Installation guidlines active SharePoint environment

Note in advance: 

Our installations (Organice DCS and Organice  Workbox) use the .NET Service Controller infrastructure to query the status  of Windows services on the machines in the SharePoint Farm.

This Service Controller in turn invokes several operations  in the Windows Advanced API (advapi32.dll) that use ports 139 and 445  to marshal the necessary queries across machine boundaries.

All installation steps need to executed on a SharePoint server

Pre-installation steps

The following steps need to be taken before a New (e.g Organice DCS) is installed

GAC Check

Check the GACs (3.0 and 4.5) for any DLLs that  are not standard to SharePoint (e.g. Organice, Brava, DCS etc.)

• If there are DLLs present, please notify Cadac.  We’ll take a look at the GAC and remove any fault entry.

• After installing the solution(s), check the GAC again. Make sure that the DLL in the GAC has the same version number as  the DLL from the solution installer. Do this for every web front-end.

Clear SharePoint Cache

1. Open Services.msc
2. Select and stop the ‘SharePoint Timer Job’ service
3. Go to C:\programdata\Microsoft\SharePoint\config\%GUID%  (select the folder that contains the Cache.ini file)
4. Delete all XML files exept the Cache.ini file
5. Modify the Cache.ini file by altering the number  to 1 and save the file.
6. Start the ‘SharePoint Timer Job’
7. Repeat the same process for each web front-end  (this includes all SP servers that have the ‘Microsoft SharePoint Foundation  Web Application’ role enabled)

Close all PowerShell windows

If you used the SharePoint Management Shell (PowerShell),  SharePoint may not be able to perform certain tasks.

You’ll need to do the following:

1. Find any open any PowerShell window in the farm
2. Close all PowerShell windows

IIS Reset

Before installing the servers, reset IIS services by using the command ‘IISReset’. This will clear the IIS cache, which  results in a clean installation. You need to do this on every Web server.

You’ll need to do the following:

1. Open a CMD windows as administrator
2. Perform the ‘IISRESET’ command

SharePoint Services Reset

Along with the IISReset, we need to restart the  SharePoint and Organice services as well.

You’ll need to do the following:

1. Open services.msc
2. Select ’SharePoint Timer Job Service’ and restart  it.

During installation steps

The following steps need to be taken during a new installation

Timer jobs

During installation, check the job status to see  if all jobs are running. Make sure that all jobs are finished before performing  another action (deploy solutions, create site collection etc.)

You’ll need to do the following:

1. Open Central Administration
2. Select Monitoring
3. Select Timer Jobs
4. Select Running Jobs
5. Wait for all the jobs to end.