

Here comes SharePoint Foundation (beta)

Just got SharePoint Foundation 2010 up and running!

It sure takes a lot of RAM! maybe its because of the x64.

Installation generally went well, the SharePoint Foundation installation got stuck in the last stage “Applying Updates…” for around 50 minutes, but it continued on and completes as usual.

SharePoint Configuration Utility for SharePoint Foundation failed for the first time around step 8, weird error, “User not found” some where at the configuration database, captured in the log file. However, I re-run the configuration utility, and it works fine!

Now to shutdown the VPC and give it more RAM before I install SharePoint Server 2010.

The Dreaded Seadragon to the Rescue!

Had some interesting development on current project where customer requested to be able to allow user to view huge JPEGS from their portal. Deep Zoom in Silverlight comes into the picture, and was discussed extensively in the project.

Two key problems though:

1. Deep Zoom Composer provides a simple and easy way to create deep zoom image collections, but provides no simple way to automate it when user uploads large images into image library in SharePoint.
2. We are kind of afraid that Silverlight, as the viewer, might  not be as easily available in controlled corporate environment at this moment

Spent the weekend with Deep Zoom, and found out that there were APIs available to create deep zoom collections using .NET codes, Bryant had a great blog post on this:
Deep Zoom Image Generation with DeepZoomTools.DLL

Had to do more test for applying it into ASP.NET (SharePoint), but, fundamentally, it should be workable. This should solve part 1 of the problem.

For part 2, the handy Deep Zoom composer provides the answers straight away. It showcases a way to generate Seadragon Ajax viewer to view a single Deep Zoom Image.

Some study on the generated html files found out that it is extremely simple to generate seadragon into web page:

Basically just by creating Seadragon.Viewer on a container DOM element and calls openDzi passing in the xml files generated by ImageCreator.

One thing to note, Seadragon, as the time I tested, only supports one single image (no ImageColelction generated xml support). But, well, it works for me ;) Also tested it on Chrome, Safari and Firefox, all works :D

 
Testing Seadragon in a SlimBox2

Zoom babe, zooooom!

Time to convince customer to go for Seadragon, and call it a day, cheers!