SharePoint Logging & Debugging: The Troubleshooter’s Best Friend

Jason Himmelstein jhimmelstein@sentri.com @sharepointlhorn

Jason’s contact & vitals Microsoft vTSP

virtual Technology Solutions Professional SharePoint Foundation Logger

http://spflogger.codeplex.com Web: www.sentri.com Blog: www.sharepointlonghorn.com Twitter: @sharepointlhorn LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhimmelstein

Author of Developing Business Intelligence Apps for SharePoint http://bit.ly/SharePointBI

So many people see the beauty…

…but never get the full experience

SharePoint Logging – a history

How has SharePoint traditionally done logging

IIS Logs

ULS Logs

Upgrade Logs

PSConfig Logs

SharePoint Logging – new & improved!

New Functionality in SharePoint 2010

Correlation IDs

Flood Protection

Developer Dashboard

Configurable ULS Logs

Usage Logging (Web Analytics)

Lets look at the big picture

Configurable ULS Logs

Size limitation Easy Granular tuning, with visibility

into what’s tuned Ability to specify number of days to

log

Flood Protection

I’m smart, why don’t I want to see

everything?

How does Flood Protection work?

How do I turn it off and on?With this option enabled, if the same event fires 5 times within 2 minutes, SharePoint will suppress the event from logging and throw a summary event at the 2 minute mark.

The default behavior and can be customized using PowerShell and the Set-SPDiagnosticConfig cmdlet.

How deep do you really want to go?

Flood Protection (cont’d)• How do I turn it off and on?

Health Data Collection Health Logging timer jobs are disabled by default

Be selective in what you want to enable

How to enable: Central Admin | /_admin/ServiceJobDefinitions.aspx

Filter by Disabled and enable one by one Powershell commandlet: SPDiagnosticProvider Enable all Health Data Collection option in

Central Admin | /_admin/LogUsage.aspx

Usage Logging

The drivers behind Web Analytics

True detail on who clicked what, and

what they saw

Finding the root cause

Correlation IDs What is this weird 32 character message and

why do I care?

How are they used in SharePoint 2010?

Why are they useful?

The Developer Dashboard How do I turn it on for a limited scope only?

There’s some great info here for developers, but what

does it tell me from an Operations/Support perspective?

How can I convince my development team to code for it?

SPMonitored Scope Not available in Sandboxed Solutions

The Developer Dashboard (cont’d) Enabling the dashboard

3 modes Off On OnDemand (recommended)

STSADM stsadm -o setproperty -pn developer-dashboard -pv [off | on |

ondemand] PowerShell

$j = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService.DeveloperDashboardSettings; $j.DisplayLevel = ; $j.Update()

$j = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService.DeveloperDashboardSettings; $j.DisplayLevel = 'OnDemand'; $j.Update()

Optional parameters

$j.TraceEnabled = $true;$j.RequiredPermissions = '%MaskSetting%';

The Developer Dashboard (cont’d)

The Developer Dashboard (cont’d)

Angry SharePoint!

The Developer Dashboard (cont’d)

Happy SharePoint!

SPMonitoredScope

The SPMonitoredScope class resides in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities namespace. Example of wrapped code:

A tip for the best and most effective use of SPMonitoredScope: All calls to external components, such as custom databases, external Web services,

and so on, should be wrapped with SPMonitoredScope. This will make it easier for administrators to identify them as points of failure, and to isolate the problem quickly. Sandbox Solutions are not able to be wrapped in SPMonitoredScope

Measured statistics are written to the ULS logs as well as to the Developer Dashboard.

There are a few limitations for using SPMonitoredScope. Only calls to SharePoint databases are captured. Only the code wrapped with SPMonitoredScope that resides on the front-end Web

server appears on the Developer Dashboard. Code that executes on application servers only displays the SPMonitoredScope information in the ULS logs of the computer that the code is running on.

Create custom monitors by adding ISPScopedPerformanceMonitor to the current SPMonitoredScope

demo Configurable ULS Logs

Flood Protection

Developer Dashboard

DEMO

Web Analytics In Central Admin

Administrative Report Library – Search Admin Reports Health Reports -Slowest Pages & Top Active Users Break down by Web Application Traffic, Search Inventory

Configurable ULS Logs

One Database to rule them all: The Logging database

What can it log? How do I tell it to start logging? How do I get the information out? Are there tools out there to help me

see the data more easily? BDC models SQL Views CodePlex Projects

Are there performance implications?

NTEventLog in SPFLogger

NTEvent Analytics in SPFLogger

ULSTraceView in SPFLogger

TimerJob Log in SPFLogger

TimerJob Analytics in SPFLogger

…and now its time for…

SharePoint Server Performance

Governance & Troubleshooting Determine tolerance for custom solutions

Encourage Sandbox Solutions Require SPDisposeCheck Require SPMonitored Scope If you don’t have a Dev/QA Environment, you don’t

have a Production Environment Never test patches in Production Educate on the Developer Dashboard

SharePoint Server Performance

Governance & Troubleshooting Never accept a solution that is not a

WSP Respect your users, or you won’t have

any Limit the number of Farm Admins Minimize Server Sprawl Audit your environment regularly Survey your users regularly Engage your Executive Sponsorship

Handy Reference Information Useful Stuff

Jason’s info http://www.sharepointlonghorn.com jase@sharepointlonghorn.com @sharepointlhorn

Todd Carter’s info @toddca http://www.todd-carter.com/

Russ Maxwell’s Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/russmax

Microsoft References SPMonitoredScope Class

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.utilities.spmonitoredscope(office.14).aspx

Using SPMonitoredScope Class http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512758.aspx

Download links http://spflogger.codeplex.com Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit v2.0

Did you really take these pictures?

Jason’s contact & vitals Microsoft vTSP

virtual Technology Solutions Professional SharePoint Foundation Logger

http://spflogger.codeplex.com Web: www.sentri.com Blog: www.sharepointlonghorn.com Twitter: @sharepointlhorn LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhimmelstein

Author of Developing Business Intelligence Apps for SharePoint http://bit.ly/SharePointBI