Although you can use the Central Administration to back up your site collection as a once off task, you get additional options using Windows PowerShell, such as using SQL Snapshots for backing up SharePoint 2010 Site Collections.

Backup-SPSite http://server_name/sites/site_name -Path C:\Backup\site_name.bak

Get-SPSiteAdministration http://server_name/sites/site_name | Backup-SPSite -Path C:\Backup\site_name.bak

Backup-SPSite http://server_name/sites/site_name -Path C:\Backup\site_name.bak –UseSqlSnapshot

Note: You can use the UseSqlSnapshot parameter only if you are hosting your content database on SQL Server Enterprise Edition / SQL Server Developer Edition.

Windows PowerShell also gives you the flexibility of backing up several site collections using the thread parameter.

Get-SPDiagnosticConfig

If you want to change the location of your diagnostic configuration log use the following PowerShell cmdlet

Set-SPDiagnosticConfig -LogLocation D:\SharePointLogs\

Congratulations to Ivan on this launch! I believe this is not only Aussie First but possibly the first SharePoint Consulting company (in Asia Pacific) to launch on SharePoint 2010 Foundation (Beta).

Check out the site which has been customised by Ivan himself and has a good mix of Silverlight as well!

Digital Atmosphere http://mysp.in/brebinator

To quote from the download page:

Overview

This download contains a two Virtual Machine set for evaluating and demonstrating Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.

Virtual machine “a” contains the following pre-configured software:

1. Windows Server 2008 SP2 Standard Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS

2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services

3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2

4. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate Edition

5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition Beta 2

6. Microsoft Office Web Applications Beta 2

7. FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 Beta 2

8. Microsoft Project Server 2010 Beta 2

9. Microsoft Office 2010 Beta 2

10. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2

Virtual machine “b” contains the following pre-configured software:

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the “CONTOSO.COM” domain

2. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Active directory has been preconfigured over 200 “demo” users with metadata in an organizational structure.

All of these user profiles have been imported and indexed for search within SharePoint Server 2010, with “contoso\administrator” granted administrator permissions.

SharePoint Server 2010 has been configured in a “Complete” farm using Kerberos authentication and the default SQL Server 2008 instance for data, and has a site collection created using the Team Site template at http://intranet.contoso.com/ and a FAST Search Center at http://intranet.contoso.com/search/.

Performance Considerations

1. If possible, unpack and run the VM image on a separate, fast hard drive (7200 RPM or better) from the operating system of the host machine. If this is being done on a laptop, a second internal drive or external eSATA drive works best, though USB 2.0 (make sure it’s 2.0, 1.1 is too slow) or Firewire is acceptable.

For absolute best performance use a second internal SSD drive.

Instructions

a. Start Hyper-V Manager from Control Panel -> Administrative Tools

b. Confirm that the local host machine appears in the Hyper-V Manager list and select it if not already done

c. Under Actions, click Virtual Network Manager…

d. Confirm that you have created an Internal virtual network named “Internal”. Internal networks limit connectivity to only VMs and the host.

If a suitable not, create one now using the following steps:

i. Click on Virtual Network Manager in the Actions pane

ii. Choose New virtual network in the Virtual Networks pane

iii. Choose Internal from the type list and click Add

iv. Enter a name of Internal and click OK v. Start menu -> right-click Network –> Properties

vi. Click Change adapter settings

vii. Find the adapter with a description of Internal, right-click and choose Properties

viii. Double-click on Internet Protocol Version 4 and enter the following values: 1. IP address: 192.168.150.6 2. Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 3. Default gateway: (leave blank) 4. Preferred DNS server: 192.168.150.1

ix. Click OK

e. Close the Virtual Network Manager dialog.

a. Under Actions, click Import Virtual Machine…

b. Use the Browse button to select the folder where the virtual machine package was extracted. Do not check

c. Click Import and wait for the Import to complete – the import status will appear in the Operations column

d. Select the newly imported virtual machine and click Settings in the right pane of the Hyper-V Manager

e. Confirm (and correct if necessary) that the Network Adapter is connected to the Internal network from step 1d.

f. Close the virtual machine Settings dialog.

Download 2010 Information Worker Demonstration Virtual Machine (Beta)

http://mysp.in/t10betavhd

List who has SP Shell Admin Access

Before you get started with addition, it would be good to check who has Shell Admin access using the following PowerShell cmdlet

get-spshelladmin

Let’s check who is in the farm administrator group for http://server

Even though I am a farm administrator, I could not use SharePoint Management Shell to get a list of users who have SPShellAdmin access.

Give user SP Shell Admin Access

To add a user as Shell Admin, use the following PowerShell cmdlet (logged in as the account that has SPShellAdmin access)

Add-SPShellAdmin -username alpesh

Or simply type Add-SpShellAdmin and press enter. You will be prompted to enter the username! Then type get-spshelladmin to see if you have successfully added the user as SPShellAdmin

Remove SP Shell Admin Access for a user

To remove a user as Shell Admin, use the following PowerShell cmdlet

Remove-SPShellAdmin –username alpesh

Or

Or simply type Remove-SPShellAdmin and press enter. You will be prompted to enter the username!

To get a list of all globally installed site templates use the following PowerShell cmdlet

get-spwebtemplate

To get the basic information about all the STS template, use the following PowerShell cmdlet

get-spwebtemplate “STS*”

To get the basic information about all the SPS template, use the following PowerShell cmdlet

get-spwebtemplate “SPS*”

Get-SPServiceApplication cmdlet lists all service applications in a farm with their Display Name, TypeName and ID

Now type the same command piped with Select Id, Name to get these results

This cmdlet behaves differently at each scope, getting the enabled Features at each level. There are 4 levels of scope

· Farm

· WebApplication

· Site (Site Collection)

· Web (Site)

get-spfeature -farm (gets all the enabled Feature in the farm)

get-spfeature -webapplication http://server (gets all enabled the Features in the Web application)

get-spfeature -site http://server/sites/IT (gets all the enabled Features on the site collection)

get-spfeature -site -sandboxed (gets all installed the Feature definitions on the site)

get-spfeature -web (gets all the enabled Features in the Web)

If no scope is provided, all installed Features are returned.

get-spfeature (gets all the installed Feature definitions in the farm)

The list will scroll by so use any of the following commands

get-spfeature | more (using more command stops the list from scrolling to end)

get-spfeature |select displayname, scope (using select displayname, scope will remove the id column)

get-spfeature | sort scope | select displayname, scope | more (sort scope command will sort the feature based on their scope)

get-spfeature -Limit ALL | Where-Object {$_.Scope -eq “SITE”}

This will get a list of all installed “SITE” scoped Feature. Replace Site with Web or Farm to see the list

For the purpose of testing we will

· Create a site collection named 2Delete using a site template STS#0

· Delete a site collection named 2Delete

1. New site collection created using SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
   
2. Site collection created. as per confirmation. Delete site collection using SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
   
3. Press ENTER.
   
4. Site collection deleted.
   

Old Method: Go to Central Admin… or use stsadm

Smart Method: Use PowerShell

How?

Launch your Administrator: SharePoint 2010 Management Shell

Type

Set-SPSite –Identity http://server –SecondaryOwnerAlias justsharepoint\alpesh

This will add secondary site collection administrator. Soon will show you how you can add secondary site collection administrator for all site collections in a managed path!