MOSS Pre-Installation Health Check

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I don’t know why I haven’t blogged on this before, but I think its of great value to those who install and configure SharePoint.

Yesterday @MossLover tweeted that the audit policy settings on a server had caused the installation of MOSS to fail during PSCONFIG.  I can totally understand where and why this happens.  Sometimes there are settings on servers that won’t cause MOSS to fail until after certain components are installed and configured.  This is why I recommend doing a “Health Check” or “Infrastructure Review” *before* installing MOSS to ensure your installation and configuration (and subsequent operations) goes smoothly. 

An “Infrastructure Review” would typically be something that I do PRIOR to deploying MOSS.  A “Health Check” would be something that I do AFTER MOSS is deployed.

I use a number of different tools to do my health checks. @JThake asked me what tools I use.

The following are the list of tools I use.

Physical Architecture and Network Infrastructure

MPSReports

Particularly the DCDIAG, DNSDIAG pieces are *very* helpful.  If you download the report tool, make sure you get the following editions:

  • Directory Services Edition (Mpsrpt_dirsvc.exe): An edition that captures information that is relevant to Directory Services issues
  • Network Edition (Mpsrpt_network.exe): An edition that captures information that is relevant to networking issues
  • SQL Edition (Mpsrpt_sql.exe): An edition that captures information that is relevant to SQL.

MAP

Both these tools (MPSReports and MAP) will look at the physical architecture and give you reports on its structure and design.

SPSReports

If MOSS is already deployed, SPSReports can give you a good look into the health of their SharePoint infrastructure

Capacity Planning

Using the Capacity Planning tool, I create a report using the hardware, network connectivity, and portal usage the customer currently uses.  It will tell me where bottlenecks may exist.

Perfmon is a great tool to discover how the actual server is handling any load.  Doing a Perfmon baseline will also help in determining future growth and utilization.

The tools run very quickly, its the analysis of the data you get from these tools that is time consuming.  But if you know what you are looking for, you should be OK.