Run the Best Practices Analyzer Tool for Windows SharePoint Services

Applies To: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Topic Last Modified: 2008-04-21

Before you perform this procedure, confirm that:

You have read the topic Manage farm administration settings (Windows SharePoint Services).

Important

The account that you use to run the Best Practices Analyzer Tool must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer and must be a member of the following fixed server roles in SQL Server: dbcreator, sysadmin.

Run the Best Practices Analyzer Tool

Use this procedure to run the Best Practices Analyzer tool.

Run the Best Practices Analyzer tool from the command line

To download the tool, click Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the 2007 Microsoft Office System (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=83335&clcid=0x409).
Save and extract the file BestPracticeAnalyzer.exe.

Open a command-line window and change to the directory to which you extracted the files in step 2.

To run the tool on the local server, type the following: sharepointbpa.exe -cmd analyze
To run the tool from a server not attached to the server farm, type the following: sharepointbpa.exe -cmd analyze -substitutions SERVER_NAME <ServerHostingCentralAdminWebApp>

where ServerHostingCentralAdminWebApp is the name of the server that hosts the SharePoint Central Administrator Web site.

The following table describes the commands you can use with the Best Practices Analyzer tool.

Command	Description
quiet	Runs the Best Practices Analyzer tool in quiet mode. Output is written to sharepointbpa.exe_MM_DD_YYYY_HH_MM_SS_MS.log.
analyze	Performs analysis against the specified XML file.

The following table describes the parameters you can use with the Best Practices Analyzer tool.

Parameter	Value	Required?	Description
rulefile	A valid rule file, such as \\server\share\rules.xml	No	This file contains the set of rules to be run. If not specified, a default rule file located in the installation folder is used.
outputdirectory	A valid file share location, such as \\server\share	No	Specifies the directory where analysis report output files will be created. If not specified, all report files are saved to the installation folder.
reportformat	Valid values include: xml html	No	Specifies the format of the report that will be generated during an analysis run. Note If a format is not specified, then html is used.
substitutions	A valid variable name and its value, such as SERVER_NAME MyServer	No	The rule file uses pre-defined variables such as %SERVER_NAME% or %CONFIG_DB_CONN% with accompanying default values. You can override the default value used in the rule file by using the substitutions parameter, specifying which defined variable to substitute, and then providing the new value that overrides the default value for that variable. Note Variable names are case sensitive; the case of the variable specified in the rule file must match the case used on the command line.

After the analysis is complete, open the file sharepointbpa.report.htm in the directory to which you extracted the files in step 2.