User Profile Synch SharePoint 2010 – The Essential Mix
While I detailed my findings on initial pre-deploy Best Practices in my post Planning SharePoint 2010 User Profile Synchronization, I have since banged out a more organized reading list figured out through more hands-on. You may start UPS in SP 2010 as confident pro but but you’ll end with the thousand yard stare, UNLESS you follow the exact advice presented by the nice folks in the following list, in the order indicated:
1. Make sure you have the SharePoint 2010 August CU (build 14.0.5123.5000 ). Todd Klindt’s complete SharePoint 2010 build number list is here. I personally can’t vouch for newer CU’s as I haven’t tried yet but will post in the future when I learn more about the stablity of those CU’s.
2. Read Technet’s Configure profile synchronization (SharePoint Server 2010) end-to-end. Do not do the worksheets component at the beginning yet – we will get to those when the basic synch service is up and running smoothly. Do not execute any of the config suggested in that article yet- just breeze through it, familliarize yourself with the config sections they are referring to, but just don’t set anything up yet.
3. Read and execute the steps described on Spencer Harbar’s guide at http://www.harbar.net/articles/sp2010ups.aspx . As he indicates in his follow-up troubleshooting guide at http://www.harbar.net/articles/sp2010ups2.aspx you need to follow the instructions exactly:
“I must stress that the number one reason people have problems is that
they do not follow the procedure! No really, I can’t count the number of
times steps have been missed or I get a response like “oh, I didn’t
think I needed to do that”. If you follow the procedure you will be
successful unless you are hitting an environmental or other known issue.“
.. but wait! Not everyone is a super MVP like Spencer so a lot of the little details he refers to will actually be more complex for those who have perhaps have dived straight into SharePoint without a lot of Windows SysAdmin experience. So if you find gaps in your understanding of Spencers instructions, refer to the following article by Microsoft Support Escalation Engineer Steve Chen in point 4. Heck, read it regardless.
If you are at any point not clear on user accounts and rights, refer to Sean Wallbridge’s guidance on SharePoint 2010 Server User Accounts
4. Steve Chens User Profile Sync article – In particular sections like detailing how to Grant Replicating Directory Permission in AD will help people who are new to the SysAdmin.
5. At this point you should have your two ForeFront Windows services up and started, and be able to access Central Administration > Synchronization Connections etc. normally. If not, or something else has blown out, do not pass go, do not collect $200 : return to Spencers troubleshooting article and be very sad because you very likely did not pay close enough attention to the steps involved.
6. Read Technet’s Plan for User Profile Synchronization
7. Grab theUser profile properties and profile synchronization planning worksheets for SharePoint Server 2010, forget about being an environmentally friendly, paperless SharePoint zealot and print those suckers out. Post ’em all over your cube, your bathroom, wherever. Make sure you run through them even if it’s not a mega enterprise deployment you are creating.
8. Deploy!
The preceding links are essential to avoid your first SharePoint 2010 User Profile Synchronization attempt turning into a headbanger where grown men stare anxiously at little service start status indicators.
- Why does UPS get “stuck on starting”?
- Incorrect Permissions
- UPS Provisioning quits immediately after hitting Start in Services on Server
- NetBIOS Domain Name and Fully Qualified Domain Name don’t match
- Using a SQL Server Named Instance
- Starting UPS after creating the User Profile Service Application using Windows PowerShell
- Running Central Administration over SSL
- Timeouts when creating Synchronization Connections
- After a server restart, the UPS service instance is stopped
- After the installation of Cumulative Updates, the UPS service instance needs to be provisioned.
- When attempting to Manage the UPA, you receive an error, Not Found, Correlation ID: [guid], or Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.ResourceManagement’
- After the installation of the August CU, Event ID 3 is repeatedly logged to the Application Event Log
- After clicking start in Services on Server, nothing happens for 20 minutes and UPS is not provisioned. No ILM Configuration steps are logged to ULS.
- How to view progress of UPS provisioning
- How to reset the Sync Machine Instance
- Stuck on Starting and ULS logs event 9i1w: ILM Configuration: Error ‘ERR_CONFIG_DB’
- Cannot create a Synchronization Connection with multiple domains after installing the December 2010 CU
- [New] The User Profile Synchronization service instance is Stopped after installing the June 2010 CU
- [New] Profile Synchronization fails after installing the June 2011 CU
- [New] Profile Synchronization fails after installing the June 2011 CU when .NET 4.0 is installed on the server