Thing that should or should not be done to SharePoint admin account

Here is a short list of most common scenarios that people should be aware of regarding SP admin account on AD:

1. When the account initially is created, set "Password never expires" account property to true. This is not a regular user account hence it should comply with service account settings rules. If the password changes, reset passwords to reflect the new password in the Application pool identity.

2. If you are not happy with you "spappadmin" or "spadmin" (fill in the blanks) farm admin account name, DO NOT DELETE IT AND CREATE NEW ONE with the desired name.  just rename this account in AD, this will make sure that the SID remains the same and the security settings do not have to be recreated for this account EVERYWHERE.

this applies to any other account in AD, but admins do know it.

3. if your farm admin account without password change suddenly looses connection to the DB and in the log you see account "[blank]" could not be authenticated to the SQL.  most likely your account got corrupted in AD.

Another scenario, Farm is still functioning fine, but when you try to connect to the SQL remotely using farm admin account connection fails.

You will still be able to access you farm since the trusted connection had been established before the AD account got corrupted, but you will not be able to establish any new connections with it.

In this case just recreate admin account in AD and go through the pain of recreating security settings or changing SIDs.

Enjoy :-)

Technorati Tags: SharePoing administrator,Farm administrator account

Shared Services Provider app pool

When you create Shared Services provider in your SharePoint Farm and want to assign already existing app pool make sure that the name of this application pool is exactly the same as SSP name. If the name is not the same then Sharepoint will create new app pool with SSP name even though the new SSP will use the app pool that you assign to it. Why I think it's important is the amount of app pools will directly impact the performance of system.

Just examine you IIS and delete this unused app. pool.

Technorati Tags: SSP application pool,sharepoint,IIS