OWSTIMER process (SharePoint Timer Service) high CPU usage in VMware
I came across an obscure situation earlier this year with a new SharePoint farm that I had just designed and built. It was a fairly straight forward setup comprising of a dedicated SQL 2008 server, 2 x Web Front Ends utilising Windows NLB and 1 x Central Administration server all running Windows 2008 Enterprise R2 in a virtual environment utilising VMware ESX. So after building the SharePoint farm, restoring the Content Databases and Shared Services Provider I thought to myself everything is actually going to plan for once, until…… I restarted one of the web front ends! I had then...
Read MoreHow to setup XP Mode on Windows 7
Windows 7 was just recently released to the General Public and has been in the hands of TechNet and MSDN subscribers for a while before that, and one of the features that I have been utilising lately is “XP Mode” which is a glorified version of Virtual PC as we have known it in previous releases. Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 (not to be confused with Windows Virtual PC 2007) is actually one of two pre-requisites for XP mode with the other being “Hardware-assisted virtualization (HAV)”. HAV are processors with the Intel VT, AMD-V or VIA VT feature which will need to be enabled...
Read MoreVirtualising your SharePoint Environment
To virtualise or not to virtualise? I thought I would provide you with some insight into my SharePoint infrastructure setup and hopefully place some minds at ease when it comes to virtualisation and SharePoint. First and foremost, all of my servers are running in a virtual environment and have been for quite some time. Virtualisation is handled by VMware Infrastructure v3.5 across 3 beefy ESX Hosts running dual Quad Core Xeon processors with 32GB RAM each connected to a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network with 15K Disks. The ESX hosts are also housing other virtual machines outside of the...
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