{"id":292,"date":"2008-07-17T13:03:19","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T13:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parkesy.wordpress.com\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/"},"modified":"2008-07-17T13:03:19","modified_gmt":"2008-07-17T13:03:19","slug":"lucky-lucky-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucky Lucky Boy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I was supposed to be spending the day thinking about SharePoint at an event Combined Knowledge were running (Vijay posted the details here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

I did spend the day thinking about SharePoint but for different reasons<\/p>\n

First a little bit of background<\/p>\n

We run two SharePoint sites internally that pretty much run our business<\/p>\n

There is the SBS \u201ccompanyweb\u201d SharePoint site (WSS v2) \u2013 we\u2019ve been using this from the beginning and we have a ton of information in here. Contract details, company calendar, contacts, customer network information, etc (you get the picture) <\/p>\n

Not that long ago I did the side-by-side install to get WSS v3 up and running <\/p>\n

(David Schrag has an excellent post on this<\/a> and there is also the official white paper on the SBS blog<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The idea long term is to move everything over to the WSS v3 site but we\u2019re doing it a bit at a time with the main function of that site currently being our helpdesk system<\/p>\n

So back to the story!<\/p>\n

I\u2019d blogged a couple<\/a> of times about<\/a> problems I was having with emails and workflows so when I saw the details of an \u201cinfrastructure update\u201d on the Microsoft download site<\/a> I thought this may be the answer I’d been looking for<\/p>\n

So I eagerly downloaded the update and this is where I made a fatal error<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll hold my hands up and say recently I haven\u2019t been treating our internal systems with the same attention we would one of clients systems. We keep drumming into our clients that their systems run their business and why you need to look after them properly so I\u2019m really disappointed in myself<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So I installed the update and it failed<\/p>\n

The \u201cfriendly error message\u201d message was MOST unhelpful.<\/p>\n

\u201cConfiguration of SharePoint Products and Technologies failed\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I was then informed that nothing would be rolled back and that I should correct the problem and re-run the update<\/p>\n

This is where I first failed. Instead of taking my time and trying to figure out what the problem was I did a couple of searches and found solutions that seemed<\/em> to fit some error messages I found in the logs and tried those<\/p>\n

It made it even worse. I couldn\u2019t get to the WSS v3 site or the v2 site (I still don\u2019t understand why that was the case)<\/p>\n

So at this point you\u2019d think. Ok go back to the backup you took before you started.<\/p>\n

Second failure. I\u2019d just jumped in at the deep end on this one. Very careless of me<\/p>\n

However, the overnight backup had taken a full copy of the v2 site so it wasn\u2019t too long before I was able to get that up and running <\/p>\n

My main panic was over as so much data was in there. Since a lot of the WSS v3 stuff is still work in progress most of the data was available somewhere else. If the worst came to the worst I\u2019d have to start over and build it from scratch<\/p>\n

Then I realised my next failing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been getting some notifications from the backups recently telling me \u201cbackup completed with exceptions\u201d \u2013 basically it couldn\u2019t backup some files so just skipped over them<\/p>\n

I\u2019d had a quick look and added it to my \u201cto-do\u201d list.<\/p>\n

This is when I wished I\u2019d treated the problem the same as I would a clients system and given it immediate attention. The files it skipped just happened to be the WSS v3 SQL database files\u2026..argh!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This was when I got lucky. Before I\u2019d started the update I had SharePoint designer open as I\u2019d been working on some workflows and even though I wasn\u2019t expecting anything to go wrong I took a backup from here \u2013 just in case<\/p>\n

The difference between this and the WSS v2 site though was that it didn\u2019t matter that the site was down. The restore fixed that!<\/p>\n

To restore my SharePoint designer backup I needed a working SharePoint site!<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019d been so careless up till now I decided to get back to doing things right<\/p>\n

I fired up a virtual machine and configured a SharePoint installation from scratch<\/u>, then connected to it using SharePoint designer and verified my backup would restore ok<\/p>\n

Once I was happy with this it was just a matter of removing SharePoint and reloading it back onto the SBS where I was then able to create a blank site and restore my backup file<\/p>\n

It may sound so simple but it took up the whole of my day and I did my final restore at 1am<\/p>\n

My workflows are now broken and all the alerts have gone but it could have been a lot worse<\/p>\n

So another lesson learnt. I\u2019ve added our internal systems onto our help desk system so it will now be treated in the same way as any other system we look after. I won\u2019t jump in head first \u201cjust because it\u2019s our system\u201d and treat it no differently to any other server we look after<\/p>\n

The next question I asked myself is why I did I get into this situation? <\/p>\n

Impatience I guess.Things have been very busy lately and there were a ton of other things I wanted to get on with instead of testing a patch in a controlled environment to then put it on our own server. My attitude to the running of our own network was very wrong<\/strong> here<\/p>\n

As with any mistakes I make I\u2019ve certainly learnt from this one<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I was a bit dubious about posting this but I\u2019m treating it as my punishment (even though I feel like I\u2019ve been punished twice as I missed the SharePoint event as well! :-)  )  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I was supposed to be spending the day thinking about SharePoint at an event Combined Knowledge were running (Vijay posted the details here) I did spend the day thinking about SharePoint but for different reasons First a little bit of background We run two SharePoint sites internally that pretty much run our business There<\/p>\n

<\/span>Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sharepoint"],"yoast_head":"\nLucky Lucky Boy! - Andy's Techie Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lucky Lucky Boy! - Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday I was supposed to be spending the day thinking about SharePoint at an event Combined Knowledge were running (Vijay posted the details here) I did spend the day thinking about SharePoint but for different reasons First a little bit of background We run two SharePoint sites internally that pretty much run our business ThereRead More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-17T13:03:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andy Parkes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andy Parkes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/\",\"name\":\"Lucky Lucky Boy! - Andy's Techie Blog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2008-07-17T13:03:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2008-07-17T13:03:19+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3534e8ac6b1bec765cd061feff56679d\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/07\/17\/lucky-lucky-boy\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Lucky Lucky Boy!\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Andy's Techie Blog\",\"description\":\"Professional Geek\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3534e8ac6b1bec765cd061feff56679d\",\"name\":\"Andy Parkes\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3824cbf53df51d7ca5cf809b6ad81a157fbfff2292e36ab8666f04ddad06bfcc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3824cbf53df51d7ca5cf809b6ad81a157fbfff2292e36ab8666f04ddad06bfcc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Andy Parkes\"},\"description\":\"Andy Parkes is Technical Director at Coventry based IT support company IBIT Solutions. 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