Resources: Building a Private Cloud for SharePoint 2010

In short; a private cloud is an on-premise, virtualized farm that can automatically grow to cater for your needs. The key here is automated. Simply creating an over-sized static farm and allowing applications to run here is not the same thing; that’s traditional hosting.

In addition, a hybrid cloud is where the private cloud also uses public cloud services, such as Office 365,

Private cloud architectures are becoming popular and a large amount of good resources are out there for you right now. Why not take a look?

Private Cloud For the Technical Decision Maker

Microsoft has published an excellent overview of the different types of cloud service models and their impact on investment, governance, level of control and the challenges a business might face.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/cloud/hh147296.aspx

MOF Infrastructure and Planning Design Guide

Microsoft has release a whitepaper guide on how to use the Microsoft Operations Framework for service management of a private cloud. Available now after registration on the Microsoft Connect site.

https://connect.microsoft.com/site14/Downloads

Optimizing SQL Server for Private Cloud

SQL Server 2012 codename “Denali” contains many service-optimizations for cloud services. Microsoft has released a poster and a guidance on how to optimize SQL server resources for a private cloud deployment.

Full article: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/cloud-computing/private-cloud.aspx

Video: How to Build a Private Cloud

Chris Henley discusses “the emergence of a private cloud as the logical next step in virtualization and the amazing benefits that you can get by automating IT services in your organization”.

Video: http://blogs.technet.com/b/chenley/archive/2011/08/15/how-to-build-a-private-cloud-part1.aspx

Deploying Cloud-Based Solutions

Finally, Phil Wiklund has released a book on cloud deployments for SharePoint. I found out about the book while attending Phil’s session at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Anaheim (read my recap of the session). The book is very well written and I recommend it to anyone in the process of planning or deploying cloud solutions.

Deploying Cloud-Based Solutions, available from O’Reilly

Converting C# to PowerShell

I found a great tip from Paulo Morgado around generating PowerShell from C# code.

.NET Reflector has an array of add-ons on CodePlex, and one of these is the PowerShell add-on that allows you to disassemble code directly into PowerShell.

In this example, I am opening the method ChangeAccountPassword from the SPUtility library in SharePoint:

I can now change targets from C# to PowerShell.

When you need to convert helper methods from C# to PowerShell or if you’re new to PowerShell syntax, this tool is really helpful!

SharePoint Conference 2011

This year’s conference was great and provided everything; sunny weather, interesting speakers, great parties, cool swag giveaways from the exhibitors and most of all a great amount of information.

It is a humbling feeling to look back over the crowd during the opening keynote and not being able to see the end of the room for the 7500 or so attendees. Even more so when considering the million people strong SharePoint community that is out there today!

During the event, I did some guest blogging on SharePointEduTech which is hosted by Dave Coleman. I wrote a few pieces around the sessions that I enjoyed the most.

SPC223: Deploying SharePoint 2010 in Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud Architectures

The conference sessions has had a few ups-n-downs but there has been a couple that really stood out. Phil Wicklund’s session on Cloud deployment options for SharePoint however was excellent. I had prepared for the conference with a sheet of questions, most of which was targeted to this session, and all of them were covered off the bat in the actual session.

Read more…

SPC102: Drive Adoption and Get Users Excited About SharePoint

This was the first session I attended at the conference and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I had been registering for some pretty heavy technical sessions and this was not it. It was however one of the most useful ones that I can take home with me and use in my everyday projects.

Read more…

SPC373: Performance Tuning SharePoint 2010

Eric Shupps, the “SharePoint Cowboy”, held an intense session focusing on performance tuning SharePoint 2010. It was filled with live demos and Eric’s usual high energy. It also contained a great amount of helpful tips and tricks for improving performance on your farm installation.

Read more…