This document summarizes a presentation given by John L. Ferringer titled "Everybody Lies: Troubleshooting SharePoint with House M.D." at the Twin Cities Fall 2012 SharePoint Saturday event. The presentation draws parallels between diagnosing medical issues like on the TV show House M.D. and troubleshooting problems in SharePoint. Ferringer discusses understanding the problem, determining the root cause through investigating logs, change history, and ruling out obvious solutions. He also covers finding a remedy by testing possible treatments and fully understanding how the treatment addresses the root cause. The overall message is that thorough investigation and understanding are needed to effectively troubleshoot and resolve SharePoint issues.

1. SharePoint Saturday
Twin Cities Fall
November 3, 2012
Everybody Lies
Troubleshooting SharePoint
with House M.D.
John L. Ferringer

2. About me
• Senior Manager, Sogeti
• My blog: http://www.MyCentralAdmin.com
• Twitter: @ferringer

4. Who is Dr. Gregory House?
• A diagnostician
• An arrogant jerk
• A cynic
• An observer

5. What’s House got to do with SharePoint?
• We often have to diagnose (troubleshoot)
• Dealing with SharePoint can make you a
jerk (just kidding)
• Dealing with SharePoint will definitely
make you a cynic
• The more you observe, the better you
diagnose

6. Does SharePoint make you feel like House?

7. SharePoint is….
• Complex
• Vast in depth and breadth
• Made up of many subsystems
• Influenced by many outside factors
• Every farm and use case is unique
• …
• Just like the human body

8. How does House cure his patients?
• Understand the Issue
• Determine the Root Cause
• Finding a Cure
• Move Forward
Why not do the same with SharePoint?

9. Before we start, let’s keep this in mind…

10. UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE

11. Identify the Problem
• You can’t cure anything if you don’t know
what’s wrong
• Interview the patient
• You also have to ask the right questions
– What is the error?
– How is it happening?
– Who is seeing the error?
– When does it occur?
– What else do we know about the error?

12. SharePoint 2010’s Correlation ID
• Your users may see it
• You may see it
• It’s a GUID
• It is actually helpful

13. Let’s get REAL for a minute
• SharePoint 2010 farm
• 1 Web Server, 1 App Server, 1 SQL Server
• Visual Studio on the Web Server

14. Review the Patient History
• What has the patient done to get here?
• What is their environment?
• What happened before the error?
• What was happening during the error?
• How was SharePoint performing?
• Do you have Change Management?

15. Know Your Logs!
• They record what’s going on
• Which logs?
– Windows Event, ULS, IIS
– Keep in mind other sources: SQL, DCs, etc
• Know your tools!
– ULS Viewer
– Log Parser
– PAL
– Just to name a few

16. Why do we care about Change?
• You have to know
what you have!
• How has it changed?
• When were they made?

17. Back to Reality

18. DETERMINE THE ROOT CAUSE

19. Rule Out the Obvious
• Understand what you know
• Every problem is unique
• But, someone’s probably seen it before…
• So check your sources:
– Internal
– External: Google it! (with Bing!)
• But be careful…

20. Remember…
• Know your sources
– Who wrote it?
– Are they credible?
• Read the entire post!
– Everything!
– All the comments too
• Was there a follow up post?
• Validate the information

21. Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice…

22. Talk to the team

23. What Doesn’t Fit?

24. It’s all about me, right?
• Remember the database errors?
• Here, have some SA rights…
• No thank you.

25. Get a Different Perspective

26. In the Real World, who do I turn to?

27. FINDING A CURE

28. Review Possible Treatments
• Reproduce the issue
• Test it!
• Understand
the treatment
• Always read the label

29. Back to John’s problem…
Treatments:
• Sysadmin rights in the database
–Oh heck no!
• Local development environment
– Not possible
• Proper rights in the database
– Now we’re talking…

30. Fully Understand the Cause

31. Fully Understand the Remedy

32. MOVING FORWARD
HTTP://TINYURL.COM/SPTROUBLE

33. Questions…