SharePoint Faithful: Infrastructure Updates

July 16, 2008

On July 15, 2008, Microsoft announced three updates that have an impact on our favorite Swiss Army knife for the enterprise. You can download the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) (Download X86, Download X64). These updates provide the features previously shipped in Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express. I know this gets confusing, but for the moment, SharePoint and search are in sync. Among the features are “federated search” which allows the different repositories to be indexed and results displayed in a single results list. Vivisimo offered this function in 2000, and it is a positive step for Microsoft to offer this function. A spiffy dashboard is provided. We have not verified the assertion that the whole SharePoint ecosystem delivers performance improvements. We know that to goose SharePoint, the drill is to scale up and out. The problem, of course, is that budgets are shrinking. Cloud-based SharePoint solutions are starting to look mighty appealing.

Here’s a screen capture of the federated results. Suggestions appear in the right hand column. The central display includes Web pages and docx files. There is no on the fly clustering in this display.

Microsoft has posted some knowledge base articles to explain other enhancements to the SharePoint infrastructure; for example:

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)

Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB953750)

Please You will want to scan the SharePoint Team blog. Not surprisingly, there are some installation procedures that must be followed. We clicked on the links but as of 7 pm Eastern time on July 15, 2008, not all the links were active. Check this link to see if the necessary knowledge base articles are available.

Take it from me. Read these documents. A hitch in the git along can ruin a sysadmin’s weekend.

Stephen Arnold, July 16, 2008

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Enterprise, Microsoft, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.