For those who don’t know about CloudShare.com – it’s a subscription-paid virtual server hosting environment along the lines of Amazon EC2 or Azure, which has a key twist: it provides pre-configured virtual machines that specifically focus on SharePoint and related technologies. We use it for development at itgroove when we need to do high-level development, as a complement to local Hyper-V development images.
Allow developers to spend more time coding and less time thinking about the tools they use. The CloudShare Explorer allows developers to access CloudShare development and testing environments without leaving Visual Studio. With CloudShare Explorer for Visual Studio, you can easily create and access your cloud-based labs.
Features:
•Complete list of your CloudShare environments in the CloudShare Explorer tab. The list is continuously updated with the status of the environments.
•Full screen remote access to the CloudShare machines with just a click of a mouse.
•Resume your lab environments.
•Revert the environment, or a specific machine, to the latest snapshot (only works with a CloudShare TeamLabs account).
•Web access to your lab web servers within Visual Studio.
•Add a machine to an environment (only works with a CloudShare TeamLabs account).
•Delete a machine in an environment (only works with a CloudShare TeamLabs account).
•Prevent CloudShare environments from being suspended if the user is still working on them.
•Highly customizable – you can turn on / off most of the functionality of the plugin as needed
Are you a developer for the Microsoft platform, interested in helping your organization collaborate and manage workflow using SharePoint solutions? Take this course to learn the core skills common to most SharePoint development activities. Find out how to work with backend data and front end user interfaces and security. You’ll get some guidelines and best practices that will help you optimize your SharePoint applications. You’ll see some cool demos that will show you how to create an app, deploy it to a catalog, and install it. And you’ll see workflows inside the dramatically enhanced SharePoint Designer. This Jump Start will help you prepare for Exam 70-488.
Instructors |Chris Johnson – General Manager, Provoke Solutions Inc.; Consultant; Christopher Harrison – Microsoft Certified Trainer
Related Exam(s) | 70-488: Developing Microsoft SharePoint® Server 2013 Core Solutions Associated Course(s) |20488: Developing Microsoft SharePoint® Server 2013 Core Solutions
Go to the page linked below and sign up for a free MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy) account and get started:
PowerShell is an essential tool for advanced SharePoint development & administration. Unfortunately Visual Studio doesn’t offer PowerShell code syntax highlighting or Intellisense natively. You can however use Adam Driscoll’s plugin PowerGUI VSX from Codeplex, which runs on top of PowerGUI.
Note: Development seems to have stopped for a while on that project, not sure if it’s just super stable for 2012 and no updates have been required or what, but in any case, go to the Codeplex page and show some love to encourage further development.
PowerGUI V requires the free, standalone application PowerGUI. Please download the correct version:
Windows PowerShell™ command-line interface is a new command-line tool and supporting scripting language from Microsoft that complements Cmd.exe in the Windows administration context. In the SharePoint administration context, Windows PowerShell supersedes the Stsadm.exe administration tool. Moving forward, you should use Windows PowerShell scripting technology to develop any new command-line scripts in SharePoint.
A recurring question that has come up is regarding which version & flavour of Visual Studio can and should be used for SharePoint- we are at a point where SP 2013 is coming on strong but many, many clients are going to be locked into SP 2010 for a while yet. Obviously an investment in software like Visual Studio should be made with the best balance of future-proofing and low cost possible. This post seeks to offer some advice on that.
The quick answer is:
-you can develop for SP 2010 using VS 2012, there project templates etc. that are geared for both version in VS 2012.
-you can develop for SP 2013 using VS 2010, however there’s going to be loose ends. Upgrading your existing VS 2010 solutions to VS 2012 is however not that hard.
The next question you will likely have is, which flavour of Visual Studio to get – Ultimate with MSDN, Premium with MSDN, Test Professional, Professional with MSDN, or Professional.
Version compare here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng#products/compare. I would see Visual Studio Professional 2012 being a good fit for most common scenarios, but whether you use Pro or move up to Premium would depend on if you need the following Premium features:
In general, the big upsell when going up the feature matrix ladder is when you are working on hardcore software development in big teams, using Agile development processes, complex unit testing etc.
The hard requirement of having Visual Studio installed on a non-production SharePoint server install is pretty much standard, until you go to a SharePoint 2013 development model which is based on more open standards and Apps. Depending on your licensing provisions available (e.g. you’re in Government or Education), you may have SharePoint CAL’s covered to create such an environment – or, and for a variety of other reasons, you might want to consider an MSDN subscription. An MSDN subscription also would enable the aforementioned Team Foundation Service hosted source code option.
SharePoint dev is sometimes maddeningly complex as the already complex front-end side of SP is just the tip of iceberg. The plumbing underneath is massive. Although there is quite a bit of flexibility with how you approach it, you definitely need to get your shop tooled up in a specific pattern, and Visual Studio is just one component. Evaluating whether or not it even makes practical sense to do such work in-house or to contract out is a big jigsaw puzzle too. Fortunately there is a good degree
Here’s a quick round up of our four top picks for getting your SharePoint Development going on in the cloud. Why develop in the cloud instead of perhaps using a local dedicated or virtual development environment? Here’s ten reasons:
1. Scalable Add as many machines as you need. 2. Open and Flexible Choose development platform and programming model. 3. Secure Secure and durable technology platform with industry-recognized certifications and audits. 4. Fast Deployment Time Deploy applications without waiting for hardware to arrive. 5. Highly Available Highly reliable services and multiple fault-tolerant Availability Zones. 6. Quickly Adjust to Business Change: Running SharePoint in the Cloud allows you to add capacity as needed, without long lead time. You can easily scale up, or down, as business demands change. Stay ahead of the curve by adjusting capacity in minutes and hours, not days or weeks. 7. No New Hardware to Buy: All four options offer low, pay-as-you-go pricing, which eliminates hardware acquisition costs and allows you to pay only for the capacity you need. We do all of the hardware management, so you can focus on higher-value activities than replacing hard drives. 8. Shift Capital Expense to Operating Expense: While reducing both. You no longer need to plan, procure, manage, and depreciate your IT infrastructure. You can replace large up-front expenses with more predictable costs that scale with your business. 9. Utilize Existing Skills and Software: Leverage your existing investments in IT skills and software assets, enabling your company to roll out new applications more quickly.
10. Low Cost Pay only for cloud resources used.
SharePoint Development on Office 365
Use an Office 365 Developer Site as a development and testing environment to shorten your setup time and start creating, testing, and deploying your apps for Office and SharePoint. Deploy the “Napa” Office 365 Development Tools to this preconfigured SharePoint site and you also get a head start on developing SharePoint-hosted apps, and apps for Office documents and mail items, without installing Visual Studio 2012 and Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 on your development computer. With an Office 365 Developer Site, you get an isolated app domain for SharePoint-hosted apps, preconfigured to use OAuth, so that you can use the Windows Azure Access Control Service (ACS) for authenticating and authorizing provider-hosted apps for SharePoint that are deployed to this site.
Microsoft SharePoint Server provides rich deployment flexibility, which can help organizations determine the right deployment scenarios to align with their business needs and objectives. Hosted and managed in the cloud, the Windows Azure Virtual Machines offering provides complete, reliable, and available infrastructure to support various on-demand application and database workloads, such as Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint deployments.
While Windows Azure Virtual Machines support multiple workloads, this paper focuses on SharePoint deployments. Windows Azure Virtual Machines enable organizations to create and manage their SharePoint infrastructure quickly—provisioning and accessing nearly any host universally. It allows full control and management over processors, RAM, CPU ranges, and other resources of SharePoint virtual machines (VMs).
Windows Azure Virtual Machines mitigate the need for hardware, so organizations can turn attention from handling high upfront cost and complexity to building and managing infrastructure at scale. This means that they can innovate, experiment, and iterate in hours—as opposed to days and weeks with traditional deployments.
The following is required to complete this step-by-step guide:
A Windows Azure subscription with the Virtual Machines Preview enabled. DO IT: Sign up for a FREE Trial of Windows AzureNOTE: When activating your FREE Trial for Windows Azure, you will be prompted for credit card information. This information is used only to validate your identity and your credit card will not be charged, unless you explicitly convert your FREE Trial account to a paid subscription at a later point in time.
This step-by-step guide assumes that the reader is already somewhat familiar with configuring Windows Server Active Directory, SQL Server and SharePoint Server in an on-premise installation. This guide focuses on the unique aspects associated with configuring these components on the Windows Azure cloud platform.
Amazon EC2 running Windows Server is a secure and dependable environment for customers to deploy Microsoft SharePoint quickly and cost effectively. The Microsoft License Mobility through Software Assurance program allows Microsoft volume license customers to use their existing Windows Server applications licenses, including SharePoint Server, on AWS without paying any additional Microsoft licensing fees. Take advantage of the benefits that the AWS Cloud offers such as pay-as-you-go pricing, scalability, and data integrity to run your SharePoint workloads today.
The Get Started section below has more detail about all of the available technologies and resources for Microsoft on AWS, including pricing, documentation, whitepapers, templates and sample code. If you have questions about SharePoint on AWS please visit the FAQ page for more info.
AWS Free Tier includes 750 hours of Linux or Windows Micro Instances each month for one year. To stay within the Free Tier, use only EC2 Micro instances.
CloudShare provides an unmatched solution for SharePoint development and testing. Build a single server or multi-server SharePoint farm in minutes. With a few clicks, you can collaborate with other developers, demo for prospects, and deploy your solution to a production farm.
Explore the full functionality of SharePoint
Develop on virtual machines with sole server administration access
Select from development templates pre-configured with Visual Studio, Office, and various versions of SharePoint
Leverage tools including Team Foundation Server to store your solution code
Share your SharePoint solution across your organization
Each of these services has it’s strong points. With Microsoft’s Azure offering now set to price match against Amazon AWS, things are really heating up. CloudShare is an fantastic company with a super-simple deployment model – it’s possibly the simplest way to roll out a new development scenario. Office 365 is rock solid, if you don’t need to actually manipulate server-side stuff and are focused on the Apps model. I’m always interested to hear from other developers on their experiences with these different offerings.
Exploration extends the new SharePoint Explorer with advanced information about SharePoint sites such as the installed Web Parts and Master Pages or the Feature dependencies and elements. Also included in the Explorer are a variety of import functions to bring existing SharePoint items into your active solution.
The Content area includes advanced templates such as Linq to SharePoint, Custom Action or Delegate Control. Become extra productive while developing sandboxed solutions using the SharePoint Full Trust Proxy. Utilise the SharePoint Console Application project template to quickly build SharePoint code.
Our enhanced Deployment functions give you the ability to utilise quick deployment and almost a dozen other productivity enhancing deployment steps, including automated deployment (per file on change deployment).
Find the complete overview of all the CKS Development Tools Edition features on the documentation tab of the project site.
I love me some All-in-one-Code Framework. Concise, useful, organized examples of code from Microsoft’ers that help you paddle fast enough to keep up with ye olde wave of acronyms. They are responsive and community-oriented; if you request an example and there is a need for it, they will probably publish it for you. I have posted previously about the effort here , which was focused on the Codeplex project and desktop application.
They now have a Windows App for exploring the latest updates:
Web Essentials extends Visual Studio 2012 with a lot of new features that web developers have been missing for many years.
If you ever write CSS, HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, CoffeeScript or LESS, then you will find many useful features that make your life as a developer easier.
This is for all Web developers using Visual Studio 2012.
A bunch of features are not specific to a specific language or editor. These features are listed here.
Features
Settings
All settings can be found by going to Tools -> Options -> Web Essentials.
Solution scoped settings
Settings can either be global or specific to any solution. By scoping settings to individual solution, you can ensure that all team members are using the same settings.
To enable solution settings, right-click any item in Solution Explorer and click “Create solution settings”.
Bundling
Any text based file can be bundled using Web Essentials.
Out of the box, Web Essentials provides shortcuts to produce bundle files for CSS and JavaScript.
These bundle files are automatically updated whenever one of the source files change.
Just right-click 2 or more CSS/JS files and click “Create CSS/JS bundle file”.
Solution wide commands
These menu items are shortcuts to solution wide commands.
They can be found under Build -> Web Essentials.
Stylesheets
Most of the CSS features in Web Essentials also applies to LESS.
Intellisense
Generate vendor specifics
A lot of the new CSS 3 properties only work cross-browser if vendor specific properties are added. These include -moz, -webkit, -ms and -o.
The result is the insertion of the missing vendor specific properties in the right order.
If one or more of the vendor specific properties are already present, then only the missing ones are added.
Add missing standard property
Invoke the Smart Tag to automatically insert any missing standard properties.
Keep vendor specifics in sync
HTML elements, classes and IDs
Hacks
Specific hacks can be used to target specific versions of IE on a selector level. These are all valid according to the W3C
!important
Intellisense is now provided for !important.
Modernizr
Modernizr class names will now be bolded in the CSS editor, but more importantly, they will also be respected by the automatic hierarchical indentation feature of VS2012.
Add region
Regions are supported in the VS2012 CSS editor, but now it’s even easier to add them.
Choosing Add region… result in this snippet being inserted.
Custom fonts
iOS scrollbars
VS2012 supports the different pseudo elements for customizing the iOS scrollbars. It can, however, be a little difficult to work with unless you know how to chain the pseudos correctly. That’s no longer a problem.
Animation names
Inline URL picker
Just start typing and the file system shows up in Intellisense.
CSS gradients
Gradients are really difficult to write, so now examples are automatically inserted for all the different types of gradients, including the various vendor specific ones.
Hide unsupported properties
Some of the CSS properties, such as the CSS 3 FlexBox Module are not supported by any browser yet. Now you can turn all unsupported properties and pseudos off.
Hide inherit/initial
Sometimes it can feel like these two properties are too noisy in Intellisense. Though they are completely valid, you might just want to hide them.
Custom color palettes
Coming soon…
Visual cues
Browser matrix tooltip
Selector specificity tooltip
In case you’ve been wondering why certain styles are never applied in the browser, you can now see the specificity for each individual selector by hovering the mouse over them.
Color swatches
All color types are supported, including the new CSS 3 formats.
Font and image preview
Validation
Browser selector
Control how validation and Intellisense behaves, based on the browsers you want to support.
Just right-click a CSS document and click “Select browsers…”. Note: The CSS document must be part of the open solution.
Best practices & Browser compatibility
Helpful error messages
Some errors are very common to make. Web Essentials will now check for those errors and provide more precise and helpful error messages to help you fix them.
Removes warnings for 9
The 9 hack isn’t supported by the CSS editor and will produce error messages. Web Essentials removes the errors.
Color values
Color functions such as rgb(1, 2, 3) is validated to make sure the parameters are withing the allowed ranges.
Display inline
Using diplay:inline nulls other properties such as with, height and padding-left. Web Essentials checks for this so you can remove redundant code.
Duplicate properties
Dublicate properties are common, but should be avoided unless they are used for browser compatibility reasons. If not, Web Essentials will check for them.
Duplicate selectors
Selectors should never be duplicated in the same stylesheet
Pseudo class/element ordering
Psuedo classes goes before pseudo elements. It is, however, very difficult to figure out what pseudos are classes and what are elements. Web Essentials makes sure your psuedos are correctly sorted.
Unknown vendor specifics
Since it’s very difficult to validate and verify all vendor specific properties, it becomes easy to make mistakes. The validator will automatically call out any unknown or deprecated vendor specifics.
IE10 prefixes
The IE10 Public Preview introduced new prefixed properties such as -ms-animation. The final version of IE10 did implement the unprefixed versions of those properties, rendering the use for the prefixed versions obsolete.
Missing vendor specifics
Forgot any vendor specific properties? Don’t worry, Web Essentials will let you know.
Vendor specific ordering
Make sure to specify the prefixed properties before the unprefixed standard property.
Shorthand properties
You’re wasting precious space by not using shorthand notation for the properties that support it.
Unknown HTML tag in selectors
It’s easy to make a spelling error for an HTML element without noticing. This is now checked for using both old and new HTML 5 tag names.
Disallow universal selector
Optional. The universal selector (*) is expensive for browsers to apply. Now you can make sure that it is validated.
Over-qualified selectors
Optional. Some selectors are over qualified and slows down browser rendering.
Zero-length units
Optional. Don’t like 0px and 0em? Flag them to make sure your team member removes the unit type.
Web standards
Auto-update standards
Web Essentials checks for updates to the schema files that drives both validation and Intellinsense. If an update exist, it is being downloaded in the background and immediately applied.
Vendor specific updates
When new browsers are released, they often introduce new vendor specific properties. Web Essentials automatically updates the schema files with new browser specific capabilities.
Converters
Darken/lighten colors
Place the cursor in a hex color value and hit SHIFT+CTRL+ARROW UP/DOWN to darken or lighten the color.
Convert color formats
Use Smart Tags to easily convert colors between the different formats
Sort properties
A Smart Tag on every selector enables you to easily sort all the properties within the rule.
This will take the referenced image and base64 encode it directly into your stylesheet. You have then eliminated an HTTP requst.
If the base64 string becomes to long, you can easily collapse it.
Remember to optimize your image files before embeding them. Use the Image Optimizer extension to make it effortless.
Minification
You can minify CSS directly in the editor. Just select a valid range of CSS and right-click the selection. Now click the option “Minify selection”.
You can also minify and bundle entire CSS files. That is described in the General section.
JavaScript
Some of the JavaScript features also apply to TypeScript.
Features
JSHint
JSHint is a really good way of making sure your JavaScript follows certain coding guidelines and best practices. The default settings are very relaxed, but you can turn on more rules through the new options dialog.
The error window updates as you type, so you don’t have to right-click the .js file to kick off JSHint. It happens as you write.
Each indiviual JavaScript file can override the global settings by using the official JSHint comment format descripted in the JSHint documentation.
In version 1.8 you can also enable JSHint to run on build.
Regions
Some people hate them, other people loves them. This is a feature that was in the original Web Essentials 2010 an by popular request now made it in the 2012 version.
Outlining/code folding
Only functions provide outlining support by Visual Studio 2012. Web Essentials adds outlining supports to any scope including multiline arrays.
Minification
Right-click any JS file in Solution Explorer to produce a *.min.js file. Whenever the source .js file is changed, the .min.js file is updated accordingly.
Source Maps
When minifying, Source Map (.js.maps) files are automatically generated by enabling it in Tools -> Options.
JSDoc comments
Get full Intellisense and tooltips based on the JsDoc comment format that a lot of libraries use.
Auto-complete braces
When an opening curly brace, square bracket or parenthesis is typed, the closing ditto is inserted to the right of the cursor. Type-through is supported to not mess with muscle memory.
Smarter indent
Hitting Enter when the cursor is between an opening and closing curly brace now places the cursor correctly on the line below with the correct indentation.
HTML
The HTML editor has been extended with extra functionality.
Features
Handlebars, Mustache and JsRender
The various different syntaxes used for the flavors of Handlebars are now supported in the HTML editor.
Markdown
See the compiled markdown in a preview window inside Visual Studio.
The preview window shows the rendered HTML generated from the Markdown file.
As part of ZenCoding, you can now generate Lorem Ipsum code directly in the HTML editor. Simply type “lorem” and hit TAB and a 30 word Lorem Ipsum text is inserted. Type “lorem10” and a 10 word Lorem Ipsum text is inserted.
This can be used in conjuction with ZenCoding like so: ul>li*5>lorem3
LESS
The dynamic stylesheet language. LESS extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions.
Features
Preview window
LESS comes with a preview window located at the right side of the editor. It shows the compiled output every time you save the document.
Full editor support
The LESS editor in Web Essentials gives full support for all regular CSS capabilities.
In addition, it provides Intellisense and validation for LESS specifics.
Compiler settings
You can set all the compiler settings from Tools -> Options. They include:
Compile on save
Compile on build
Enable minification
Extract to variable
Web Essentials makes it easy to convert property values to LESS variables. Select the text you want extracted, right-click the selection and click “Extract to variable…”.
Colors are special cased and a Smart Tag makes it easy to extract all instances of the same color in the document into a LESS variable.
Extract to Mixin
Select the properties you want to extract. Then right-click the selection and click “Extract to mixin…”.
Minification
When a LESS file is compiled, it can now also be minified to produce a much smaller CSS file.
CoffeeScript
CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Underneath all those awkward braces and semicolons, JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model at its heart. CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way.
Features
Preview window
When a CoffeeScirpt file (.coffee) is saved in Visual Studio, Web Essentials will compile it automatically and generate a preview.
Compiler settings
You can set all the compiler settings from Tools -> Options
Iced CoffeeScript
You can also use the Iced CoffeeScript compiler for added features.
Outlining/code folding
The CoffeeScript editor will automatically provide outlining support.
Minification
When a CoffeeScript file is compiled, it can now also be minified to produce a much smaller JavaScript file.
Lots of new Windows Phone 8 samples, an Enterprise Sales Dashboard for Windows 8, SharePoint 2013 Custom Geolocation field type with Client side rendering, a Microsoft Surface Sample screen saver, and more..
Introduction
Developers love code samples. Samples often serve as the starting point for many developers to learn a new technology. They also provide straightforward solutions and helpful references when we as developers need to solve tough programming tasks. Some developers even live by code samples.
In partnership with Visual Studio Product Team and MSDN Samples Gallery Team, Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework releases Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension for Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010 – an effort to evolve the code sample use experience. You can search and download 3500+ Microsoft official code samples and community samples, including over 700 Windows 8 samples and more than 1000 All-In-One Code Framework customer-driven code samples. With its integrated sample search, flexible sample download and more than ten useful features designed for easier access and management of code samples, we hope to put the power of tens of thousands of code samples at developers’ fingertips.
Features & Benefits
Integrated and Rich Sample Search Experience
Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension is integrated with Visual Studio Quick Launch Bar, Toolbar, Code Editor and File Menu. It gives you quicker access to samples when you are writing code in Visual Studio. A rich set of sample search conditions allows you to filter search results by language, owner, technology and the targeting Visual Studio version.
Integrated and Flexible Sample Download Experience
Beyond that, Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension provides additional benefits to developers. Developers can enjoy theflexibility in downloading and managing code samples. By multi-selecting sample search results, and clicking a simple download button, you get your wanted code samples.
Integrated Look and Feel
Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension is integrated with the Visual Studio theme colors. It supports both light and dark themes.
To get going with developing SharePoint 2013 apps, you need to first set up an App Domain. I first installed SharePoint 2013, then Visual Studio 2012 RC, then ran the web install to get the SharePoint 2013 development extensions added in. You then fire up Visual Studio, saw the new “Apps” entry in the Office/SharePoint templates for Visual Studio, and created a new project based on the “App for SharePoint 2013” project type.
When you attempt to deploy your app, SharePoint comes back with the error “Failed to install App for SharePoint” in Visual Studio’s Error list. The Output window didn’t show much more than that. When you look in the ULS log for the App’s project name, you get this message:
An App domain must be configured prior to completing this operation
The issue is: before creating an App for on-premise hosting, you need to configure a hosting ‘domain’ for your Apps.
# Assumes you have a Service App Pool named "Default SharePoint Service App Pool"
$apppool = Get-SPServiceApplicationPool "Default SharePoint Service App Pool"
$appname = "App Management Service"
$dbname = "AppManagement_DB"
# Create the App Management service and start its service instance
$sa = New-SPAppManagementServiceApplication -ApplicationPool $apppool -Name $appname -DatabaseName $dbname
New-SPAppManagementServiceApplicationProxy -ServiceApplication $sa -Name "$appname Proxy"
Get-SPServiceInstance | Where-Object { $_.typename -eq "App Management Service" } | Start-SPServiceInstance
# Create the Subscription Settings service and start its service instance
$sa = New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplication -ApplicationPool $appPool -Name "Subscription Settings Service" -DatabaseName "Subscription_Settings_Service_DB"
New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplicationProxy -ServiceApplication $sa
Get-SPServiceInstance | where{$_.TypeName -eq "Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service"} | Start-SPServiceInstance
# Configure your app domain and location
# assumes path of app.contoso-apps.com
Set-spappdomain -appdomain "contoso-apps.com"
Set-spappSiteSubscriptionName -Name "app"
Interestingly, I ran into the following error on the last step Set-SPAppSiteSubscriptionName -Name “app” -Confirm:$false
Set-spappSiteSubscriptionName : The requested service, ‘http://localhost:32843/ SecurityTokenServiceApplication/securitytoken.svc/actas’ could not be
activated. See the server’s diagnostic trace logs for more information. At line:1 char:1 + Set-spappSiteSubscriptionName -Name “app”+
Note that the name isn’t the same name given in the set-spappdomain step – the above didn’t like the period separator in my app.mydomain.com, so I used just the leftmost subdomain part of my domain.
The error, though, was another surprisingly clear error message. It could be traced to the following error in the Servers Manager > Local Server > Events:
WebHost failed to process a request.
Sender Information: System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment+HostingManager/9051906
Exception: System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException: The service '/879afece63b54f95a16f9c9c110b0a24/ProfilePropertyService.svc' cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: Memory gates checking failed because the free memory (99291136 bytes) is less than 5% of total memory. As a result, the service will not be available for incoming requests. To resolve this, either reduce the load on the machine or adjust the value of minFreeMemoryPercentageToActivateService on the serviceHostingEnvironment config element.. ---> System.InsufficientMemoryException: Memory gates checking failed because the free memory (99291136 bytes) is less than 5% of total memory. As a result, the service will not be available for incoming requests. To resolve this, either reduce the load on the machine or adjust the value of minFreeMemoryPercentageToActivateService on the serviceHostingEnvironment config element.
at System.ServiceModel.Activation.ServiceMemoryGates.Check(Int32 minFreeMemoryPercentage, Boolean throwOnLowMemory, UInt64& availableMemoryBytes)
at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.CheckMemoryCloseIdleServices(EventTraceActivity eventTraceActivity)
at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath, EventTraceActivity eventTraceActivity)
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath, EventTraceActivity eventTraceActivity)
at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.EnsureServiceAvailableFast(String relativeVirtualPath, EventTraceActivity eventTraceActivity)
Process Name: w3wp
Process ID: 6100
The solution: 8GB RAM did not seem to be enough for this hungry hungry hippo. When I added more RAM (went to 14GB RAM as that’s what was available at the moment), things worked as expected. The Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Services Application now appears in our Service Applications list: