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Mastering the 70-667 Exam - Foundations and Installation

The 70-667 Exam, officially titled "TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring," was a cornerstone certification for IT professionals specializing in SharePoint. It served as a validation of the skills and knowledge required to install, configure, manage, and troubleshoot a SharePoint 2010 environment. Passing this exam granted the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification, a credential that demonstrated proficiency in a specific Microsoft technology. While the 70-667 Exam and SharePoint 2010 are now retired, the foundational concepts it covered remain remarkably relevant for anyone working with modern collaboration platforms, including SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365.

This series will explore the key domains of the 70-667 Exam, not as a direct study guide for an obsolete test, but as a historical and conceptual journey. Understanding how SharePoint farms were built from the ground up provides invaluable context for appreciating the architecture and administration of today's cloud-based services. The principles of farm topology, service applications, security, and maintenance that were critical for the 70-667 Exam have evolved, but their conceptual DNA is clearly visible in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. This knowledge provides a deeper understanding of the platform's inner workings.

Core Concepts of SharePoint 2010 Architecture

At the heart of any SharePoint 2010 deployment, and a central topic for the 70-667 Exam, was the farm architecture. A farm is a collection of one or more SharePoint servers that work together to provide a set of services. This architecture was typically multi-tiered, consisting of distinct server roles. The most common roles were the Web Front End (WFE), the Application Server, and the Database Server. Understanding the responsibility of each role was essential for designing a scalable and resilient SharePoint environment, a key skill tested by the exam.

The Web Front End servers were responsible for handling user requests, rendering web pages, and serving content. They were the primary point of contact for end-users interacting with SharePoint sites. The Application Servers, on the other hand, ran the resource-intensive service applications, such as Search, User Profile Service, and Managed Metadata. Offloading these services to dedicated application servers prevented them from impacting the performance of the WFEs. Finally, the Database Server, typically running Microsoft SQL Server, was the backbone of the farm, storing all content, configuration data, and service application data in a series of databases.

Preparing the Environment for Installation

A successful SharePoint 2010 installation, a critical task covered by the 70-667 Exam, began long before the setup executable was run. It required meticulous preparation of the server environment. This included ensuring all hardware and software prerequisites were met. Servers needed to be running a 64-bit version of Windows Server, typically Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2. The underlying hardware also had to meet specific requirements for CPU cores, RAM, and disk space, which varied depending on the intended size and usage of the farm.

Beyond the base operating system, a number of software dependencies had to be in place. This included specific versions of the .NET Framework, Internet Information Services (IIS) with particular roles enabled, and other Windows components. SharePoint 2010 also required a compatible version of Microsoft SQL Server, such as SQL Server 2008 R2, to host its databases. A crucial part of the preparation process involved creating dedicated service accounts within Active Directory. These accounts were used to run the farm services and application pools, following the principle of least privilege for enhanced security.

The Installation Process: A Retrospective

The actual installation of SharePoint 2010, a practical skill for any 70-667 Exam candidate, was a multi-step process. It began with running the SharePoint Products and Technologies Preparation Tool, often referred to as the prerequisite installer. This tool would automatically check for, download, and install most of the required software dependencies, significantly simplifying the setup process. It was the essential first step before the main installation could proceed. Any failures at this stage had to be resolved before moving forward, often involving manual installation of a missing component or fixing a server configuration issue.

Once the prerequisites were successfully installed, the main SharePoint setup process could be initiated. During this phase, the installer would prompt for a product key and ask the administrator to choose an installation type. A "Standalone" installation was designed for single-server development or evaluation environments and used SQL Server Express. For any production environment, a "Server Farm" installation was the correct choice. This option allowed the administrator to specify the database server and credentials for the farm account, preparing the server to either create a new farm or join an existing one.

Post-Installation with the Farm Configuration Wizard

After the core binaries were installed on the server, the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard would launch automatically. This wizard was the final and most critical step in creating a new farm or adding a server to an existing one. Its primary function was to create the central configuration database, which stores all the settings for the farm. It also created the SharePoint Central Administration content database and installed the Central Administration website, the main hub for managing the farm. This wizard handled the complex tasks of registering services and setting initial security configurations.

While the Farm Configuration Wizard provided an option to walk through the creation and configuration of key service applications, many experienced administrators, and those studying for the 70-667 Exam, would often choose to skip this part. The wizard offered a streamlined setup, but it made certain default choices that were not always optimal for a production environment. For instance, it might use the farm account for services, which was not a security best practice. Therefore, a common approach was to use the wizard only to create the farm itself and then manually provision and configure each service application with specific settings and dedicated service accounts.

Configuring Service Accounts and Managed Accounts

A deep understanding of service accounts was fundamental for both real-world administration and for success on the 70-667 Exam. Using dedicated Active Directory accounts for different SharePoint functions was a critical security and manageability best practice. The primary account was the Farm Account, also known as the database access account. This highly privileged account was used for communication between SharePoint and the SQL Server and for running the SharePoint Timer Service. Its password was managed by SharePoint, and it should never be used for any other purpose.

SharePoint 2010 introduced the concept of Managed Accounts to simplify the administration of service account passwords. Administrators could register service accounts from Active Directory within SharePoint Central Administration. This allowed SharePoint to manage password changes for these accounts automatically. When creating a new application pool for a web application or a new service application, the administrator could simply select one of these pre-registered managed accounts. This prevented service outages that could occur if a password was changed in Active Directory but not updated within SharePoint's configuration.

Scripting Installation with PowerShell

While Central Administration provided a graphical interface for most configuration tasks, PowerShell was the tool of choice for automation, repeatability, and advanced configuration. SharePoint 2010 was the first version to fully embrace PowerShell with the introduction of the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell. For anyone preparing for the 70-667 Exam, having a solid grasp of key PowerShell cmdlets was essential. PowerShell could be used to perform nearly every administrative task, from creating a farm to managing site collections.

For installations, PowerShell offered a powerful alternative to the GUI wizards. Using scripts, an administrator could create a new configuration database, provision Central Administration, and register managed accounts in a consistent and documented manner. This was particularly valuable when building multiple environments, such as development, testing, and production, as it ensured that all environments were configured identically. The New-SPConfigurationDatabase and Install-SPHelpCollection cmdlets were just a few examples of the tools available for scripting the initial farm setup, a practice that has become even more critical in modern infrastructure-as-code paradigms.

Transitioning Knowledge to SharePoint Online

Although the 70-667 Exam focused on an on-premises product, the knowledge gained is not lost in the modern cloud era. Understanding how a SharePoint 2010 farm was constructed provides a mental model for how SharePoint Online operates, even though the underlying infrastructure is managed by Microsoft. The concepts of web front ends and application servers help explain how the service scales to meet demand. The reliance on SQL Server underscores the importance of the database layer, which is still present, just abstracted away from the administrator's view.

The principles of planning and configuration remain the same. While you no longer run a prerequisite installer, you still need to configure your Microsoft 365 tenant settings. Instead of creating service accounts in Active Directory, you manage permissions and roles in Azure Active Directory. The act of creating a web application and site collection in SharePoint 2010 is conceptually similar to provisioning a new modern Team Site or Communication Site in SharePoint Online. The fundamental architecture and the problems it solves have evolved, but the core principles tested in the 70-667 Exam provide a solid foundation for mastering its modern successors.

The Foundation of Content: Web Applications

In the world of SharePoint 2010, and a core component of the 70-667 Exam curriculum, the web application was the top-level container for all content. A web application is fundamentally an Internet Information Services (IIS) website configured to work with SharePoint. It acts as a logical unit that binds together several key components: an IIS site with a specific IP address, port, and optional host header; an application pool that provides a dedicated worker process; at least one content database; and a set of authentication and authorization policies. All SharePoint sites and site collections exist within the context of a web application.

Understanding this structure was vital for administrators. For example, creating multiple web applications on the same farm allowed for logical separation of content with different needs. One web application might host the company intranet with Windows Authentication, while another could host an extranet for external partners using Forms-Based Authentication. Each web application would run in its own application pool, providing process isolation so that a problem in one would not affect the others. The web application was the primary boundary for many farm-level security and governance settings, making its proper configuration a critical administrative skill.

Creating and Configuring Web Applications

The creation of a web application was a fundamental administrative task that was guaranteed to be covered in the 70-667 Exam. This process was typically performed through SharePoint Central Administration. The "New Web Application" page presented a detailed form with numerous configuration options. The administrator had to define the IIS settings, including the port number and an optional host header, which allows multiple websites to be hosted on the same IP address and port combination. Choosing a host header was a common practice for creating vanity URLs for different departments or projects.

Other critical settings included selecting the security configuration. This involved choosing the authentication provider, such as claims-based or classic mode, and the specific authentication type, like NTLM or Kerberos. The administrator also had to specify an application pool for the new web application. They could either use an existing one or create a new one, which required providing a name and selecting a managed account to run it. Finally, the settings for the primary content database, including the database server name and the database name itself, were configured on this page, establishing the initial storage for the web application's content.

Understanding Claims-Based Authentication

SharePoint 2010 marked a significant architectural shift with the introduction of claims-based authentication as the preferred model, a key topic for the 70-667 Exam. In the previous version, SharePoint relied on "classic mode" authentication, which was tightly coupled with Windows identities. Claims-based authentication decoupled SharePoint from a specific authentication type. Instead of a user presenting a Windows token, they presented a set of "claims," which are statements about the user, such as their username, email address, or group memberships. An identity provider, trusted by SharePoint, is responsible for issuing these claims.

This model offered far greater flexibility. It standardized the way SharePoint handled identity, whether it came from Windows Active Directory, a forms-based system using a SQL database, or a standards-based identity provider like ADFS. When creating a web application, choosing claims-based authentication was the recommended practice. It not only enabled the use of different authentication types but was also a prerequisite for using certain features, including various Business Connectivity Services and Search functionalities. Understanding how to configure SharePoint to trust an identity provider was a crucial skill for administrators.

Extending Web Applications to Different Zones

A powerful feature related to web applications, and a common scenario for 70-667 Exam questions, was the ability to "extend" a web application to a different zone. Extending a web application created a new IIS website with its own unique URL and authentication settings, but it pointed to the exact same content databases as the original web application. This meant users could access the same content through different URLs, each with its own security configuration. SharePoint defined five logical zones: Default, Intranet, Extranet, Internet, and Custom.

A typical use case was to have an intranet site accessible to internal employees via the Default zone using integrated Windows Authentication for a seamless single sign-on experience. The same web application could be extended to the Extranet zone with a different URL that was exposed to the internet. This extranet zone could be configured to use Forms-Based Authentication, allowing external partners to log in with credentials stored in a separate user database. This provided secure access to the same collaborative content without granting partners access to the internal Active Directory domain.

Managing Content Databases

Every web application required at least one content database to store its data. This included all documents, list items, pages, and permissions for the site collections contained within it. As an administrator studying for the 70-667 Exam, it was critical to understand how to manage these databases effectively to ensure performance and scalability. While a web application could theoretically have a single massive content database, this was not a recommended practice. Microsoft provided guidance on supported database sizes, and exceeding these limits could lead to performance degradation and difficulties with backup and restore operations.

Best practice dictated creating multiple content databases for a single web application. This allowed the administrator to distribute the storage load and keep individual database sizes manageable. When creating new site collections, the administrator could choose which content database to place them in. SharePoint would, by default, distribute new sites among the available databases. Administrators could also set database capacity warnings and maximum size limits to proactively manage growth. The ability to add, detach, and reattach content databases using Central Administration or PowerShell was an essential maintenance skill.

The Building Blocks: Site Collections and Sites

While a web application provided the container, the actual content was organized into site collections and sites. A site collection is a hierarchical group of sites, managed as a single unit, with its own set of owners and permissions. It has a single top-level site and can contain many subsites organized beneath it. Each site collection exists within a specific content database associated with its parent web application. For the 70-667 Exam, understanding the relationship between web applications, content databases, and site collections was fundamental. A single web application could contain thousands of site collections.

Within a site collection, the top-level site and its subsites provided the framework for collaboration. Each site could have its own lists, libraries, pages, and unique permissions if needed, although they inherited permissions from the parent site by default. The site collection acted as a security and administrative boundary. For example, features like the recycle bin and usage reports operated at the site collection level. The site collection administrator had full control over all content within that collection but not over other site collections, providing a powerful model for delegated administration.

Creating Site Collections and Applying Quotas

The process of creating a new site collection was another routine task for SharePoint administrators. This was done from the Central Administration site, where the administrator would select the parent web application and specify a URL for the new collection. A title and description were provided, but the most important choices were the site template and the primary site collection administrator. The template determined the initial structure and features of the site, with common options being Team Site, Blank Site, or Publishing Portal.

To control storage growth and prevent uncontrolled consumption of disk space, administrators could apply quota templates to site collections. A quota template defined a maximum storage limit and a warning level. For example, a template might set a warning at 8 gigabytes and a hard limit at 10 gigabytes. When the warning level was reached, an email notification would be sent to the site collection administrator. Once the maximum limit was reached, users would be prevented from uploading new content. Applying quotas was a key governance practice tested in the 70-667 Exam.

Self-Service Site Creation

To empower users and reduce the administrative burden of manually creating every site, SharePoint 2010 provided a feature called Self-Service Site Creation (SSSC). When enabled on a web application, SSSC allowed users with the appropriate permissions to create their own site collections on demand through a simple web form. This was particularly useful in large organizations where departments or teams needed to quickly spin up new project sites without waiting for the IT department. The 70-667 Exam would expect candidates to know how to configure and manage this feature.

While SSSC was beneficial for user agility, it also introduced the risk of "site sprawl," where a large number of unused or abandoned sites could accumulate, consuming resources and cluttering the environment. Therefore, proper governance was essential. Administrators could configure SSSC to require a secondary contact, automatically apply a specific quota template, and place all self-service sites on a dedicated URL path or even in a dedicated content database. This made it easier to monitor and manage the sites created through this feature, balancing user empowerment with administrative control.

Modern Equivalents in SharePoint Online

The concepts of web applications and site collections from the 70-667 Exam era have direct parallels in modern SharePoint Online. The web application layer, however, has been largely abstracted. In Microsoft 365, you don't create or manage web applications; Microsoft handles the underlying IIS and infrastructure for the entire service. All customers share a massive, multi-tenant web application infrastructure that Microsoft scales and secures. The concept of zones is also obsolete, as modern authentication methods and Azure AD Conditional Access provide more granular and powerful ways to control access.

The site collection, however, remains a central concept, though it has been rebranded. Every modern Team Site or Communication Site you create in SharePoint Online is technically its own site collection. The old model of having a top-level site with many subsites has been replaced by a "flat" architecture where independent site collections are connected through a hub site. This provides greater flexibility and avoids the rigid, inherited navigation and permissions of the past. Quotas still exist, but storage management is much simpler in the vast storage pools provided by Microsoft 365.

Core Security Principles in SharePoint 2010

A comprehensive understanding of security was arguably the most critical knowledge area for the 70-667 Exam. The security model in SharePoint 2010 was built on foundational principles, starting with the distinction between authentication and authorization. Authentication is the process of verifying a user's identity, proving they are who they say they are. Authorization is the process of determining what an authenticated user is allowed to do. SharePoint handled authorization through a rich, hierarchical permission system based on the principle of least privilege, which states that users should only be granted the minimum permissions necessary to perform their job functions.

This system was applied to a hierarchy of securable objects. At the highest level, you could secure the entire farm. Below that, security could be applied to web applications, site collections, individual sites, lists and libraries, folders, and even individual list items or documents. By default, permissions were inherited from the parent object in this hierarchy. For example, a subsite would inherit the permissions of its parent site. This inheritance model simplified permission management for common scenarios, but understanding how and when to break this inheritance was a key administrative skill.

Configuring Authentication Providers

To pass the 70-667 Exam, an administrator needed to be proficient in configuring SharePoint's authentication providers. As discussed previously, SharePoint 2010 heavily favored claims-based authentication for its flexibility. The most common provider in corporate environments was Windows Authentication, which leveraged Active Directory. Within Windows Authentication, administrators had to choose between NTLM and Kerberos. NTLM was simpler to set up but had limitations, most notably the "double-hop" problem where credentials could not be passed from one server to another, which impacted services like Excel Services or BCS when connecting to backend data sources.

Kerberos was the more secure and capable protocol that solved the double-hop issue, but it was significantly more complex to configure. Setting up Kerberos required creating Service Principal Names (SPNs) in Active Directory and configuring delegation settings. An SPN is a unique identifier for a service instance. For SharePoint, SPNs had to be correctly registered for the accounts running the web application pools and service applications. Incorrect SPN configuration was a common source of authentication failures, making it a frequent troubleshooting topic for SharePoint administrators.

An Introduction to Forms-Based Authentication

Forms-Based Authentication, or FBA, was another key authentication method that a 70-667 Exam candidate needed to understand. FBA provided a way to authenticate users who were not in Active Directory. It presented users with a web login form where they could enter their credentials. These credentials would then be validated against a backend user store, which was most commonly a Microsoft SQL Server database or an LDAP directory. This made FBA an ideal solution for extranet scenarios where external partners or customers needed access to SharePoint sites.

Configuring FBA was a manual process that involved editing the web.config files for both the web application and the Central Administration site. The administrator had to add connection strings to point to the user database and specify the membership and role providers responsible for validating credentials and retrieving user roles. While powerful, this manual configuration process was error-prone, requiring careful attention to detail in the XML configuration files. Properly setting up FBA demonstrated a deep level of technical proficiency with both SharePoint and IIS.

The SharePoint Permission Model

Once a user was authenticated, SharePoint's authorization system determined what they could see and do. This system was built on three core components: users/groups, permission levels, and securable objects. The central component was the permission level, which was a named collection of individual rights. SharePoint provided default permission levels like "Read," which included rights to view pages and open items; "Contribute," which added rights to add, edit, and delete items; and "Full Control," which granted all possible rights. Administrators could also create custom permission levels to meet specific business requirements.

Instead of assigning permission levels directly to individual users, the best practice was to assign them to SharePoint groups. SharePoint provided default groups like Visitors, Members, and Owners, which were pre-configured with the Read, Contribute, and Full Control permission levels, respectively. Administrators would then add individual users or Active Directory groups into these SharePoint groups. This approach dramatically simplified management. If a user's role changed, an administrator only had to move their account from one group to another, rather than reconfiguring individual permissions across multiple sites.

Managing Permissions and Inheritance

The concept of permission inheritance was a double-edged sword and a frequent topic for 70-667 Exam scenarios. By default, a subsite inherits all permissions from its parent site, a list inherits from the site it is on, and an item inherits from its list. This is efficient; you can set permissions at the top of a site collection, and they automatically flow down to all content. However, business needs often require specific content to have different security. For these cases, an administrator had to break permission inheritance.

When inheritance was broken on an object, such as a specific document library, it created a copy of the parent's permissions at that moment. The administrator could then modify these permissions without affecting the parent. For instance, they could remove the default Members group and add a new group with Read permissions, effectively making the library read-only for most users while the rest of the site remained collaborative. While necessary, breaking inheritance added complexity to permission management, as the security model was no longer uniform.

Fine-Grained Permissions: A Cautionary Tale

SharePoint 2010 provided the ability to apply permissions at a very granular level, down to a single list item or document. This is known as using fine-grained permissions. While this flexibility seems powerful, its overuse was a well-known anti-pattern that administrators studying for the 70-667 Exam were warned against. Securing individual items breaks inheritance, and when this is done for a large number of items within a single list or library, it can cause significant performance degradation.

Each time a user accesses a list, SQL Server has to perform a complex check against the access control list (ACL) for each item to determine which ones the user is allowed to see. When thousands of items have unique permissions, this process becomes very slow. The best practice was to always manage permissions at the highest possible level, such as the site or library. If item-level security was absolutely necessary, the recommendation was to design the information architecture to move those items into separate lists or libraries that could be secured as a whole.

Web Application and Farm-Level Security Policies

Beyond the standard permission model within site collections, SharePoint 2010 offered higher-level security controls. One of these was the Web Application User Policy. This feature, configured in Central Administration, allowed a farm administrator to grant or deny specific permissions to users or groups across every site collection within a web application. This policy overrode any permissions set within the sites themselves. For example, a user policy could be created to give a service account, like the search crawler account, "Full Read" access to all content within a web application, ensuring it could index everything.

Another use case for user policies was to explicitly block a user. By adding a user to the policy with "Deny All" permissions, that user would be completely blocked from accessing any content in the web application, regardless of any other permissions they might have been granted within a specific site. This provided a powerful, centralized kill switch for user access. Farm-level security was primarily managed by adding users to the Farm Administrators group, which granted them ultimate control over the entire SharePoint environment through Central Administration.

Security Evolution from 70-667 Exam to Microsoft 365

The security principles from the 70-667 Exam era have evolved significantly with the move to Microsoft 365. The foundation is no longer Active Directory on a local domain controller but Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Authentication is handled by Azure AD, which supports modern protocols and advanced features like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and passwordless sign-in. Instead of configuring Kerberos and FBA in web.config files, administrators now configure authentication through the Azure portal, using features like Conditional Access to enforce security policies based on user, location, device, and risk.

The core SharePoint permission model of groups and permission levels still exists within sites, but it is now layered within the broader Microsoft 365 security context. For example, a modern Team Site is connected to a Microsoft 365 Group, and membership in the group grants access to the SharePoint site, along with a shared mailbox, calendar, and Planner. This provides a more holistic and user-centric approach to collaboration security. The focus has shifted from securing individual on-premises servers to managing identity and access in a cloud-first, zero-trust world.

The Importance of Proactive Farm Maintenance

Managing a SharePoint 2010 farm was not a "set it and forget it" task. A key competency for any administrator, and a major focus of the 70-667 Exam, was the ability to proactively maintain and monitor the health of the environment. A well-maintained farm is reliable, performs well, and is less likely to experience unexpected outages. Proactive maintenance involved a regular cadence of tasks, including reviewing logs, checking server health, applying updates, and performing backups. It required a deep understanding of SharePoint's built-in tools for health and monitoring.

This approach contrasted sharply with a reactive one, where an administrator only acts when something breaks. By proactively monitoring the system, an administrator could often identify and resolve potential issues before they impacted end-users. For example, monitoring database growth could alert an administrator to a site collection that is nearing its quota, allowing them to take action before users are prevented from uploading documents. The 70-667 Exam tested knowledge of the tools and best practices that enabled this proactive stance, ensuring certified professionals could maintain stable and performant SharePoint environments.

Using the SharePoint Health Analyzer

The primary tool for proactive monitoring in SharePoint 2010 was the Health Analyzer. This was an integrated feature accessible through Central Administration that ran a series of predefined health rules against the farm on a scheduled basis. These rules were designed to detect common issues related to security, performance, configuration, and availability. For example, a rule might check if the farm's service accounts are also local administrators on the servers, which is a security risk. Another rule might check for low disk space on servers running the search index.

When a rule detected a problem, it would generate a health report, which would be displayed on the Central Administration homepage. Each report included an explanation of the problem, identified the failing servers or services, and often provided a link to an article with detailed remediation steps. Administrators could also run rules on-demand and edit the schedule for when rules were run. Being able to interpret Health Analyzer reports and act on their recommendations was a fundamental skill for day-to-day administration and a core topic for the 70-667 Exam.

Configuring Diagnostic and Usage Logging

When troubleshooting an issue, detailed logs are an administrator's best friend. SharePoint 2010 generated extensive diagnostic logs, also known as Unified Logging Service (ULS) logs or trace logs. These text-based logs captured detailed information about events occurring within the farm. To pass the 70-667 Exam, administrators needed to know how to configure diagnostic logging. This included setting the path where log files were stored, controlling the amount of disk space they could consume, and specifying how many days of logs to retain.

A critical aspect of logging configuration was managing the level of detail. Administrators could select which categories of events to log (e.g., Search, General, Database) and set a logging severity for each, from less severe events like "Verbose" to critical ones like "Unexpected." Setting everything to Verbose could generate massive log files and impact performance, so it was typically only done for short periods during active troubleshooting. SharePoint also provided usage logging, which collected data about how the platform was being used, such as which sites were being visited and what search queries were popular, providing valuable analytics for administrators.

Monitoring Performance with Timer Jobs

Timer jobs are the unsung heroes of a SharePoint farm. They are background processes that run on a schedule to perform essential system maintenance and administrative tasks. There were hundreds of built-in timer jobs in SharePoint 2010, responsible for everything from synchronizing user profiles to running health checks and processing analytics data. The 70-667 Exam required candidates to be familiar with the role of timer jobs and how to manage them. This was done through the Timer Job Definitions and Timer Job Status pages in Central Administration.

From these pages, an administrator could see all the timer jobs in the farm, view their schedules, and check their history to see if they had run successfully. If a key feature like search alerts was not working, one of the first places to check was the status of the relevant timer job. While most timer jobs were set to optimal schedules by default, administrators had the ability to change the schedule for certain jobs or run them immediately if needed. Understanding the function of key timer jobs, like the various Health Analysis jobs, was crucial for farm maintenance.

Native Backup and Restore Strategies

A comprehensive backup and restore strategy is a critical component of any disaster recovery plan. SharePoint 2010 provided a set of native tools for this purpose, and proficiency with them was essential knowledge for the 70-667 Exam. The platform offered several layers of backup and restore capabilities. The most comprehensive option was a full farm backup, which captured everything: all content databases, service application databases, and the farm configuration database. This provided a complete snapshot of the farm that could be used to restore the entire environment to a new set of servers.

Beyond the all-or-nothing farm backup, SharePoint also offered more granular options. An administrator could perform a backup of an individual site collection, which was useful for migrating a single collection or recovering it from a specific point in time. It was also possible to export an entire site, list, or document library to a file. However, it was important to know the limitations of these tools. For instance, exporting a list did not preserve its workflows. For many organizations, these native tools were supplemented by more advanced third-party backup solutions.

Performing a Farm Backup and Restore

Executing a farm backup was a straightforward process using either Central Administration or the Backup-SPFarm PowerShell cmdlet. The administrator would specify a shared folder on the network where the backup files would be stored. It was crucial that both the SharePoint Timer Service account and the SQL Server service account had read and write permissions to this location. The backup process could be run immediately or scheduled to run at a later time, typically during off-peak hours to minimize performance impact on the farm.

Restoring a farm was a more complex operation and was generally only performed in a disaster recovery scenario where the original farm was completely lost. The restore process required building a new SharePoint farm with the same version and patch level as the one that was backed up. Then, using Central Administration or the Restore-SPFarm cmdlet, the administrator could restore the configuration and content from the backup files. This would overwrite the new farm's configuration, effectively recreating the old farm on the new hardware.

Granular Backup and Unattached Content Database Recovery

One of the most significant improvements in SharePoint 2010's recovery capabilities, and a valuable topic for the 70-667 Exam, was the ability to perform a recovery from an unattached content database. This feature allowed an administrator to take a backup of a content database from SQL Server, restore it to any SQL instance, and then connect to it from SharePoint Central Administration without actually attaching it to the farm. From there, the administrator could browse the contents of the database and export a specific site collection, site, list, or library.

This was a game-changer for granular recovery. Previously, to recover a single deleted document, an administrator might have had to restore an entire farm to a separate environment, a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. With unattached content database recovery, the process became much faster and simpler. An administrator could simply use a recent SQL backup of the content database to quickly extract the specific content that was needed, providing a powerful tool for responding to common data loss scenarios.

Monitoring Performance and Capacity Planning

Beyond checking the SharePoint-specific health rules, a diligent administrator also needed to monitor the performance of the underlying servers. This meant using tools like Windows Performance Monitor to track key performance indicators (KPIs) for the SharePoint servers and the SQL Server. Important counters to watch included CPU utilization, available memory, and disk I/O latency and queue length. Consistently high values for these counters could indicate a performance bottleneck that needed to be addressed, perhaps by adding more hardware resources or optimizing a specific SharePoint service.

This performance data was also crucial for capacity planning. By tracking trends over time, such as the growth rate of content databases or the number of search queries per second, administrators could predict when the current infrastructure would reach its limits. This allowed them to proactively plan for expansion before performance began to degrade for users. The 70-667 Exam expected candidates to understand these operational aspects of running a SharePoint farm, which extended beyond the SharePoint software itself to the underlying Windows and SQL infrastructure.

From On-Premises Monitoring to the Service Health Dashboard

The world of maintenance and monitoring has been transformed by the shift to Microsoft 365. The hands-on, server-level monitoring that was a core part of the 70-667 Exam is no longer the responsibility of the customer's IT team. Microsoft manages the entire underlying infrastructure, including the servers, storage, and networking. They are responsible for monitoring hardware health, applying patches, and ensuring the overall performance and availability of the service.

The administrator's role has shifted from monitoring servers to monitoring services. The primary tool for this is the Microsoft 365 Service Health Dashboard. This portal provides real-time information on the status of all Microsoft 365 services, including SharePoint Online. If there is a service degradation or outage, Microsoft will post updates and advisories here. The focus is now on monitoring service health, tracking license usage, analyzing user adoption reports, and managing security and compliance settings for the tenant, a very different but equally critical set of responsibilities.

The Service Application Architecture of the 70-667 Exam

One of the most significant architectural changes in SharePoint 2010, and a central theme of the 70-667 Exam, was the introduction of the Service Application Framework. In previous versions, services like Search or user profiles were tightly coupled to a specific Shared Services Provider (SSP), which was a monolithic entity. The new framework decoupled these services into independent, pluggable units called service applications. Each service, such as the Managed Metadata Service or the Business Connectivity Service, could be deployed, managed, and configured separately.

This architecture provided tremendous flexibility. An administrator could choose exactly which services to run in their farm, and they could run multiple instances of the same service with different configurations. For example, they could have two separate Search service applications, each crawling a different set of content. Furthermore, these service applications could be published and shared across multiple SharePoint farms, allowing for centralized management of services in a large enterprise. Understanding how to create, configure, publish, and connect to service applications was a critical skill for any SharePoint 2010 administrator.

Configuring the Managed Metadata Service

The Managed Metadata Service was a flagship feature of SharePoint 2010 and a key topic for the 70-667 Exam. It introduced robust capabilities for creating and managing taxonomies (formal, hierarchical classification systems) and folksonomies (collaborative tagging by users). This service provided a central location, called the Term Store, for managing hierarchical collections of terms, known as term sets. For example, an organization could create a term set for all its department names or product categories.

Once defined in the Term Store, these managed terms could be used for tagging content across the entire farm through a new "Managed Metadata" site column. This ensured that content was tagged consistently, which dramatically improved search and discovery. Users were presented with a standardized list of terms to choose from, eliminating issues with typos or variations in spelling. The service also supported enterprise keywords, allowing users to apply their own tags to content in a more free-form manner. Configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application and managing the Term Store were essential administrative tasks.

Deploying and Managing the User Profile Service

The User Profile Service Application (UPA) was the engine for social and personalization features in SharePoint 2010. It was responsible for aggregating user profile information from various business systems, most commonly Active Directory. The 70-667 Exam required a deep understanding of this service because it was notoriously complex to configure correctly. The UPA stored information about each user, such as their department, manager, skills, and contact details, which were then used to power features like My Sites, people search, and audience targeting.

The most challenging aspect of the UPA was User Profile Synchronization. This was the process of importing profile data from directories like Active Directory and, optionally, writing data back. Setting up a synchronization connection required precise configuration of service accounts, permissions on Active Directory, and filtering rules. Failures in the synchronization service were common, and troubleshooting them required a methodical approach. Despite its complexity, a functioning UPA was crucial for creating a rich, socially-enabled user experience in SharePoint.

Configuring SharePoint Search Service

Search is a fundamental component of any collaboration platform, and the Search Service Application in SharePoint 2010 was a powerful and highly configurable engine. For the 70-667 Exam, administrators needed to understand the search architecture and how to manage it. The architecture consisted of several components, including crawl components, which were responsible for crawling content sources, and query components, which handled user search requests. These components could be scaled out across multiple servers in the farm to handle large amounts of content and high query loads.

Key administrative tasks included creating and configuring content sources. A content source defined a starting address for the crawler to begin indexing, such as the farm's own SharePoint sites, external websites, or file shares. The administrator would also configure crawl schedules to determine how frequently the content was re-indexed. Another important task was managing crawled and managed properties. This allowed administrators to customize the search experience by making custom document properties, like "Project Code," available for searching and refinement in the search results.

Business Connectivity Services Configuration

Business Connectivity Services (BCS), the successor to the Business Data Catalog (BDC) from the previous version, was the focus of many questions on the 70-667 Exam. BCS provided a framework for connecting SharePoint to external data sources, such as SQL databases, web services, or other line-of-business systems. It allowed this external data to be surfaced within SharePoint as if it were native SharePoint content. For example, a list of customers from a CRM system could be displayed and even edited directly within a SharePoint site.

Configuring BCS involved several steps. First, an administrator or developer had to create an external content type using SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio. This object defined the connection details and the data structure of the external system. This definition was then imported into the Business Data Connectivity service application's metadata store. From there, administrators could create external lists in SharePoint sites that were based on these external content types. Securely managing credentials for accessing the external system, often using the Secure Store Service, was another critical piece of the configuration puzzle.

Managing Content Types and Site Columns

While service applications managed the farm's capabilities, content types and site columns were the fundamental tools for managing the information within a farm. This was a core information architecture topic for the 70-667 Exam. A site column is a reusable definition for a column that can be used in any list or library within a site collection. For example, you could create a site column called "Document Status" with choices like "Draft," "In Review," and "Approved."

A content type is a reusable collection of settings for a specific category of content. It bundles together a group of site columns, a document template, and other settings like information management policies or workflows. For instance, an "Invoice" content type could be created that includes columns for "Invoice Number," "Vendor," and "Amount," along with a specific Word template. By using content types, organizations could ensure that similar types of content were managed consistently across all their sites, which was crucial for governance and records management.

Information Management Policies and Auditing

To help organizations comply with legal and corporate regulations, SharePoint 2010 provided Information Management Policies. These policies, a key governance feature for the 70-667 Exam, allowed administrators to define rules for how content was managed throughout its lifecycle. Policies could be applied to content types or directly to lists and libraries. A common use case was creating a retention policy. For example, a policy could be configured to automatically declare a document as a record seven years after it was created and then move it to a records archive.

Another critical policy feature was auditing. When auditing was enabled, SharePoint would log specific events related to the content, such as who viewed an item, who edited it, or who changed its permissions. This provided a detailed audit trail that could be used for compliance and security investigations. Administrators could configure which events to audit and could also set up audit log trimming to prevent the logs from consuming excessive database space. These features provided powerful tools for managing the content lifecycle and meeting organizational governance requirements.

Conclusion

The 70-667 Exam may be retired, but the concepts it covered are far from obsolete. The Service Application Framework laid the groundwork for the microservice-based architecture of the modern cloud. The Managed Metadata Service still exists today, and the Term Store in SharePoint Online is a direct descendant, providing the same critical taxonomy services for Microsoft 365. The User Profile Service has evolved into the Microsoft 365 user profile, powered by Delve and the Microsoft Graph, which aggregates profile information on a much grander scale.

SharePoint Search has become Microsoft Search, a unified search experience that spans SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 services. Business Connectivity Services' mission of connecting to external data is now largely fulfilled by the Power Platform, where Power Apps and Power Automate provide powerful, low-code tools for integrating with hundreds of external systems. The principles of content types and information management remain best practices for any well-governed SharePoint Online environment. The technology has changed, but the fundamental business problems and the architectural patterns used to solve them, which were at the core of the 70-667 Exam, endure.

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