Chapter 14

Optimizing SharePoint

Microsoft Exam Objective Covered in This Chapter:

• Maintaining a SharePoint Environment
  • Optimize the Performance of a SharePoint Environment

When you buy a new car, it should work great and do everything you want a car to do. Of course, with just a few modifications, it might perform even better. SharePoint is the same way. Although an “out-of-the-box” deployment of SharePoint may be just fine for your basic needs, with just a little extra care and attention, you can make it perform even better than you imagined. Optimization can take many forms. A key player in SharePoint optimization is the modification of the Remote BLOB storage and cache settings, but that’s only the beginning. Areas ranging from resource throttling to mobile administration come into play, plus a lot more.

SharePoint Optimization

You can use a number of techniques to optimize SharePoint performance. Some utilize tools and methods you have already worked with in previous chapters, while others will be new to you. This section of this chapter will focus on how to use what you already know to optimize the SharePoint environment.

General SharePoint Optimization Principles

There are a wide variety of activities that can be performed to optimize SharePoint access and performance, but not all of those activities are done by a SharePoint administrator. Nevertheless, as an administrator, you should have at least some understanding of the larger realm of techniques that affect your environment.

This section will present information at a high level. It’s unlikely that all this information be part of the certification exam, but you’ll encounter the topics when you are actually administrating SharePoint.

Caching

Anyone responsible for managing a web environment knows that users don’t have to get a fresh view of a website every time they hit the site. Depending on how you classify users and their priorities, you can assign different caching profiles for different user types, conserving SharePoint resources. For instance, if you service Anonymous or other “lesser-priority” users, you can assign them a different caching profile than authenticated users. You can also manage caching profiles by page type if it makes more sense in your environment to prioritize by content framework rather than user.

Database Optimization

Generally, what’s good for SQL Server and the content databases is good for SharePoint. If SharePoint experiences performance issues, the problem may, strictly speaking, not be in SharePoint but rather be a SQL Server issue. Communicate with the database guru in your environment, and make sure you have a good working relationship. Chances are, that person wants their environment to operate just as smoothly as you want yours to, so why not work together?

Some specific issues with database servers have to do with the timely defragmentation of the databases and scaling hardware and software resources so that higher-demand databases have access to more storage and network bandwidth than lower-demand databases.

Navigation

Navigation depth is something that can be controlled by SharePoint designers. The deeper and more complex the navigation scheme, the more resources are required for SharePoint to fetch navigation menus. On top of that, users are more likely to become confused and unable to quickly find the pages, lists, and libraries they need. If this is a problem in your environment, you can ask the SharePoint designers responsible for navigation to limit the level and depth of navigation menus, keeping them within manageable parameters. What you consider “manageable” will depend on your specific technical and corporate requirements and standards.

Network Traffic

With the use of today’s high-speed corporate LANs, we have a tendency to think that we won’t experience bandwidth issues. Consider, though, how incredibly dependent SharePoint is on SQL Server and on databases. An untold number of calls go between SharePoint and SQL Server each time something changes on a site or site collection. Multiply that usage by thousands or tens of thousands of users, and you get an idea of just how much traffic is being exchanged between SharePoint and SQL Server. Now imagine that people are using the same network segments that SharePoint uses to communicate with its databases.

The way around this problem is to isolate the network traffic between SharePoint and SQL Server. This can be accomplished either by constructing a separate physical network for this purpose or by using VLANs.

Managing General Optimization

You can perform a number of tasks to optimize SharePoint performance. One such task is to minimize the use of application pools in SharePoint. The more application pools SharePoint must support, the more active memory on the server machines that is consumed. If you minimize the creation of service applications, you conserve memory resources.

One principle is to use a specific application pool or pools for customizations and to consolidate all other service applications under one application pool. It’s also recommended by Microsoft to use a separate application pool for the administrative virtual server and to have all other virtual servers share another, single application pool.

Create as few application pools as possible and then, when creating new applications, only use pools for specific purposes, consolidating as many services into as few pools as possible. Exercise 14-1 will show you an example. You will need to be a farm administrator to complete this task.

You have already created similar service applications by performing the exercisesin Chapter 4, “Configuring Service Applications,” but this time, you have a better understanding of which application pool to select when creating a service application and why.

A general performance killer is the Repair Automatically feature found in the Health Analyzer rule definitions. Unless you find this feature for a rule to be absolutely necessary, you should turn it off to optimize performance. You saw how to configure these rule definitions in Exercise 13-4. Exercise 14-2 will provide a refresher with optimization in mind.

You also have the option of improving SharePoint performance by adjusting the resource throttling settings for web applications using Central Administration. For example, the default settings run HTTP throttling every five seconds. Exercise 14-3 shows you how to change this and other performance settings.

If you are using multiple content databases in your SharePoint environment, you want to set each web application to use a specific database so that every time you create a site collection within a web application, you are using the desired content database. Depending on the size of your environment, access to resources, and your topological plan, you’ll want either to use one content database for all site collections or to logically organize the site collections and specific content databases based on the size and priority of the site collection. If you need to see which content databases are associated with which web applications, perform the steps in Exercise 14-4. You will also see the instructions for how to set a default database server for your SharePoint environment.

SharePoint content consists of two primary sources: static files for the SharePoint root directories located in C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Shared14 for 2010 and dynamic data stored in the content. At runtime, SharePoint merges the page contents from both sources and then transmits them inside an HTTP response to the requesting user. Internet Information Services (IIS) versions 6 and 7 both contain various mechanisms for reducing the payload of HTTP responses prior to transmitting them across the network. Adjusting these settings can reduce the size of the data transmitted to the client, resulting in shorter load times and faster page rendering.

Exercise 14-5 shows you how to enable and adjust IIS compression to optimize SharePoint web page load times. When you enable static content compression, the default settings will only compress files larger than 2,700 bytes and will create a per-application pool disk space limit of 100 MB.

Optimizing Cache Settings

In Chapter 3, “Configuring SharePoint Farm Environments,” you performed a number of the basic configuration tasks for Remote BLOB Storage. In this section of this chapter, you’ll see how to configure cache settings for not only Remote BLOB Storage but also cache profile settings and object cache settings. Most of these adjustments are made in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) is an optional feature for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and is designed to let you move a storage of binary large objects (BLOBs) from a database server to commodity storage solutions. This comes in handy if your SharePoint content databases grow beyond about 4 GB. You can optimize access to BLOB storage by configuring a disk-based BLOB cache or a web application. Exercise 14-6 shows you the steps in this process. You must belong to the Administrators group on the local computer to successfully perform this task.

When you change and save the web.config file and then close Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, IIS automatically cycles, causing a brief interruption in SharePoint services. This is an expected behavior, and it’s best to perform this task after business hours or when SharePoint site collection usage will be light.

Output caching allows web pages to be cached based on user profiles so the amount of a cache and how long web data is cached varies depending on the user account. Output caching can be configured at the site collection and web application levels. Exercise 14-7 shows you how to perform this task at the site collection level, which is necessary before doing so at the web application level.

You must be an administrator for the desired site collection to complete this task.

These are the minimal actions required to enable output caching profiles. There are other specific settings you can manipulate in this interface.

Configuring Page Output Cache ProfileSettings for a Web Application

If you configure the page output cache profile settings for a web application, all site collections hosted by the web applications will use those settings. The process of configuring these settings is performed using the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and is substantially similar to Exercise 14-6; however, the majority of attributes must be overridden by entering a custom parameter specified in the .NET Framework Class Library. Although this may be within the skill set of some readers, it is beyond the scope of a SharePoint administrator and will not be covered here.

Configuring Object Cache Settings for a Web Application

Object caching settings can also be set at the site collection level, and this feature is turned on by default. In the site collection, you can change the settings for object caching on the Site Settings page under Site Collection Administration by clicking Site Collection Object Cache and then, on the subsequent page, editing the settings according to your preferences.

To perform this task for a web application using Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, follow the steps in Exercise 14-6 to open the web.config file for the desired web application, find the line <ObjectCache maxSize="100" />, and change the value in megabytes to the desired value. Save the file when finished and close the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, understanding that web applications services will be momentarily interrupted when the manager recycles.

A number of parts of the SharePoint publishing feature make queries, and the responses to those queries are cached in the object cache. The querying process is linked to the user account making the query. To optimize cache performance such as hit rate, queries must be tailored to the rights and abilities of specific user accounts such as whether the user has rights to see draft items.

For query results to get to the object cache, when a user makes a query, the query is actually not made in the user’s name, but rather two queries are made by system entities: one by the Portal Super User account, which includes draft items in the results, and another by the Portal Super Reader account, which includes only published items. Once the query is made, the object cache checks the access control list (ACL) to determine the user account access and returns one of the two results in the object cache based on the user account’s rights. Although this process increases the number of results returned, it conserves memory used by the cache.

For the object cache functionality to be used effectively, you must create two users, one for the Portal Super User account and one for the Super User Reader account to be used in place of the SharePoint systems accounts. The default system accounts used for Portal Super User and Portal Super Reader will not return the desired results.

To effectively use the object cache, the SharePoint administrator must perform two actions. First, object cache user accounts must be created in Central Administration that will be used in place of the default system accounts. Second, the new user accounts must be added to the web applications using Windows PowerShell. Exercise 14-8 will show you how to create the accounts in Central Administration. You must belong to the Farm Administrators group to successfully complete this task.

Before closing the dialog box, you should make a note of how the two account names are displayed in the User Name column, since the display strings can be different depending on whether you are using claims authentication to access the web application.

Adding Super User Accounts to a Web Application

The process of adding users to the web application involves creating a file with a .ps1 extension, such as SetSuperUsers.ps1. To do so, open a blank Notepad document and type the following code:

Make sure you change the sample values to your production values as in the following example:

Save the document with a name such as SetSuperUsers.ps1. Remember, the filename must have the .ps1 extension. Make sure you know the location of the directory to which you have saved this file.

Configuring Mobile Administration

One of the new features in SharePoint Server 2010 is the ability to interact with SharePoint from a mobile platform. Although mobile sales staff and other “road warriors” have been in existence for years, connecting with their primary offices via VPN, within the past few years, cell phones and similar devices have become widely used as tools for the enterprise. Many websites are being optimized for handheld devices. SharePoint is no different.

In SharePoint, mobile users can now subscribe to alerts on SharePoint changes using Short Message Service (SMS) so that said alerts are sent directly to their mobiles when these changes occur. In some ways, this works similarly to outgoing email alerts, which existed in prior versions of SharePoint, but mobile alerts are more akin to texting than emailing.

Another important piece to connecting to SharePoint via a mobile device is that SharePoint is commonly implemented as an intranet rather than Internet service, making it particularly difficult to contact using a mobile phone away from the main office location.

As a SharePoint administrator, you have the option of configuring a mobile account for a specific web application or for the entire farm. How wide or narrow you create your scope can be defined by priority concerns. For instance, if you configure a mobile account for the entire farm, anyone in the farm can subscribe to such alerts. This would be ideal if you needed to send organization-wide alerts to users, but you may want to organize alerts by web application, containing information to specific groups. Before you begin to configure a mobile account in SharePoint, you must make sure that the server farm account has access to the Internet so alerts can be sent. You must also acquire the root certificate for the service provider’s HTTPS web address.

Importing a Root Certificate

As just mentioned, you won’t be able to configure a mobile account until you import the root certificate for your service provider’s HTTPS web address and then create a trusted root authority. You must perform this task using Windows PowerShell. To do this, you must belong to the Farm Administrators group and the local Administrators group on the computer running PowerShell. You must also be a member of the SharePoint_Shell_Access role for the required database.

To acquire the root certificate, open Windows PowerShell as an administrator and type the following command at the prompt, substituting the actual path to the root certificate file for the sample value in the following code string:

Here’s an example of what the command might look like in production:

Next in PowerShell, run the following command to create the trusted root authority, replacing the sample name for the actual name of the trusted root authority:

Here’s a sample of what the command could look like in production:

Use only the root certificate to execute this task, not any of the other certificates that are present.

Configuring a Mobile Account

Now you’ll be able to configure a mobile account. The task can be performed using either Central Administration or Windows PowerShell. Exercise 14-9 will show you the correct procedure for Central Administration. You will need to be a member of the Farm Administrators group to successfully complete this task.

To perform the same task using Windows PowerShell, execute the following command at the PowerShell command prompt, substituting the URL for Central Administration for <WebApplicationUrl>, the URL to the server providing the SMS service for <ServiceUrl>, the username you received from the SMS service provider for <UserID>, and the password you received from the SMS service provider for <Password>.

Here’s an example of what this command might look like in production:

If you want to use the pipeline operator, a sample of the command as it might look in production is as follows:

When entering the URL for the SMS service provider, make sure you use HTTPS instead of HTTP.

The previous two tasks configured a mobile account for the entire server farm. Exercise 14-10 shows you how to configure a mobile account for a web application.You will need to belong to the Farm Administrators group to complete this task.

In Windows PowerShell, you use the same commands as you did for configuring a mobile account for the server farm except for the WebApplication switch; you enter the URL for the web application instead of Central Administration. Everything else is the same.

To retrieve information about the mobile account, you must use Windows PowerShell. For the WebApplication switch, if you need this information for the server farm, enter the URL for Central Administration. If you need this information for a web application, enter the URL for the web application.

A production example for the farm server scenario looks like this:

A production example for the web application scenario looks like this:

To delete a mobile account for the server farm, in Central Administration, go to System Settings and click Configure Mobile Account under E-mail And Text Messages (SMS). On the Mobile Account Settings page, remove all the entries from all the available fields and then click OK.

To delete a mobile account for a web application, in Central Administration, click Manage Web Applications under Application Management. On the Manage Web Applications page, on the Ribbon under General Settings, click Mobile Account. On the Web application Text Message (SMS) Service Settings page, remove all entries from all the fields and then click OK.

Configuring Mobile Views

Although mobile views are configured by default for most lists and libraries, they are not configured for customized lists or libraries or those that were created in previous versions of SharePoint and imported into SharePoint Server 2010. Mobile views allow users on mobile phones to be able to view a list or library in a manner optimized for handheld devices. Exercise 14-11 shows you how to configure mobile views for a list.

To perform the same task for a library, navigate to the desired library. In Library Tools, click the Library tab on the Ribbon. Then follow the same steps you did in Exercise 14-11. Not all lists and libraries will display the identical configuration options, so you can use only those presented.

The previous exercises all assume that the alerts will be sent to mobile users from a company’s intranet, which is normally accessible only within the organization’s network infrastructure. There’s an additional task if these alerts are to be sent from a SharePoint site normally accessible from the Internet and published across a firewall using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

As a SharePoint administrator, you must specify a cross-firewall access zone to be used to generate external computer and mobile URLs in the alert messages sent to mobile users. This allows users sent externally accessible URLs when they click the E-mail A Link button on the Ribbon.

To configure a cross-firewall access zone, follow the steps in Exercise 14-12.

Summary

In this chapter, you learned a variety of techniques you can use to optimize SharePoint access and performance:

• General, high-level optimization principles
• Specific optimization practices, such as HTTP throttling
• Optimizing cache settings for RBS and other features
• Configuring mobile access so that users can receive SharePoint alerts via their handheld devices

Exam Essentials

Understanding How to Enable and Configure Features to Optimize SharePoint Performance Be able to demonstrate how to enhance SharePoint performance using techniques such as HTTP throttling, application pool consolidation, and content database optimization.

Administering Mobile Accounts for SharePoint Interaction with Mobile Devices Know how to enable mobile accounts so that users can receive SharePoint alerts via SMS, configure mobile accounts for the server farm and web applications, and enable mobile views of lists and libraries.

Review Questions

1. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You are reviewing a high-level optimization plan. Of the following activities, which one is most likely to be performed by a SharePoint designer?

A. Configuring object caching

B. Database optimization

C. Controlling navigation depth

D. Network throughput optimization

2. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You want to modify your use of application pools to reduce memory usage. Of the following, which is most likely to accomplish your goal?

A. Create an application pool for each site collection.

B. Create an application pool for each web application.

C. Create one application pool for customizations and another for all site collections.

D. Create one application pool for Central Administration and another for all other websites.

3. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. A number of applications and features within SharePoint, including the Health Analyzer rule definitions, consume a great deal of resources and should be disabled if not absolutely necessary. Of the following, which health definition rule or feature should be used most sparingly?

A. Application Pools Recycle When Memory Limits Are Exceeded

B. Databases Used By SharePoint Have Fragmented Indices

C. Repair Automatically

D. Search—One Or More Property Databases Have Fragmented Indices

4. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You currently are modifying resource throttling for a web application. The Resource Throttling dialog box offers a wide variety of features that allows you to manage resources consumed by a web application. Of the following, which feature should you specifically turn off if not required?

A. Daily Time Window for Large Queries

B. List Unique Permissions Threshold

C. Backward-Compatible Event Handlers

D. HTTP Request Monitoring and Throttling

5. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You want to optimize content database usage. Of the following, which is the appropriate option for optimizing content database usage based on size and priority of site collections?

A. Use one content database for all site collections.

B. Logically organize the site collections to content databases for resource usage.

C. Create one content database for each site collection.

D. Create no more than 100 site collections per content database.

6. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You want to reduce the size of the payload of HTTP responses from SharePoint sites to decrease loading times. Of the following, where should you perform the task that will achieve this goals?

A. In Central Administration

B. On the main page of the relevant site collection

C. In the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager

D. In Windows PowerShell

7. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You want to optimize BLOB cache settings by modifying a particular file for a web application. What is the name of this file?

A. blob.config

B. blob.cache

C. web.config

D. web.cache

8. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You want to optimize access to BLOB storage by configuring a disk-based BLOB cache. Of the following, what is the correct tool to use to accomplish this task?

A. In Central Administration

B. On the main page of the relevant site collection

C. In the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager

D. In Windows PowerShell

9. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You are currently configuring BLOB cache settings in a particular configuration file. After finding the BlobCache line in the file, which parameters can you modify as part of the optimization process? (Choose all that apply.)

A. attribute

B. enabled

C. location

D. path

10. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You have just finished modifying a configuration file to optimizing BLOB cache settings, and you have saved the file and closed the tool you used to make your changes. What is the expected behavior that will immediately follow?

A. All database connections will reset, causing a momentary interruption in access to site collections.

B. Internet Information Services (IIS) automatically recycles, causing a momentary interruption in access to site collections.

C. All output caching web pages reset, causing a momentary interruption of access to all SharePoint web pages on all site collections.

D. To save your configuration settings, you must reboot the server on which SharePoint Central Administration resides.

11. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You want to modify web page output caching so that anonymous users receive cached pages when they revisit a page in SharePoint they recently visited and authenticated users access updated pages each time they visit any page. Where must you configure output caching for a site collection?

A. In Central Administration

B. On the main page of the relevant site collection

C. In Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager

D. Using Windows PowerShell

12. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You want to modify web page output caching so that anonymous users receive cached pages when they revisit a page in SharePoint they recently visited, and authenticated users access updated pages each time they visit any page. Where must you configure output caching for a web application?

A. In Central Administration

B. On the main page of the relevant site collection

C. In Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager

D. Using Windows PowerShell

13. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You are currently enabling output caching for a site collection, and you want to set the Anonymous Cache Profile for anonymous users. What are the available options for this profile? (Choose all that apply.)

A. Anonymous Access

B. Public Internet

C. Extranet

D. Intranet

14. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You are currently configuring object caching, and in order for the proper query results to be returned to users, you must create two user accounts to take the place of SharePoint systems accounts. Of the following, which two accounts must you create? (Choose two.)

A. Portal Super Access account

B. Portal Super Cache account

C. Portal Super Reader account

D. Portal Super User account

15. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You are currently configuring object caching. You must first create two user accounts to be used for object caching and then add those accounts to a web application. Of the following, what is the most correct procedure?

A. You must create the object cache user accounts in Central Administration and add them to a web application using Windows PowerShell.

B. You must create the object cache user accounts in Windows PowerShell and add them to a web application using Central Administration.

C. You must create the object cache user accounts and then add them to a web application using Central Administration.

D. You must create the object cache user accounts and then add them to a web application using Windows PowerShell.

16. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of optimizing SharePoint performance. You have just finished configuring object caching by creating the necessary object cache user accounts and adding them to a web application. What must you do to apply your changes?

A. Restart the server on which Central Administration resides.

B. Restart the SQL server on which the relevant content database resides.

C. Restart Internet Information Services (IIS).

D. Click OK at the end of the configuration process in Central Administration.

17. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of configuring mobile accounts in SharePoint so users can receive SharePoint alerts on their mobile phones. Before you begin to configure a mobile account, what tasks must you perform? (Choose two.)

A. The server farm account must have access to the intranet.

B. The server farm account must have access to the internet.

C. You must acquire the root certificate for your SMS service provider’s HTTP web address.

D. You must acquire the root certificate for your SMS service provider’s HTTPS web address.

18. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of configuring mobile accounts in SharePoint so users can receive SharePoint alerts on their mobile phones. You can configure a mobile account at different levels in SharePoint. Of the following, which are valid levels at which you can configure a mobile account? (Choose all that apply.)

A. The server farm

B. A web application

C. A site collection

D. A list or library

19. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of configuring mobile accounts in SharePoint so users can receive SharePoint alerts on their mobile phones. To configure a mobile account using Windows PowerShell, what command must you use?

A. Set-SPMobileAlertsAccount

B. Set-SPMobileMessagingAccount

C. Set-SPSMSAccount

D. Set-SPSMSMessagingAccount

20. You are a SharePoint administrator for your organization, and you are in the process of configuring mobile accounts in SharePoint so users can receive SharePoint alerts on their mobile phones. The relevant SharePoint site is one that can be accessed from the Internet rather than an intranet that is accessible only from within the company. What additional step must you perform to enable a mobile account?

A. Configure Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway for SharePoint.

B. Configure a cross-firewall access zone for mobile accounts in Central Administration

C. Open the required port in the firewall using Windows PowerShell.

D. No additional task is required.

Answers to Review Questions

1. C. SharePoint designers can control the level and complexity of the navigation scheme in SharePoint for ease of use and to conserve resources. As an administrator, you will configure object caching; the DBA or other database server staff will be in charge of database optimization, and the IT/network infrastructure staff will implement network throughput modifications.

2. C. To conserve memory resources, use as few application pools as possible, creating one for all of your customizations and using one more for all your site collections.

3. C. For any given rule, you should disable the Repair Automatically feature unless the use of this feature is absolutely necessary in order to conserve resources.

4. C. The other options are all features that are used to conserve resources. Only use the Backward-Compatible Event Handlers feature if you expect to use legacy event handlers. If not, turn it off to conserve resources.

5. B. If you need to organize content database usage based on the site and priority of site collections, logically organize site collections that are larger or that receive more traffic to specific content databases and smaller, less utilized site collections to different databases.

6. C. You must use the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager to enable and adjustIIS compression.

7. C. To configure the BLOB cache, you must locate and modify the web.config file in order to optimize access to BLOB storage for disk-based BLOB cache or a web application.

8. C. Use the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager to locate and access the necessary file to specify a directory for the cache.

9. B, C, D. You must change the enabled attribute from false to true to enable BLOB caching, set the location attribute to indicate the location of the BLOB cache directory, and modify the list of file extensions in the path attribute to include or exclude the desired files for the cache. The attribute option is bogus. You can also change the maxSize attribute to change the size of the cache in gigabytes.

10. B. When you change and save the web.config file and then close Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, IIS automatically cycles, causing a brief interruption in SharePoint services. This is an expected behavior, and it’s best to perform this task after business hours or when SharePoint site collection usage will be light.

11. B. Navigate to the main page of the desired site collection, and make the adjustments starting on the Site Settings page.

12. C. The process of configuring these settings is performed using the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. The majority of attributes on the required configuration file must be overridden by entering a custom parameter specified in the .NET Framework Class Library.

13. B, C, D. The Public Internet option is used for anonymous access. The other valid option is Disabled.

14. C, D. The Portal Super Reader account can view published information in the query return but not draft information. The Portal Super User account can read both published and draft information. The other two options are bogus.

15. A. Object Cache user accounts can be created only in Central Administration, but they can only be added to a web application using Windows PowerShell.

16. C. At the end of adding super user accounts to a web application, you must restart Internet Information Services (IIS).

17. B, D. Before you begin to configure a mobile account in SharePoint, you must make sure that the server farm account has access to the Internet so alerts can be sent. You must also acquire the root certificate for the service provider’s HTTPS web address.

18. A, B. You can configure a mobile account so that alerts are sent farm-wide or web application–wide. They cannot be configured at the site collection, list, or library levels.

19. B. For creating a mobile account at any level, such as farm-wide or web application-wide, you must use the Set-SPMobileMessagingAccount command followed by the required parameters.

20. B. If alerts are to be sent from a SharePoint site normally accessible from the Internet and published across a firewall using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), you must configure a cross-firewall access zone for mobile accounts in Central Administration.