Due to too many timeout issues and errors, I have to change this site from Windows IIS to Ubuntu LAMP.

PHP on Windows is really painful.

Hi all.

 

Why applying ".Where(condition).FirstOrDefault()" is much faster than ".FirstOrDefault(condition) when it's applied on an array?

 

Answer: While calling method Where() on an Array or a List, it's optimized to use the enumerator of the source directly. But FirstOrDefault(), which doesn't have this mechanism, runs the virtual method version from IEnumerator.GetEnumerator().

Special thanks to Iris Sakura.

These updates really suck.

 

I've managed to install these updates last time by re-install OS and SharePoint on failed servers. After that, some colleague request to install a language pack. It still works at that time.

 

Today, these 4 updates are visible again on Windows Update. They all can be update successfully. But when I run the wizard, it shows

.

 

In CA, I see

 

It's ok on some servers but failed on others. The patch of language pack may be not included. When I try to run that updates manually, it says it cannot applied again.

It can be fixed by removing the language pack and rerun wizard on all servers.

 

Do Microsoft have a test division and process for release management?

 

Special thanks to Iris Sakura.

 

Problem: If you remove one SharePoint server from Central Administration site, some information will be left in farm database. While adding a server with the same name back to farm, the Distributed Cache service may not able to start.

Fix: On the new installed server

1. Open C:\Program Files\AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server\DistributedCacheService.exe.config with a notepad or other text editor with administrator permission.
2. Nav to configuration - dataCacheConfig - clusterConfig, remember the provider and connectionString.
3. Start PowerShell.
4. Run Add-CacheHost -ProviderType xxx -ConnectionString yyy
   xxx is the provider gotten from step 2 and yyy is connectionString.
5. Run Unregister-CacheHost
6. Run Remove-CacheHost

You are ready to re-run the Add-SPDistributedCacheServiceInstance now.

There is a big farm of SharePoint Server 2013 in my company. Most of these servers are prepared with SharePoint 2013 and upgraded to Service Pack 1. Some new servers are prepared with SharePoint 2013 with Service Pack 1 directly. Project Server are installed in all servers.

From WSUS, Microsoft pushed July 2014 update for SharePoint 2013 this month, which includes KB2881077, KB 2863837, KB2863826 and KB2881003.

The problem is these can be applied on all servers come with SharePoint 2013 with Service Pack 1 but failed to be done on all servers which were upgraded to Service Pack 1. Patch files are trying to uninstall Service Pack 1 on those servers but Service Pack 1 is marked not able to be removed.

 

The way to fix is:

1. Remove all servers which were upgraded to Service Pack 1 separately from Central Administration site. You cannot do that by wizard -- it won't let you do that due to patch incomplete.
2. Reinstall the whole operation system to that servers removed from step 1.
3. Install SharePoint 2013 with Service Pack 1 and all other related tools to those servers.
4. Upgrade all servers to July 2014 update.
5. Run wizard on all servers.
6. Add those servers back to farm.
7. You may need to fix the distributed cache problem by following this guide from Microsoft. If you get the error "Host Already Presented", you may want to have a look at this post.

 

WTF Microsoft!

When you need to move the SQL Server instance to another server, you can use SQL Alias to get avoid of changing connection string for softwares which use this database.

All you need is setting up SQL Alias on the computers running your softwares. Nothing need to be done with the SQL Server if it's installed other than the computers running applications.

The tool for setting up SQL Alias is included with Windows. You just need to run cliconfg.exe to set. Be careful the typing -- it's not config.

If your Windows is x64 based, you may need to choose the right version of that tool. The x64 version is C:\Windows\system32\cliconfg.exe and the x86 version can be located as C:\Windows\syswow64\cliconfg.exe. If you don't know which is the right one, set up both of them.

I've just change this site from VM based Windows Azure into a Web site based mode to mitigate the jobs for maintenance.

It still slow and not stable as predictable.

Azure service is really not good, especially for PHP+MySQL.