SPDiag Diagnostics tab

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Topic Last Modified: 2015-03-09

In SPDiag version 2.0, you can use the Diagnostics tab to execute predefined rules that are based on the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) health model against a target SharePoint farm. The Diagnostics feature was designed to discover and report against common issues by checking all servers in the target SharePoint farm for compliance with best practices and acceptable operational limits, and to provide concise descriptions of problem sources and remedies.

There are four categories of rules: Security, Performance, Configuration, and Availability.

To execute a rule, select the check box next to the rule in the Rules Selection pane, and then click Run Selected Rules. You can run any combination of rules concurrently.

Note

Rules cannot be run when SPDiag is in offline mode, but you can view results from the last time rules were executed. The Run selected rules button will change to Show stored results when SPDiag is in offline mode.

Rules may collect data from different sources and in different ways. Rules may collect data from ULS and IIS log files in the SPDiag project database, or they may use the SharePoint Object Model and other realtime data sources. All rules that use the SharePoint Object Model are automatically executed during initial population of the Snapshot pane to ensure that a valid copy of the rule results is available when SPDiag is run in offline mode.

When you execute a rule or rules, the results are displayed in the Rule Results pane. You can click a rule result to display detailed information about the rule and the execution results. If a problem is discovered, the information pane displays information about how to resolve the issue, which may include links to the affected site collection, related service account names, links to KB articles and available hotfixes, and other information specific to the problem. You can also export rule results to an XML file by clicking Export Results above the Rule Results pane.

Each rule result displays the following information:

Title

The name of the rule.

The rule name indicates the issue the rule is intended to detect, and is not an indicator of the current condition of the farm.

Status

This row displays the status of a rule that has been run. Details about each status value are displayed in the Remedy information.

Possible values are:

  • Passed indicates that no problem was found, and the rule target is within acceptable operational limits.

  • Warning indicates that a potential issue exists, and that action should be taken to prevent a problem from occurring.

  • Failed indicates that a problem exists and must be resolved to ensure proper functioning of the farm.

  • Error indicates that the rule execution did not complete. An error status may be generated if there is an internal error condition, if a rule cannot be executed against one or more specific farm servers, or for several other reasons. Details about why the rule failed to execute are displayed in the Remedy information, along with the specific server or servers for which execution failed, if applicable.

    Note that an error status does not necessarily indicate that a problem exists in the SharePoint farm. However, you should resolve the condition that caused execution of the rule to fail, and execute the rule again to ensure that a problem does not exist.

Some rules can only result in Passed and Failed, while other rules can also show Warning and Error statuses.

Category

The category the rule falls under.

Explanation

Description of the rule and the issue it is intended to detect.

This information may be dynamically generated when the rule is executed, and may include detailed information about the target farm.

If the rule results in a Failed or Warning status, this section will contain the names of affected farm servers and information about the specific condition detected on those servers.

Remedy

Recommended actions for the rule.

This information may be dynamically generated when the rule is executed, and may include detailed information about the target farm.

If the rule results in a Failed status, this section will contain links to affected sites in the farm, account names, links to KB articles and other external content, and detailed procedures you can perform to resolve the issue or perform additional troubleshooting steps.

If the rule results in a status of Warning, Passed, or Error, there will be information in the Remedy row about actions you can take to prevent a problem in this area from occurring, or about what to do in the event of a problem.

Each SPDiag Diagnostics rule is compiled in its own DLL file stored in the SPDiag installation folder. Microsoft may release additional rule DLLs for use with SPDiag at its discretion.

The following sections provide detailed information about each category and related rules:

-
Security category

-
Performance category

-
Configuration category

-
Availability category

Security category

The Security category contains the following rules related to service account configuration and access privileges:

-
The server farm account should not be used for other services

-
One or more web applications do not have access to a content database

The server farm account should not be used for other services

This rule checks to see if the farm service account is also being used for other farm services, such as the identity of a Web application. If this condition is detected, the rule results in a Failed status. Possible states for this rule are Passed and Failed.

Execute this rule when you want to audit the security of your farm, or as a precaution when you are executing other rules. The server farm account is highly privileged and should not be used for any other services.

One or more web applications do not have access to a content database

This rule checks to see if the process identity account for each Web application in the target farm has db_owner privileges on the associated content database. If this condition is detected, the rule results in a Failed status. Possible states for this rule are Passed and Failed.

Execute this rule when site collections on a given Web application cannot write to the content database.

Performance category

The Performance category contains the following rules that check for common conditions that may impact farm performance:

-
Content Database is larger than 100GB and contains multiple site collections

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Large lists exist beyond recommendations

Content Database is larger than 100GB and contains multiple site collections

This rule checks to see if any content database containing multiple site collections is larger than 100GB. If this condition is detected, the rule results in a Failed status. Possible states for this rule are Passed and Failed.

Execute this rule when you want to identify content databases in your farm that may suffer performance issues due to their size.

Large lists exist beyond recommendations

This rule checks to see if there are any lists in the target farm that contain more than 2,000 items. If this condition is detected, the rule results in a Failed status. Possible states for this rule are Passed and Failed.

Execute this rule when you want to identify large lists in your farm. It is possible for lists to safely contain more than 2,000 items under certain conditions.

Configuration category

The Configuration category contains the following rules that check for configuration issues in either SharePoint or the server operating system:

-
TCP Chimney is enabled and out of date

TCP Chimney is enabled and out of date

This rule checks to see if the TCP chimney has not been updated to the recommended version on servers in your farm where it has been enabled. If this condition is detected, the rule results in a Failed status. Possible states for this rule are Passed and Failed.

Execute this rule when you want to find farm servers that need an updated version of TCP chimney. Instead of installing an update, you can also choose to disable TCP chimney on affected servers.

Availability category

The Availability category contains the following rules that verify that critical services are running, and check for adequate disk space on farm servers:

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SharePoint servers are low on free disk space

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SharePoint Timer Service is Offline

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SharePoint Tracing Service is Offline

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SQL servers are low on free disk space

SharePoint servers are low on free disk space

This rule checks all computers that are running SharePoint Products and Technologies and that are in the target farm are low on disk space. This condition is calculated using the following formulas:

FAIL: = FREESPACE < (Physical Memory * 2)

WARNING: = (Physical Memory * 2) < FREESPACE < (Physical Memory * 5)

PASS: = (Physical Memory * 5) < FREESPACE

If this condition is detected, the rule results in either a Warning or a Failed status, depending on the severity of the condition. Possible states for this rule are Passed, Warning, and Failed.

Execute this rule when you want to identify computers that require additional hard disk capacity, or need to be cleared of unused logs and other files.

SharePoint Timer Service is Offline

This rule checks all computers that are running SharePoint Products and Technologies and that are in the target farm to see if the SharePoint Timer Service is in a stopped state. If this condition is detected, the rule results in a Failed status. Possible states for this rule are Passed and Failed.

Execute this rule when you experience the following issues:

  • Timer jobs are not running.

  • Alerts and other e-mails generated by SharePoint Products and Technologies are not being processed as expected.

SharePoint Tracing Service is Offline

This rule checks all computers that are running SharePoint Products and Technologies and that are in the target farm to see if the SharePoint Tracing Service is in a stopped state. If this condition is detected, the rule results in a Failed status. Possible states for this rule are Passed and Failed.

Execute this rule when SPDiag cannot collect complete data from ULS logs on a server, or to ensure that ULS logging is enabled on farm servers.

SQL servers are low on free disk space

This rule checks to see if any computers that are in the target farm and that are running SQL Server are low on disk space using the following formula:

FAIL: = (FreeSpaceOfDisk < DatabaseSize * growth * 2)

If this condition is detected, the rule results in a Failed status. Possible states for this rule are Passed and Failed.