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The below blog of Eric Ligman "Microsoft Senior Sales Excellence Manager" contains more than 1 million free e-books, Step-By-Steps, Resource Guides, etc., .

It contains a lot of formats: PDF, DOC, epub, mobi.

Reference: Microsoft Free E-books

Remote BLOB Store [RBS] with SharePoint 2010

Remote BLOB Storage with SharePoint 2010

With Sharepoint 2010, the Remote Blob Storage (RBS) functionality, which allows putting documents into the database filesystem instead of the database itself, came into focus again. To make that happen each content database is located in a specific section of the file system where all the documents are stored. This documents are none the less managed by Sharepoint, a database is mandatory even if the documents are stored as BLOB because metadata is written exclusively into databases.

1   What is RBS

RBS is a library API set that is incorporated as an add-on feature pack for Microsoft SQL Server.  It can be run on the local server running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 Express. To run RBS on a remote server, you must be running SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise edition. RBS is not supported for Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

Binary large objects (BLOBs) are data elements that have either of the following characteristics:

·        Unstructured data that has no schema (such as a piece of encrypted data).

·        A large amount of binary data (many megabytes or gigabytes) that has a very simple schema, such as image files, streaming video, or sound clips.

RBS uses a provider to connect to any dedicated BLOB store that uses the RBS APIs. Storage solution vendors can implement providers that work with RBS APIs. SharePoint Server 2010 supports a BLOB storage implementation that accesses BLOB data by using the RBS APIs through such a provider. You can implement RBS for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products by using a supported provider that you obtain from a third-party vendor. Most third-party providers store BLOBs remotely.

In addition to third-party providers, you can use the RBS FILESTREAM provider that is available through the SQL Server Remote BLOB Store installation package from the Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. The RBS FILESTREAM provider uses the SQL Server FILESTREAM feature to store BLOBs in an additional resource that is attached to the same database and stored locally on the server. The FILESTREAM feature manages BLOBs in a SQL database by using the underlying NTFS file system.

The location that an RBS provider stores the BLOB data depends on the provider that you use. In the case of the SQL FILESTREAM provider, the data is not stored in the MDF file, but in another file that is associated with the database.

Automated Backup & maintenance plan for databases

Automated Backup & maintenance plan for databases

Sometimes a transaction log file contains unused space that you will not need; you can reclaim the excess space by reducing the size of the transaction log. This process is known as shrinking the log file. 

Shrinking can occur only while the database is online and, also, while at least one virtual log file is free. Shrinking the transaction log reduces its physical size by removing one or more inactive virtual log files. The unit of the size reduction is always the virtual log file.

Typically it is the log file that appears not to shrink. This is usually the result of a log file that has not been truncated. You can truncate the log by setting the database recovery model to SIMPLE.

The backup plan contains several steps in order to reduce the log size and create full backup. Briefly, it will be as follows:

• Change database recovery model to Simple.
• Shrink database’s log file.
• Change database recovery model back to full.
• Take full backup of the database.

Installing Exchange 2010 Prerequisites on Server 2008 R2 using PowerShell

You can install Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system prerequisites of Exchange 2010 using xml scripts found in  scripts catalogue on the Exchange media as following:

• Open PowerShell
• Navigate to your Exchange media “for example: D drive”

• Navigate to Scripts folder on Exchange media

 set-location “d:\Scripts”

• Execute the following script [this will install all prerequisites for all roles]

ServerManagerCMD –IP Exchange-all.xml 

• If any of the required prerequisites is already installed, it will be skipped.

Check SQL port for a named instance

When creating a name instance (beside the default one), the sql port is dynamically configured.
You need to change this dynamic port to a fixed one.

How to change SQL DB collation after setup

In some cases, you may need to change the DB collation (rebuild the DB) after setup (in my case I was installing SP 2010 and I choose a wrong collation, it needs an instance that performs case-insensitive & non-binary comparisons).