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Servers in a SharePoint Server 2013 farm can be allocated to many different roles, like Apps, Front End, Central admin I will discuss here how to disable and enable Web Front End Role (WFE) Below are the steps for removing a server from the Web Front End Role (WFE). Please note these steps assume that you have removed the server from your load balancer and that all services have been migrated to other servers. The normal thing is to use central admin and start or stop the SharePoint foundation web application service through central admin from services in the server link but sometimes this doesn't work properly and the process keeps trying to stop or start The other way is use stsadm although it is old for SharePoint 2013 but it is effective To disable the WFE From command prompt of this server open it as admin and navigate to the SharePoint working folder c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\BIN and then  execute this command stsa...

With the rising of the amazing SharePoint 2013 technology and introducing of a type of Site Collection called Host Named Site Collection (HNSC) which is suitable for models where depending on DNS host names and in multi- tenant environments. I will be collecting some data from several sources and based on my personal experience about host-named site collections. In SharePoint 2013, you can either create path based site collections or host-named site collections. Host-named site collections enable you to assign a unique DNS name to site collections. For example, you can address them as  http://TeamA.domain.com    and  http://TeamB.domain.com    . This enables you to deploy many sites with unique DNS names in the same web application. It also enables hosters to scale an environment to many customers. If you do not use host-named site collections, your SharePoint web application will contain many path-based site collections that share the same ho...

Office Web Apps Server(OWA) provides updated versions of Word Web App, Excel Web App, PowerPoint Web App, and OneNote Web App. Users can view and edit Office documents in SharePoint libraries by using a supported web browser on computers and on many mobile devices, such as Windows Phones, iPhones, iPads, Windows 8 tablets, and Android devices. I will be sharing some notes about installation and deployment of OWA based on personal experience and collection from different sources. To Install OWA  server do the following from PowerShell command: Import-Module Servermanager   Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server, Web-WebServer, Web-Common-Http, Web-Static-Content, Web-App-Dev, Web-Asp-Net, Web-Net-Ext   Add-WindowsFeature Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Includes, Web-Security, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-Filtering, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Mgmt-Console    Install the OWA server and the latest patches To configure OWA with SharePoi...

In environment were exposing the web applications to Internet there is a need to have certificates installed either on SharePoint servers or through load balancer. Once having certificates installed some URLs are not translated as required causing misbehavior for the SharePoint web applications, like when trying to publish InfoPath form that will fail. To resolve that we need to have Alternate Access Mapping Configured. What is Alternate Access Mapping? Alternate access mappings direct users to the correct URLs during their interaction with SharePoint 2013. Alternate access mappings enable SharePoint 2013 to map web requests to the correct web applications and sites, and they enable SharePoint 2013 to serve the correct content back to the user. Each web application can be associated with a collection of mappings between internal and public URLs. The three components of  AAM: The   public URL  is the URL that the clients outside in the world k...

Self-signed certificate  is an  identity certificate  that is signed by the same entity whose identity it certifies. This term has nothing to do with the identity of the person or organization that actually performed the signing procedure. In technical terms a self-signed certificate is one signed with its own  private key . C reate a self-signed certificate for a local computer for one or more of the following reasons: Troubleshooting third-party certificate problems. Managing IIS remotely.  Creating a secure private channel between your server and a limited, known group of users, such as that in a software test environment. Testing features that rely on SSL settings. How to Create Certificate through IIS? Open IIS Manager and then go to Server name and choose IIS Section “ Server Certificat es ”   Click on   Create Self-Signed Certificate  on the Actions pane While going through the wizard you can pick any of ...

Kerberos protocol supports an authentication method that uses tickets that a trusted source provides.   The Kerberos protocol defines how users interact with a network service to gain access to network resources, it provides  a fast and a secure method for users and service accounts on a multi-server farm. It saves users time when moving from one hop to another and removing the need to re authenticate with each hop. In this article I have collected some information about Kerberos from several resources and based on my personal experience The reasons why you should consider Kerberos authentication are as follows: The Kerberos protocol is the strongest Integrated Windows authentication protocol, and supports advanced security features including Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and mutual authentication of clients and servers. The Kerberos protocol allows for delegation of client credentials. Of the available secure authentication methods...

Capacity Management Capacity management is an ongoing process. You need to plan for growth and change, so that your  environment can continue to deliver an effective business solution. What to Monitor Those are the important counters that Microsoft referred to and will depend on when taking decision to scale out/ up. # Counter 1 % Processor Time 2 Disk-Average Disk Queue Length 3 Disk-% Idle Time 4 Disk-% Free Space 5 Memory- Available Mbytes 6 Memory- Cache Faults/Sec 7 Memory- Pages/Sec 8 Paging File % Used 9 Paging File %Used Peak 10 Network Interface Card- Total Bytes/Sec 11 Process(w3wp and  owstimer.exe) -Working Set 12 Process(w3wp and  owstimer.exe) -%Processor Time 13 Application Pool Recycles 14 ASP.net- Requests Queued 15 Request Wait Time 16 Request Rejected How to Monitor: There are several ways for monitoring including free option and commercia...