Side effect of setting content databases to Offline
It is pretty common for people to want a large department, such as Marketing, to have their own content database, or they may want to limit a content database to just a few site collections. I have seen two different ways of accomplishing this and no real description of the negative side effects of one of the methods, so here is what I have experienced.
First the recommended method is setting the limit in the content database’s properties, and the second method is disabling the content database when it has reached the desired threshold (marking it as Offline). At first both solutions will work equally well, as when a content database is Offline, no new site collections will be added to the database, but new content and sub sites created in a site collection that is already stored in the database will continue to be stored in the disabled database.
A seemingly unrelated issue that is very hard to troubleshoot however will eventually occur if you use the Offline/Disable method, so don’t use it!
Each site collection has it’s cache of user information for it’s members called the User Information List. It primarily saves the person’s account name, name and job title and it is supposed to be updated to match the information in the User Profiles via a timer job. When a Content Database is marked as being Offline however this timer job will skip over the site collections in the Offline databases and not update the User Information List. So, eventually you will have a listing of users with the incorrect job titles (due to promotions) or names if they are ever changed. We all know that Executives and Managers want others to know their lofty job titles, so this is a potentially big issue.
To correct this, turn the Content Databases back online, and run the following:
List the databases that are out of date:
stsadm -o sync -listolddatabases <n>
Delete the Synchronization information for the out of date databases (IT WILL NOT DELETE THE DATABASES)
stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases
Then Force the Databases to Re-Sync
stsadm -o sync
The Databases should now re-sync and update the information. The timer job will then forever keep up with it. Alternatively you could skip the stsadm commands and the timer job would eventually run and pickup the online content databases, but I like a little instant gratification now and again.
Hi Steve
Interesting post. I didn’t know about this side eeffect! Do you know whether this is true for SharePoint 2010?
While I haven’t tested it I believe it applys to 2010 as well. I would like to know for sure though if you find out.