No good deed goes unpunished.  Just as I completed significant platform upgrades of my dev and classroom environments, Microsoft announces the release of availability of the next service pack for the Office system, including the SharePoint platform.  It looks like I’ll be doing another BIG update soon.  As for the new environment, I’ll wait another 10 days to begin the implementation, so as to take advantage of the new enhancements in Office and SharePoint 2007.

SharePoint 2007 (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007) SP2 is due to ship April 28th (just 10 days from now)!  The announcement was made on the official SharePoint Team blog on Wednesday.  There are some cool new functionality being released with this service pack.  Also, as Joel Oleson pointed out, kudos should be directed to the update teams for sharing the information early, rather than the typical surprise tactic we get with service packs.

Key items found on the Office Sustained Engineering team blog on the SharePoint 2007 SP2 release:

• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

  • The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.

  • A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

• Excel Services

• SP2 makes it easier to configure Excel Web Access Web Parts on new sites.

• Several rendering, calculation, and security issues have been resolved.

• Some display issues have been addressed.

• Improved compatibility with Mozilla Firefox browsers.

• Forms Server

  • Memory requirements and the page load times for large browser-rendered forms have been reduced.

  • Browser rendering of various controls, such as the 'cannot be blank' asterisk and the rich text field has been improved.

• Search Server

• Improvements to the reliability and stability of very large corpus crawls.

• Backup-restore has been improved.

• A new command has been introduced to the stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint Administrator to tune the Query processor multiplier parameter.

• Improved accuracy in searches involving numbers.

• Service Pack 2 adds the ability to open, edit and save documents in version 1.1 of the OpenDocument Format for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These applications now let users save, open, and edit files as OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp).

• The 2007 Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 is the first service pack to support uninstall of client updates through the Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite as well as via Windows Installer command line. The Service Pack Uninstall Tool will be available as a separate download.

• The Microsoft Save As PDF or XPS add-in has been built into Office applications in SP2. Users no longer have to download and install the add-in separately.

There are also enhancements to Groove and Project Server, as well.

However, as Joel pointed out, at least we are prepared for the service pack thanks to great documentation from the team.

As of this past Tuesday, the release name of SharePoint vNext or “14”, as it was referred to by codename and/or the Office version it would be associated with, was officially unveiled to be SharePoint 2010.  Officially, it was released with an interview with Chris Capossela, Senior VP of Microsoft’s Information Worker (IW) Product Management.  It not only talked about Office and SharePoint, bur also introduced the new Exchange 2010 Beta release that day.  Exchange 2010 is expected to launch later this year, leading the 2010 platform wave.  The entire interview with Chris can be found here.  Of course the announcement to the SharePoint world was done on the official SharePoint team blog by none other than Tom Rizzo, Senior Director of SharePoint.

Oh, and if you’ve gotten used to MOSS as an acronym, I’m sorry.  It’s gone like the Dodo bird (or the previous “SPS” acronym).  As of now, there is no naming change for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).  However, the server product will be called Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (No Office in the name, folks.).  Since the MSS acronym is already taken by the Search Server products, we’ve been asked by the Product Group to simply refer to SharePoint as SharePoint.  [Note: What?!? No acronym?!? Will wonders ever cease?]

Office, as a brand, will encompass not only the client applications, but also the Office Web Applications and Office Mobile applications and platforms.  Pay close attention on the Office Web App front, as it will be a platform changer, in my opinion.

(Is it bad that I get a giddy feeling of excitement about the next version of the SharePoint platform?  My wife says it is the ‘geek’ in me coming out.)

Well, it’s been over a year since the last posting of this blog.  Why am I now coming back?  It could be my conscience, my wife bugging me about my lack of posts, or the fact that I have 6.5 blog post drafts sitting uncompleted, or the numerous requests from partners, Microsoft friends, clients and seminar/class attendees to post to my blog.  When @TweetSharePoint retweets friends tweeting about believing a blog post when they see it [enough Twitter references there?], it’s THAT time.  So, where to begin when you’ve been away for over a year?

It’s time to revisit my SharePoint Development Environment, the base of which I use for the classes, seminars, and presentations I create and present.  It’s also a handy base for Proof of Concepts (POCs) for consulting clients.  As always, the basis for creating something new is a plan.  Where is it we want to go or be (Point B)?  Where is it we are now(Point A)?  And, then, what is the best way to get from Point A to Point B?

Today, my SharePoint environment consists of the following:

My plan is to update all servers with the latest released software.  I want to be clear, the new environment is a base environment.  My plans are to use a clone of the new environment for testing new beta releases (e.g. VSeWSS 1.3 Feb 2009 CTP).  So, the plans are almost the same.  Below are the specs for the new environment, with changes in bold:

As you can see, the lowest levels of the platform (OS and DB) are changing.  So, I’ll be redoing all three servers.  My client can stay the same, but will have to migrate from the old domain.

To accomplish the new server builds, I’m going to start with a new sysprep image of a Windows Server 2008 Enterprise without Hyper-V.  Unlike in previous versions of Windows Server, the sysprep.exe utility is now included in the OS.  It is located at C:\Windows\system32\sysprep\ directory.  You can execute it from the command line there.  [Remember, by default, UAC is enabled in Windows Server 2008, so run the Command Prompt as Administrator.]  You’ll want to use the OOBE option and have the Generalize option selected (to reset the SID).  Finally, if like me, you are creating virtual images, you’ll want to select the Shutdown option, so you can save the sysprep image for reuse on other images.  An important note, activate the image prior to using sysprep and make sure all updates are downloaded and applied.  Only activated images can access the optional updates, and there will be several you’ll want to have (e.g. Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1, etc.).

On the next post, we’ll create the new domain controller and add a third-party mail server, since MS, in their infinite wisdom, decided to drop the POP3 service from the Windows Server.  We’ll obviously be using something else…

To be continued…