SharePoint Health Analyzer Rules

Project Description

The SharePoint Health Analyzer Rules project is a collection of configurable SharePoint health analyzer rules that extends out of the box Health Analyzer system by adding many important additional rules that help to ensure your SharePoint environment is kept in optimal condition.

The project delivers the following health analyzer rules in a simple to install WSP package:

Category	Name / Description	Type
Availability	Content Database Backup Warns when a content database has not been backed up within a configurable number of days. The default number of days before warning a content database backup is required is 14.
	Farm Backup Warns when a farm level backup has never been taken.
	Farm Backup History Warns when farm backups have not been taken for a configurable number of days. The default number of days before warning a farm backup is required is 7.
	Service is a Single Point of Failure A configurable rule that warns when a service is only running on a single server in a multi server farm. The rule supports a configurable list of services that should be ignored by this health check.
Configuration	Content Database Size Warns when a content database has exceeded a configurable size in GB. By default is this set to 200GB.
	Web Application Debug Mode Warns when one or more Web Applications are in ASP.NET debug mode.
	No Alerts For Problems and Solutions List Advises when an alert on the central administration ‘Review problems and solutions’ has not been created.
	Verify Rules Configuration Validates the rules configuration settings all contain valid XML fragments.
	SQL Aliases Warns when a SQL server connection is defined that does not make use of a SQL connection alias
Performance	ULS Location Warns when the ULS logs are written to the same drive as the SharePoint binaries.
	Search Index Location Warns when the search index location is set to use the same drive as the SharePoint binaries.
	Assemblies Are Compiled in Debug Mode Warns when solutions are deployed that contain assemblies that are compiled in Debug mode. The rule supports a configurable list of solutions to be ignored by this health check.
	Max Degree of Parallelism Warns when a SQL instance has not been optimally configured for parallel query execution plans
	Warn Auto Growth Settings A configurable rule that warns when a content database is still using the default auto growth settings rather than following the recommendations regarding tuning of the auto growth settings for each content database.
	Warn Database Capacity A configurable and repairable rule that warns when content databases are filling up and can be used to schedule a database expansion during a specified time window thus potentially avoiding database auto-growths during peak usage hours. Further details on this rule can be found here: http://sharepintblog.com/2012/03/05/autogrowth-of-sharepoint-content-databases-an-automated-solution/
Security	Excessive Uniquely Permissioned Items Warns when there are an excessive number of uniquely permissioned objects in a site collection. The number of uniquely permissioned items that trigger this rule is configurable. The default value is set to 10,000.
System	Farm Account is Used Interactively Warns when the farm account is used for interactive login.
	Farm Guid Translation Provides feedback regarding translating the Farm Guid for all installed language packs.

Configuration

Unlike the out of the box health rules, many of the rules in this project support configurable parameters that will allow you to ‘tune’ the rules to your environments. For example, the Content Database Backup rule has a configuration parameter that can be used to adjust the maximum number of days that a content database can remain not backed up before the warning rule is triggered.

The rule configurations are stored in a list in central administration called ‘Health Analyzer Rule Configurations’. For each rule that supports a configuration, a list item will exist that contains the name of the rule and the rule settings in an XML string:

You can adjust the configuration for each rule by editing the Settings XML string. Changes to the rule configurations will be picked up the next time the rule runs.

Deployment

Manually

The rules are deployed as a farm solution package named ‘sphealth.sharepoint.healthrules.wsp’. Once the solution has been deployed to the farm, a farm feature is available (Central Administration > System Settings > Manage Farm Features) that once activated installs the rules.

Activate the ‘SPHealth Custom Health Analyzer Rules’ feature to install the rules in the farm. To verify the rules are installed, navigate to the central administration ‘Health Analyzer Rule Definition’ list and look for rules decorated with the ‘NEW’ tag, for example:

PowerShell

If you wish to use PowerShell to install and deploy the solution, the following commands can be used:

Add-SPSolution -LiteralPath <path to the solution file>\SPHealth.SharePoint.HealthRules.wsp
Install-SPSolution -Identity SPHealth.SharePoint.HealthRules.wsp -GACDeployment
Install-SPFeature -Path SPHealth.SharePoint.HealthRules_FarmDeployRules
Enable-SPFeature -Identity 35831514-897a-4a10-9134-697934307417

Enjoy.