Here’s a collection of good SharePoint SQL database mirroring links and articles I have found to be useful specifically around the area of failing over MOSS.

• Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog: Configuring Database Mirroring for SharePoint Products & Technologies – contains a link to the useful ‘Using Database Mirroring with Office SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services’ document.
• Ask Core: SharePoint Content DB Mirroring for DPM Administrators – has a very good step by step MOSS DB mirroring, including failover, video.
• SharePoint University: Database mirroring failover script.
• Code Prostitute: Using SQL Alias for failover with Sharepoint (SPS 2007).
• Michael Nemtsev: SharePoint Mirroring.
• Scaling SQL Server with High Availability Alternatives.

Getting Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to play nicely and integrate with SharePoint can prove to be a little tricky. 

There is some information out on the web on how to integrate and configure SSRS with SharePoint though below are links to the best I have found.

WinSmarts – installing and setting up SQL and Reporting Services.

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog – Integrating SSRS with MOSS and WSS.

Mike Walsh – How not to install Reporting Services.

Microsoft’s requirements for running Reporting Services in SharePoint Integrated mode.

By far the best source of information for installing and configuring SSRS with SharePoint I’ve come across is this step by step document generated by Microsoft themselves.

Here is a link to the useful, and free,  SharePoint Portal Server (SPS2003) utility, SPUserUtil.

Keith Richie originally developed this suite of utilities a few years ago whilst working for Microsoft.  Though it is no longer supported by Keith or, as it never was by Microsoft it does contain very comprehensive documentation.

Unfortunately this suite is very difficult to come by these days so below is link to a copy.  As always, use at your own risk.

SPUserUtil.zip

Here are some relevant links to Keith’s old blog which contain some additional information.

SPUserUtil v2.1 Details

Part 0 – Removing Accounts.

Part 1 – Cloning Accounts.

Part 2 – Adding Accounts.

Part 3 – Auditing Accounts.

Part 4 – Replaying Permissions and Moving Webs.

Part 5 – Handling NT Login Name Changes.

Part 6 – Synchronizing Display Names and Email.

Using SPUserUtil to update accounts when the NT Login Name changes.

Also, here is a good blog article on using SPUserUtil by Marcus Hass.

Here are a couple of good links that outline how to move SharePoint Databases to a new drive on the same SQL server:

Technorati Tags: Move,SharePoint,SQL,databases,db,dbs,disk,hard disk

Running SharePoint or WSS with Kerberos authentication can be a tricky thing to get right at the best of times. The following are a number of steps in assisting with diagnosing the cause of any such Kerberos related problems.

1. Check that IIS to configured to handle Kerberos Authentication

Ensure that your ‘web application’ is set to run using Kerberos authentication. To do this open up the SharePoint ‘Central Administration’ tool. Select the ‘Application Management’ tab and then from underneath the ‘Application Security’ heading click ‘Authentication providers’.

Select the ‘Web Application’ you want to check the settings of and then click the relevant zone, ie: ‘Default’. On the right hand side of the window you will see the following options:

Make sure that ‘Enable anonymous access’ is unchecked as Kerberos does not work with anonymous access. ‘Authentication Type’ should be set to ‘Windows’, the ‘Integrated Windows authentication’ box checked and ‘Negotiate (Kerberos) selected.

It pays to double check that these Kerberos authentication settings that were set within the ‘Central Administration’ tool have been flowed through correctly to IIS.

To do this we will use a script called adsutil.vbs. This script is installed by default with IIS 6 and can be found in the \Inetpub\AdminScripts directory. If for some reason you can’t find it here it can be found in the W2K3 source files. The location is i386\IIS6.CAB – the script is inside this CAB. If you are unsure how to extract a CAB an easy option is to use a utility such as WinRar.

Once you are ready to run adsutil.vbs, open a command prompt and enter the in the following:

adsutil.vbsget w3svc/SiteID/root/NTAuthenticationProviders

The ‘SiteID’ is the ID IIS allocates to your virtual directory. The ‘Default’ web site that is configured when you first install IIS is always numbered ’1′. Now you’d think that the next site you create would be number ’2′ and so on. But no, that would be too easy. Now there is probably a good technical reason why unique sequential numbers aren’t used but I don’t know the reason for this.

There are two easy methods of finding a web sites ID. Both are via the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

The first way is by clicking on the ‘Web Sites’ folder and looking at the right hand pane in the ‘Identifier’ column (see below).

The second is by selecting the properties of a particular site, selecting the ‘Web Site’ tab and clicking the ‘Properties’ button at the bottom of the screen. On the next window that opens look at the ‘Log file Name’ at the bottom. You will see a long number containing a mixture of characters and numbers. The numbers after the first set of letters is the ‘SiteId’ (see below).

2. Ensure that the SPN’s and Delegation are set correctly

<TO FOLLOW>

3. Useful Links:

Martin Kearn’s blog article on SharePoint and Kerberos is widely referenced and held as being one of the main sources of information on this subject.

James World has some great tips and outline many of the gotcha’s associated with configuring Kerberos.

A Microsoft article on configuring Kerberos authentication for SharePoint.

Sonoma Partners have a really good article regarding Kerberos. Although it has a very slight slant towards MS CRM the information it contains regarding Kerberos still applies.

Here’s another Microsoft article that this time is about ‘Troubleshooting Kerberos Delegation’.

Tudor’s Weblog has some information on advanced Reporting Services deployment options which includes Kerberos.

Here are a couple of good blog postings that should assist greatly in implementing Kerberos authentication.

This first article by James gives a good overview into how Service Principle Names (SPN’s) operate and some important gotchas. Click Here.

This next article offers a complete step by step process for installing MOSS, and unlike most other articles actually instructs how to implement Kerberos authentication. Click Here.

Another article that gives valuable information regarding enabling Kerberos for SharePoint. Click Here.