SharePoint 2013 – Basic questions and answers (help to prepare interviews, respective certifications and migration)

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Greetings for the day 🙂 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 🙂

On every weekend we are starting sharing basic question and answers (may help to prepare interview , certifications, migration, help to understand basic concepts…) related to Microsoft cloud technologies (Azure, Azure AD, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Teams, Power Platform and so on).

In this article I’ll share some questions related to SharePoint 2013 (since currently working on SharePoint on-premises migration project).

In last article we shared – Azure AD – Basic questions and answers (help to prepare interviews and respective certifications) – please have a look once, very important for each and every cloud developer 🙂

So lets begin today’s show 🙂

Options available for SharePoint 2013 installation

• single server with built-in database installations
• single-server with farm installations
• multiple-server with farm installations

Concept – Stretched farm

• Stretched farm is distributed farm topology in SharePoint
• Some organizations have multiple data centers, those are located in close proximity to one another and are connected by high-bandwidth fiber optic links
• In this environment it is possible to configure the two data centers as a single farm. This distributed farm topology is called a stretched farm

Prerequisites for SharePoint 2013 stretched farm to support high-availability

• Highly consistent intra-farm latency of <1ms one way, 99.9% of the time over a period of ten minutes. (Intra-farm latency is commonly defined as the latency between the front-end web servers and the database servers.)
• The bandwidth speed must be at least 1 gigabit per second.

SQL server requirement for SharePoint 2013 installation

• Minimum requirement for DB server in farm
  • One of the following:
    • The 64-bit edition of SQL Server 2014 (requires May 2014 cumulative update for SharePoint Server 2013).
    • The 64-bit edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2012.
    • The 64-bit edition of SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26727

Server OS requirement for SharePoint 2013 installation

• Minimum requirements for front-end web servers and application servers in a farm:
  • One of the following:
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter
    • Windows Server 2012 Standard or Datacenter
    • Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard or Datacenter
  • Windows Server 2016 or higher is not supported
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 is only supported on a SharePoint Server 2013 Service Pack 1 environment

Which prerequisites are installed by Microsoft SharePoint Product Preparation tool

• Web Server (IIS) role
• Application Server role
• Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.5
• SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Native Client
• Microsoft WCF Data Services 5.0
• Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client (MSIPC)
• Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64)
• Windows Management Framework 3.0 which includes Microsoft PowerShell 3.0
• Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) 1.0 and Microsoft Identity Extensions (previously named WIF 1.1)
• Windows Server AppFabric
• Cumulative Update Package 1 for Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server (KB 2671763)

High level steps while migrating SP 2010 to SP 2013

• Create and configure a SharePoint 2013 farm
• Copy the content and service application databases from the SharePoint 2010 Products farm, and then attach and upgrade the databases.  – This upgrades the data to the new version
• Upgrade the Site Collections

What are “orphaned” site collections

• In SharePoint, a site map contains site collections that are browsable and registered
• Site collections that are not registered in the site map are referred to as “orphaned” site collections
• Generally if we attach content db having site collection to web application which already contain a site-collection with the same URL available in content DB. Then respective site collection becomes orphaned
• Basically URL of both the site collections are same
• In this case the first site collection registered is accessible. All other site collections with same URL are orphaned and not accessible
• To access orphaned site collections we need to deattach the content db from the web application which contain same URL and attach to web application which dont have site collection with same URL

How to identify the orphaned site collections available in the DB

• We can identify orphan site collections by executing following Power shell script

stsadm -o enumallwebs -databasename DS_Database

The above command results

<Sites Count="2">
  <Site Id="e2a114b8-80c9-41f6-87bf-3feddf2ad9b6" OwnerLogin="Domain\username" InSiteMap="False"> 
    <Webs Count="1">
      <Web Id="064d8e7b-b349-4693-bd67-dcefed3bf466" Url="/sites/site_name" LanguageId="1033" TemplateName="STS#0" TemplateId="1" />
    </Webs>
  </Site>
  <Site Id="a550224b9-79d9-32f6-87bf-4geddf2ad9b6" OwnerLogin="Domain\username" InSiteMap="True" HostHeader="www.knoweldgejunction.com">
    <Webs Count="1">
      <Web Id="12348e7b-c456-4693-bd67-efdegd3bf466" Url="/" LanguageId="1033" TemplateName="STS#0" TemplateId="1" />
    </Webs>
  </Site>
</Sites>

In above xml we have “InSiteMap” attribute to “Site” element, if value of “InSiteMap” attribute is False then the respective site is orphan

How to delete “Orphaned” site collections

• We can delete orphan sites by using DeleteWeb power-shell command
• We need to use the “force” and “webid” parameter/attributes to DeleteWeb power-shell command to delete orphan site
• The “force” and “webid” parameters, which are used to delete orphaned site collections, were first introduced in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Service Pack 2 (SP2).
• Example :

stsadm -o deleteweb -force -webid 064d8e7b-b349-4693-bd67-dcefed3bf466 -databaseserver DS1 -databasename DB1

If you have any preference on type of questions for SharePoint 2013 or you have some questions with your experience kindly please share in comment box. We will incorporate in our list.

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