I have been working on my CodePlex Projects lately and they have all released a new version in the past 2 weeks so I wanted to do a Summary for what’s new! They are not huge projects such as AutoSPInstaller, or SharePoint Manager, but if it helps anyone out there, I am happy!

SharePoint 2013 Service Accounts Creator

This project consists of a PowerShell script, some XML input files, which together provide a fully automated creation of the Service Accounts required for SharePoint Server 2013. Basically, there are 4 sets of Service Accounts pre-created in XML files. Three of them are the SharePoint 2013 Service Accounts that I suggest in this post “SharePoint 2013 Service Accounts Best Practices Explained” that has over 15 000 views now! The fourth set is the set of Service Accounts currently in the AutoSPInstallerinput.xml file, which will allow you to configure it faster for a Development VM! You also have the option to put the SharePoint and SQL service accounts in a New, Existing or Different OU! Here is what’s new in the latest version of the project:

Fixes

• Fix the password validation function being case insensitive.
• Fix the input.xml files to have consistent capitalization.
• Put all the XML files in a XML subfolder to make it look cleaner.

  New Features
  

• Added a “AutoSPInstaller” SharePoint accounts level to include all the AutoSPInstaller accounts with the same usernames as the ones by default in the autospinstallerinput.xml.
• Added the option to put the SQL Service accounts in a separate custom OU.

Changes

• The switch “CustomOu” is now named “SPOU” to avoid confusion with the SQL custom OU

You can download it here: https://sp2013serviceaccount.codeplex.com/

SharePoint Host named Site Collection Creator

The SharePoint Host named Site Collection (HNSC) Creator is a Codeplex Project that allows SharePoint Admins to create HNSC via a GUI instead of PowerShell. It works with both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012!

I know PowerShell is amazing, and I use it a lot, but a lot of admins cry when they hear the word. The New Microsoft Best Practice for SharePoint 2013 is to only have 1 Web Application in your farm, and the rest should all be Host Named Site Collections. However, of course, the only way to create them is PowerShell J

This is a new project, so it’s still in version 1.0 Beta but its stable and tested. The 1.5 should come within 1 month, and should add a better way to select the template of your new site collection.

First Version of the SharePoint Host Named Site Collections Creator.

• Can Create Host Named Site Collections with the following Attributes
• Site Collection URL(mandatory)
• Site Collection Primary Owner (mandatory)
• Site Collection Name (Optional)
• Site Collection Description (Optional)
• Site Collection language (Optional)
• Site Collection Template (Optional)
• Site Collection Secondary Owner (Optional)
• Specify or Create a Content Database for the new HSNC (Optional)

You can download it here: https://hnsc.codeplex.com

SQL Max Memory Calculator

By Default, SQL Server is set to use max 2TB of Ram, however I am sure that in 2013 no one has that much! This effectively means that SQL can consume all of the RAM in your server leaving nothing for the OS or other applications. This can cause performance issues. Here is how Thomas Larock, from SQL Rockstar explains it:

SQL Server (and other database systems such as Oracle and Sybase) need to read data pages into their internal memory before they can be used. Of course your server needs memory to operate as well. When your database engine and your server are competing for the same memory resources, you get bad performance. You want your server and your database engine to be like dancing partners, and less like my kids fighting over the last cupcake

There is a nice formula to define how much RAM you should dedicate to all the SQL instances on the server, to make sure there is enough left for the OS but… unfortunately it’s not easy!

SQL Max Memory = TotalPhyMem – (NumOfSQLThreads * ThreadStackSize) – (1GB * CEILING(NumOfCores/4)) – OS Reserved
NumOfSQLThreads = 256 + (NumOfProcessors*- 4) * 8 (* If NumOfProcessors > 4, else 0)
ThreadStackSize = 2MB on x64 or 4 MB on 64-bit (IA64)
OS Reserved = 20% of total ram for under if system has 15GB. 12.5% for over 20GB

This CodePlex project is an easy GUI Interface that will calculate the perfect amount of Ram you can dedicated to your SQL instances.

You can download it here: https://sqlmem.codeplex.com/

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