From a basic theory perspective, PowerShell is an interactive command-line and task-based scripting technology. Everyone who has used other scripting languages/technologies loathe parsing text for output or to put returned data to use in another script. This is not the case in PowerShell. Through CMDLETs, you deal directly with .NET objects. You can think of a CMDLET as a task orientated tool that performs a specific task. CMDLETS can be joined together in what’s called a pipeline to perform more complex operations.

In SharePoint 2007, one could utilize PowerShell by calling STSADM commands or by importing the SharePoint .NET namespaces and write SharePoint object model code. A developer could also write and compile their own CMDLETs with the SharePoint object model for use within PowerShell. These approaches while very useful, had drawbacks. An admin could say “I’m just going to stick with STSADM and I’m not a developer so the object model is out of the question”. A developer could say “I have Visual Studio and I am comfortable with that”. Well the story changes in SharePoint 2010. Microsoft has published in total well over 600 CMDLETs for SharePoint Server 2010 and it effectively replaces STSADM which had just over 180 commands for MOSS. In SharePoint 2010, PowerShell is the primary scripting/command line tool for administering SharePoint. You’ll have more control than ever in effectively and efficiently administering your SharePoint 2010 environment.

If you are experienced with PowerShell, please feel free to scroll down to the bottom of the article for the PowerShell examples

‘The book’ and online resources to learn about PowerShell

This post is not intended to teach the Basics of PowerShell, rather to introduce its usage for administering SharePoint 2010. With that said, I’ll offer some starting points for those who have not used PowerShell:

• Read a copy of “PowerShell in Action” by Bruce Payette. Bruce is a founding member of the PowerShell team at Microsoft, is a co-designer of the PowerShell language and the principal author of the language implementation. This is my favorite PowerShell book and in my opinion it is an essential read. If you read this book, you’ll truly end up understanding PowerShell as it addresses the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of the technology. The first edition is based on v1.0. There is a second edition in the works to be released later this year covering v2.0.
• Scripting with Windows PowerShell which is part of the Microsoft Script Center. In addition, you can take a look at their Getting Started posts. 
• Read about Windows PowerShell on MSDN
• Read the Windows PowerShell team blog
• PowerShell.com

Loading your PowerShell environment – You have options

Which PowerShell ’shell’ environment you use is up to you. Out-of-the-box, here are your choices:

1. SharePoint ships with the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell. To start this go to [Start > All Programs > Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products > SharePoint 2010 Management Shell]. By default the Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell PSSnapin is loaded, which is what you need to interact with the Microsoft provided SharePoint related CMDLETS.
2. Load the x64 PowerShell console v2.0 environment [Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows PowerShell > Windows PowerShell]. With this you’ll need to manually load the Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell PSSnapin. To do this, at the shell prompt execute the following command:

   Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

   You can confirm that the PSSnapin loaded by executing the following command. Note this outputs a listing of only the PSSnapin names using a pipe to Format-Table (or ft for short) and selecting the Name property. This will in fact show you all of the PSSnapins loaded in your shell:

   Get-PSSnapin  | ft Name

3. Load  the x64 PowerShell ISV  [Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows PowerShell > Windows PowerShell ISV]. This is the Integrated Scripting Environment and my environment of choice. Again, just like the Windows PowerShell console environment, you’ll need to load the Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell PSSnapin.

Using your PowerShell profile to automatically load Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell in Windows PowerShell and the Windows PowerShell ISV 

If you choose to use the Windows PowerShell or Windows PowerShell ISV for working with SharePoint, I’ll admit that it would be slightly annoying to have to manually load the Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell PSSnapin every time you want to use PowerShell. To solve this, you can use your PowerShell profile. Briefly, your PowerShell profile is a PowerShell script that loads every time you load the environment and it’s where you can place commands that you want to execute as your shell is loaded. For more info on your PowerShell Profile, see TechNet article about_profiles (which I would recommend that you read in its entirety).

For the purposes of this article, I’ll show you how to identify if you have a ‘Current User, Current Host’ profile.

To identify if you have a ‘Current User, Current Host’ profile within Windows PowerShell and the Windows PowerShell ISV, execute the following (note, returns True or False)

test-path $profile

If this returns false, you can automatically create a profile for yourself by executing the following. Note that this will not overwrite a profile if it exists.

 if (!(test-path $profile))
           {new-item -type file -path $profile -force}

Now that you have a profile, you can insert the Add-PSSnapin command above. To do this, open your profile from PowerShell:

notepad $profile

Simply copy and paste the Add-PSSnapin command as listed above, save then close the file. Close then re-open PowerShell. You’ll now have the Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell PSSnapin loaded every time you open PowerShell.

Additional must know items about your profile:

• Windows PowerShell and Windows PowerShell ISV have different ‘Current User’ Current Host profiles. So if you use both, you’ll want to keep that in mind.
• The SharePoint 2010 Management Shell also has profile options, but uses a different profile. By default, it uses the ‘All Users, Current Host’ profile.
• Since your profile is a PowerShell script, you’ll need to ensure that scripts are allowed to run on your computer. There are different Execution Policy settings for running scripts within PowerShell. By default, the Execution Policy is ‘Restricted’ which prevents all script files from executing. You’ll need to change this to another value. I suggest that you read the TechNet article about_Execution_Policies. On my development machine, I use ‘RemoteSigned’ however I recommend that you investigate the various settings and use the one that fits for your own security requirements. For production environments, you’ll want to consider using a more secure Execution Policy.

Getting started with PowerShell Examples – Discovering what you can do

The first question I asked was ‘What SharePoint related CMDLETs are installed out-of-the-box, and where do they live on my system?”.

Discover what SharePoint related CMDLets are installed in your environment – shows a long table based listing):

Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

That is great, but I want to see more detail than that about each command. Pipe to Format-List (fl for short) – this will show more properties of each command, again this will show an even longer listing:

Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell | fl

Well can I see all of the properties for each command? Sure thing…

Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell | fl -property *

How many SharePoint CMDLETs are there on my system?

(Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell).count

Where do they live on my system? Well they are all a part of a SharePoint related .dll that is in your GAC (Global Assembly Cache). To prove it, execute the following to get all of the unique assemblies that are associated with the Microsoft.SharePoint PSSnapin:

Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell | select DLL -unique

One thing that I found interesting on the file system is the contents of the “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\POWERSHELL” folder. This is a new folder within SharePoint 2010 (i.e. CONFIG\POWERSHELL didn’t exist with SharePoint 2007) and contains all of the SharePoint PowerShell registration and type configuration files. Take a look!

So how can I see all of the commands that contain SPWEB in the noun of the command?

Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -noun "SPWEB*"

I want that SPWEB CMDLET list to be sorted alphabetically by command name! No problem…:

Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -noun "SPWEB*" | Sort verb

How do I know what a specific command does? Let’s look at the SPWeb CMDLET. Use Get-Help:

Get-Help Get_SPWeb

How about an example of getting an SPWeb. This isn’t entierly useful all by itself but…

Get-SPWeb "http://yoursharepointsite"

To see all of the members of the SPWeb. The Get-Member (gm for short) CMDLET will show you this information:

Get-SPWeb http://yoursharepointsite | gm

To see all of the properties associated with a specific SPWeb. Inspect the object with this command:

Get-SPWeb "http://yoursharepointsite" | fl -property *

Here is an example of updating the SPWeb Title:

$myweb = Get-SPWeb "http://yoursharepointsite"
$myweb.Title = "My New Site Title"
$myweb.Update()

I think this is enough to get you started.

Cheers,

c.

There is a detailed procedure on MSDN  titled Setting up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server that covers all types of developer workstation installations, however for I felt that I’d post a concise Windows 7 targeted version as I am sure I will personally go through this a few times and that others would benefit from this information. 

This article specifically discusses installing the BETA version of SharePoint 2010.

This post targets an installation in ‘Standalone’ mode. I felt that I would post a ‘Standalone’ install for those who do not have access to MSDN or don’t have access to a full version of SQL Server. You can still follow along if you wish to install wish to install with a full SQL version (for the devs out there, SQL 2008 Developer Edition for example), you’ll just have to change your installation option to ‘Server Farm’ mode. There are sure to be many posts out there covering a ‘Server Farm’ mode install where you select your SQL server and please be advised that I don’t cover this install type specifically.

Before I get started, I’d like to mention that my preferred setup is on Windows Server even though I can install on Windows 7. Why? Because that is how I install it within client environments and if I am going to develop and test, I should test and develop in the same type of environment. I believe it is still a good thing that SharePoint 2010 can be installed on client operating systems as not everyone has a test server environment within which to play and learn.

Let’s get started with the install.

OS and Hardware Guidance:

• Windows 7 Professional/Enterprise/Ultimate 64-bit (it will not install on Home Premium 64-bit or any 32-bit version)
• RAM - Preferably 4 GB of RAM for SharePoint Foundation, and 6 to 8 GB of RAM for SharePoint Server. Available RAM makes a huge difference with SharePoint 2010 – do not underestimate these recommendations! To give you an idea, my office PC is a Quad core with 8 GB of RAM. Running Windows 7 Ultimate x64, a general baseline of minimum RAM usage is approximately 17% with just the OS and a few small apps running. Once I installed SharePoint Server 2010 on this machine in Standalone mode, it shot up to around 60%!  Another thing to keep in mind is that when you install in Standalone mode, most SharePoint services are enabled by default increasing the need for CPU cycles and RAM.
• CPU – recent dual core or a quad core, the faster the better. If considering a virtual environment, your CPU needs to support virtualization
• Virtual Environment - Hyper-V or VMWare. Virtual PC does not support 64-bit guests.

Known Windows 7 Limitations and Issues:

• See http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdeveloperdocs/archive/2009/11/20/sharepoint-2010-beta-release-known-issues.aspx.

Installation Procedure 

1) Obtain and configure the SharePoint 2010 Beta for installation:

• Download one of the Betas into c:\SharePointFiles (I will use this local path similar to the MSDN article for example purposes) from
  • Download SharePoint Foundation Beta
  • Download SharePoint Server 2010 Beta (registration required for this download)
    • After registration, pay specific attention to the ‘Instructions’ section of the page. Note the Product Key – you will need this later.
• Extract all the files to a local folder on you workstation. From a command prompt execute the following:
  • For SharePoint Foundation:

    c:\SharePointFiles\SharePoint /extract:c:\SharePointFiles

  • For SharePoint Server 2010:

    c:\SharePointFiles\OfficeServer /extract:c:\SharePointFiles

• Open the installation configuration file for editing, config.xml, located in the following path:

  c:\SharePointFiles\files\Setup\config.xml

• Add the following line to the <Configuration> section (note: this line is case sensitive):

  <Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/>

• Save and close config.xml

2) Install Hotfixes & Pre-requisites:

You will need to perform the following installations prior to installing SharePoint 2010 on your Windows 7 machine: (Note: In case you heard about it or were thinking about it for your developer rig, the installer ships with a tool called PrerequisiteInstaller.exe to automatically assist with installing and configuring pre-requisites for SharePoint 2010. THIS DOES NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS 7 OR WINDOWS VISTA. It is for use only with Windows Server 2008 SP2 x64 or Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.).

Important! The install links and information below are specifically for Windows 7. Please refer to other resources for other operating systems.

• WCF Hotfix for Microsoft Windows (KB971831)
• Microsoft FilterPack 2.0 Beta. At a command prompt, type the following

  c:\SharePointFiles\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\FilterPack\FilterPack.msi

• Microsoft Sync Framework
• SQL Server Native Client
• Microsoft Geneva Framework Beta 1 Runtime for x64
• ADO.NET Data Services v1.5. (Choose the Runtime Only installer – ADONETDataServices_v15_CTP2_RuntimeOnly.exe)
• Chart Controls (Required for SharePoint Server 2010 install. Not needed for SharePoint Foundation)
• SQL Server Analysis Services – ADOMD.Net (Required for SharePoint Server 2010 install. Not needed for SharePoint Foundation)

3) Configure Windows 7 Features

From a command prompt, execute the following:

start /w pkgmgr /iu:IIS-WebServerRole;IIS-WebServer;IIS-CommonHttpFeatures;IIS-StaticContent;IIS-DefaultDocument;IIS-DirectoryBrowsing;IIS-HttpErrors;IIS-ApplicationDevelopment;IIS-ASPNET;IIS-NetFxExtensibility;IIS-ISAPIExtensions;IIS-ISAPIFilter;IIS-HealthAndDiagnostics;IIS-HttpLogging;IIS-LoggingLibraries;IIS-RequestMonitor;IIS-HttpTracing;IIS-CustomLogging;IIS-Security;IIS-BasicAuthentication;IIS-WindowsAuthentication;IIS-DigestAuthentication;IIS-RequestFiltering;IIS-Performance;IIS-HttpCompressionStatic;IIS-HttpCompressionDynamic;IIS-WebServerManagementTools;IIS-ManagementConsole;IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility;IIS-Metabase;IIS-WMICompatibility;WAS-WindowsActivationService;WAS-ProcessModel;WAS-NetFxEnvironment;WAS-ConfigurationAPI;WCF-HTTP-Activation;WCF-NonHTTP-Activation

4) RESTART YOUR COMPUTER

This is necessary to complete the changes made to Windows Features.

5) Install SharePoint 2010

• From the command prompt, run the following command:

  c:\SharePointFiles\Setup.exe

  • If installing SharePoint Server 2010, you’ll be asked to enter your Product Key. Remember you needed to get this from the download page. Enter your product key and click the ‘Continue’ button
• For both Server or Foundation,  accept the agreement and click the ‘Continue’ button
• You will now be presented with an installation choice. As previously mentioned, I chose the ‘Standalone’ installation. You could also choose the ‘Server Farm’ installation if you want to go through a SQL Server installation.
• When the installation is complete, you’ll be prompted to run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard. Run the Wizard.
• When the Wizard is complete, you can use SharePoint 2010 by visiting http://YOURCOMPUTERNAME, and Central Administration will be available through your Start menu.  

Notes if you encounter installation errors:

• If you receive any errors during installation, check your logs with the following at the command prompt.

  cd %temp%
  dir /od *.log

• How do you know specifically which log to look at? Two things…
  • One – sort the files in folder by Modified Date/Time. The most recent is likely to be your error log
  • Two – your config.xml tells you the prefix of the file. In the case of SharePoint Server the prefix will be “SharePoint Server Setup” and in SharePoint Foundation it will be “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Setup”. These files will have the .log extension. The most recent log file with one of those prefixes (depending on what version you are installing) will be the one.
• You can always ask questions on the MSDN SharePoint 2010 forums at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/sharepoint2010,sharepoint/

Issues and troubleshooting journey I encountered with my install:

When I first attempted to perform the install, I received the following error that set me off on quite a journey:

Microsoft SharePoint server 2010 encountered an error during setup. One or more required office components failed to complete successfully.

Obviously, this is very generic in nature. So I investigated my setup log file. I found a further error description in a line near the end of the log file:

 ”Error: Command: ‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\SERVER14\Server Setup Controller\dbwrap.exe’ failed with error code: -2067919934. Type: 8::CommandFailed.”

That was a mouthful, but it focuses on dbwrap.exe which is part of the SQL Express installation. I also noticed there was a DbWrapLog file in my %temp% directory as well. I opened it for inspection. The last three lines were:

ERR:0:SQL Express installation failed with error -2067919934
WRN:0:The file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Sql Server\100\Setup BootStrap\LOG\summary.txt doesn’t exist
ERR:0:Fail to install or config SQL Express.

This was the hard evidence I was looking for. The “One or more required office components” that failed during setup was the installation of the SQL Express database. So now I know ‘what’ happened, I just needed to find out ‘why’. This immediately led me to check the SQL Server logs located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\. If this happens to you, you’ll see folders within this directory that resemble dates and times. Open the most recent one and you’ll see a files titled “Detail_GlobalRules.txt” and “Summary_YOURCOMPUTERNAME_….txt”. I opened the “Detail_GlobalRules.txt” file and scrolled to the bottom and found the exception

“Exception type: Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.RulesEngineExtension.RulesEngineRuleFailureException” with Message “A computer restart is required. You must restart this computer before installing SQL Server.”

Ok I thought. So I rebooted (even though I rebooted after installing the pre-requisites and hotfixes) and tried the install again. The SharePoint 2010 install failed again! Inspected all the same logs and found the same errors. After scratching my head for a few minutes, searched for an answer…

In the end, from the errors that were reported, I found out that (after researching the issue) it was a problem in the lovely Windows Registry…

The SQL server install must check the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations value and throw the restart required error when there is a value in this key so it doesn’t interrupt something else happening within the computer.

Please note that before you modify anything in your registry BACK IT UP! It turns out that my antivirus was having a field day with my Logitech webcam and continuously has entries in this registry key. The solution to get SharePoint successfully installed, remove the value in this key and run the SharePoint Server 2010 install WITHOUT restarting. Worked like a charm!

I hope the issue I ran into helps someone else as I am sure there will be folks who install SharePoint 2010 on desktops or laptops that have connected devices that may cause installation issues.

Cheers,

c.

SharePoint Administration with PowerShell
You’ve been a good friend STSADM, but it’s time to say goodbye. PowerShell is now the first class scripting citizen in the SharePoint 2010 administration story and in this session we’ll dive into how to utilize out-of-the-box cmdlets, how to create your own cmdlets and provide online resources for further reference.

If you are in the Toronto area, please consider attending this FREE event hosted by the SharePoint community, for the SharePoint community. I’ll be flying into Toronto (my hometown)  from Bermuda (where I now live and work) for this event and am truly looking forward to it! For event details and registration info, visit http://www.torontosharepointcamp.com.

“For businesses, we will launch the 2010 set of products, including Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010 worldwide on May 12.”

Consumers were not left out of this announcement:

“For consumers, Office 2010 will be available online and on retail shelves this June.”

In a widely expected move, similar to the specified time period prior to the Windows 7 release where consumers purchasing Windows Vista could upgrade to Windows 7 at no additional cost, Microsoft announced that:

“Starting [on March 4th], consumers who purchase and activate Office 2007 will be able to download Office 2010 at no additional cost when it becomes available in June 2010.”

For full details of the announcement, please see http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/03/04/get-office-today-or-tomorrow.aspx on the Microsoft Office Engineering Blog.

c.

If you have a minute or two, please read our About Us page to get a quick sense of who we are and what we are all about.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Gregg Smith for agreeing to partner for the production of this blog.  Dispite our very busy consulting schedules in Bermuda,  I know we are both looking forward to this initiative as it is an exciting time to be a part of the SharePoint community. SharePoint is a passion!

We welcome you, our readers, to comment every step of the way so please feel free to let us know what you think.

Cheers,

c.