SharePoint 2010 Server Farm Configuration Part 1

After successful installation of SharePoint Server 2010, now it is time to do some practice. In this article I am going to explain how to setup SharePoint Server Farm for demo or production operations.

In this post I am going to explain how we can configure data collection and logging configuration tools as these tools are important for troubleshooting and tuning purposes and also this is very import topic with prospect of SharePoint Exam 70-667.

·         Configure usage and health data collection.

·         Configure diagnostic logging.

·         Configure incoming and outgoing email integration.

Usage and Health Data Collection Configuration:

It is responsibility of administrator to keep a close eye on system logs to monitor the usage patterns and health of system. I am going to explain steps how you can use SharePoint Central Admin website to configure usage and health data collection. This activity is configured for whole farm not for individual server and you must be a member of farm administrators group to perform this task.

Note: Keep in mind logging requires a lot of resources and performance, it is recommended always turn on required logging for required period of time and turn off when you don’t need it.

Follow these steps to configure usage and health data collection in Central Admin.

1.       Open Central Administration home page, and then click Monitoring

2.       On the Monitoring page under Reporting, click Configure Usage and Health Data Collection.

3.       When the Configure Usage And Health Data Collection page appears, under Usage Data Collection, select the Enable Usage Data Collection check box to enable usage data collection.

4.       Under Event Selection, select the check boxes for the events you want to log in the Events To Log List.

5.       Under Usage Data Collection Settings section, please specify path for Log File Location where you want to save usage and health information, keep in mind path must exist on all servers in the server farm. In our scenario just accept the default path because we just have only one server at moment.

6.       In the Maximum Log File Size field, enter a value between 1 and 20 for the maximum disk space for the logs in gigabytes.

7.       Under Health Data Collection, select the Enable Health Data Collection check box.

8.      Click Health Logging Schedule and select the desired the timer jobs to set the schedule for when the jobs will run.

9.       Under Logging Database Server section, select either Windows Authentication or SQL Authentication.

10. Click Ok and you complete wizard.

Hope now you will able able to understand how to configure Usage and Health Data Collection logging. This article is reference from book "Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Configuration" by James Pyles. Please don't forget to comment thanks :)