Experience Sitecore !

Sooner or later, you'll face it - the need for Sitecore version upgrade. However, each Sitecore instance is unique, there is no universal method for an upgrade, therefore each upgrade path is bespoke.

In the past 10 years working with Sitecore I have done numerous upgrades, resulted in Upgrade Planning Strategy and a set of Upgrade Tips and Tricks. These tips will help saving 2-3 times (!) on spent efforts, comparing to direct approaches.
Last but not the least. versions 10 and 10.1 brought new challenges and options of migrating existing solutions into containers. I will explain your options and propose best approach on this as well.

There is still no "silver bullet" for Sitecore upgrades, but following tips from my proposed session will eliminate risks, reduce efforts, and bring you confidence while upgrading your instances.

If being chosen, I will tell you about:

1. How to approach the whole instance upgrade
2. What are the upgrade time-wasters
3. Common and potential traps to avoid
4. Dealing with configuration upgrade, and why that's not as complicated as initially seems to be
   
5. Upgrading your solution codebase, including ORM (Glass etc.) and DI
6. Employing automations with PowerShell
7. Upgrading databases and how to approach
8. Even more automation to add
9. How to treat deprecated Sitecore APIs and obsolete code
10. Migrating forms from WFFM
11. Upgrading to version 10 containers and how 10.1 changes the upgrades
12. Testing your upgrade strategies
13. Going live
14. Summary of tips and findings from this session

There are sometimes cases of misunderstanding SSL or misinterpreting certain aspects of it. Therefore I made these FAQs from the very basics, which may clear out any confusion.

1. What is SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol used to encrypt and authenticate data transmitted between applications, such as a browser and a web server.

2. Where did SSL come from?

SSL version 1.0 was developed by Netscape in the early 1990s. But due to security flaws, it was never published. The first public release was SSL 2.0, which came out in February 1995. It was an improved version, but still, after a complete redesign, version 3.0 got approved.

3. What is its purpose?

The SSL protocol prevents attackers from reading and modifying transactions and messages between the browser and the server, for example, the transfer of credit card data, logins, etc. This ensures that all data remains confidential and protected.

4. What is TLS-certificate?

TLS stands for Transport Layer Security - the successor and improved version of SSL. It has more reliable encryption algorithms, but despite some similarities, it is considered to be a different standard.

5. What protocols and versions are used nowadays?

SSL, surprisingly, is not used now. As described above, there were 3 versions (1.0, 2.0, and 3.0) initially. Then based on SSL 3.0 they created the TLS 1.0 protocol. Then TLS got upgraded to 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 came out. Currently, only the last two are used.

6. How does an SSL certificate operate?

When the browser is connected to the site, an "SSL handshake" occurs ("handshake" keys are created), then cryptographic data is exchanged and, in the end, session keys are formed, on the basis of which the traffic is encrypted.

7. What types of certificates do exist and what's the difference between those?

• SSC (Self-Signed Certificate) - you can create yourself, but there is no trust
• SGC (Server Gated Cryptography) - for very old browsers
• SAN/UCC (Unified Communications Certificates) - multi-domain for MS Exchange
• Code Signing - for software signing
• Wildcard SSL Certificate - for domain and subdomains
• DV (Domain Validation) - confirms the domain name
• OV (Organisation Validation) - checking organization, address, and location
• EV (Extended validation) - gives the most protection

8. Are there any other types available?

Yes, for example, a Multi-Domain SSL certificate for several domains - does not require the purchase of certificates for each individual domain which simplifies administration. Code Signing certificates are designed to protect your code, content, and other files while they are being transferred online.

9. What data is stored inside of SSL certificate?

SSL certificate contains information:

• Version
• Serial number
• Search Algorithm ID
• Publisher name
• Validity period (no earlier than / no later)
• The subject of the certificate
• Subject's public key information
• Unique identifier of the publisher
• Subject unique identifier
• Add-ons
• Signature

10. Are SSL and HTTPS actually the same thing?

No, they aren't. 

SSL is a security protocol used to establish a secure connection between a web browser and a web server. 

HTTPS works as a sublevel between applications. HTTPS encrypts a regular HTTP message before sending and decrypts it during delivery.

11. How do I verify if a site uses SSL/HTTPS and it is correct?

Most browsers display a padlock and/or message at the address bar to mark secure connections protected by SSL / TLS certificates. The computer OS maintains a list of root certificates that make up a chain of trust.

12. What is a Chain of Trust?

When opening a site, the browser checks the entire chain of certificates, up to the root. If even one of the certificates is invalid, then the entire chain is also considered invalid.

12. Why SSL certificates are that expensive?

SSL certificates can be viewed as a kind of and insurance, they are expensive due to the guarantees that come with them. If something goes wrong, the SSL Certificate Provider will pay the affected end user an insurance premium.

13. Are there free certificates and how secure are they?

Free certificates do exist, perform the same function as paid ones, but usually have the lowest security level (DV), there will probably not be a guarantee for it, i.e. they are safe to some extent. When threatened, your site visitors will not be able to claim a guarantee. The most known free certificates provider is Let's Encrypt.

14. What is the way of buying a certificate?

If your hosting provider does not offer any free SSL certificates, or you need a different type of certificate, you can purchase your own certificate from a Certification Authority or a discounted reseller, which will be cheaper.

15. What is a Certificate Authority then?

Certificate Authority (CA) - an international organization that issues and is responsible for SSL certificates. CA verifies the domains and sources that authenticate organizations. Certification authorities are trusted by 99% of browsers.

16. What is the process for obtaining a certificate upon payment completion?

First, you generate a CSR and a private key. Then you send the CSR to the Certification Authority (CA) and get an archive with text/binaries for different types of web servers. Then you install it on your hosting or your server.

17. How do I use an SSL / TLS certificate?

1. Deploy your site on the hosting provider's server.
2. Create a CSR - Certificate Request, buy a certificate from a trusted CA or reseller.
3. Install SSL / TLS certificate in the hosting control panel or on the server.
4. Create a redirect to the protected version of the site - HTTPS.

• What it that used for?
  
• Why did we get it at all?
  
• Any concerns of using that?

1. Before 10.1 you’ve been given the initial set of OOB items upon the installation in the databases. That includes default templates, layouts, workflows and the rest of scaffolding items.

2. Now with 10.1 all these are supplied as the resources files outside of database. That's correct: all these items are no longer residing in the database. Yes, you still have them in your content tree as normal.

3. Does databases come empty? Not actually - there are just two entries for the default site (page) you normally first see after successful Sitecore instance installation, at the root of URL. It was decided not to put these into resources, as most customers delete that default home page anyway.

4. Are these resource read-only? Yes, Sitecore cannot write back into those resource files. Treat it as if they're written on CD but with an immediate access.

5. So does that mean I cannot modify default OOB items in Sitecore anymore? No, you actually can edit those as normal after "Unprotecting item" from a Content Editor ribbon. What happens in that case is Sitecore will take the delta between initial value stored in resource file and your changes and will store that delta having only changes you’ve done in the database. On item "consumption" the current state of item gets calculated from a resource file and that delta.

6. But you cannot delete these items. Sitecore prompts that it origins from the resource file therefore cannot be deleted. Still good, as leaves less potential for silly errors, anyway..

7. So where are these resource files located? They are based (quite predictably) within App_Data folder - App_Data\items\<DATABASE_NAME>\items.<DATABASE_NAME>.dat (by default).

8. What format are these resource files? Protobuff (Protocol Buffers) from Google. That is a surprisingly old format which is proven for a decade, at least.

9. How can I create my own resources?
Officially - you cannot. Well, it is technically possible but requires very deep dive into Protocol Buffers, raw database storage and investigating new data provider in Sitecore. But, Sitecore will likely start providing authors of popular modules with the toolset to create such a resources with an ease. So, let's say for SXA you will no longer need installing SPE + SXA packages yourself, instead you'll simply drop the resource files provided by SXA team underneath items folder, not even need to publish that afterwards.

10. Why no need publishing? That's because you copy the resource file for web database as well - items are alredy on the web database. Of course, all the items created by you will still need to get published.

11. But why at all Sitecore introduced that?
The main reason is to simplify the platform version upgrade process. The way update is done has changed.
You may have notice on the Sitecore download page, "Upgrade options" section have changed: instead of Sitecore Update Packages you now have Sitecore UpdateApp Tool that operates against each specific version you'd want to upgrade from. This tool will remove the default items for each particular legacy version and replace it with the resource files, Of course it also updates the schema with the changes which was already available.

12. The bigger reason for this change was "think containers - think ahead" approach. With such a change it becomes easier to upgrade version of Sitecore when running in containers: everything from the database since now is entirely user's custom data, and can be entirely copied to a never database, while version-specific-and-system-related items get updated by just a resource file substitute.

13. Also you may heard that Fast Query has been deprecated. That is exact reason why - if something isn't in the database, Sitecore cannot efficiently build the graph of the relationship for fast query

14. What is that data provider mentioned above?
That is a new one called CompositeDataProvider that inherited by DefaultDataProvider. The name composite assumes that one cares of merging items for Sitecore tree from both DB and the resources. In the configuration you specify it for an individual database under <database> section, you can also change the location for such resources by patching <filePath> node of <protobutItems> and overriding the location.

15. For the end-consumer of DataProvider (high level of stack) nothing changes as they still use DefaultDataProvider from their code. The changes occur at intermediate level and those happen to be internal for Sitecore.

16. That actually opens up a much wider potential for creating some intemediate-level providers to things other than ProtoBuf and SQL Databases: CRMs, DAMs, some other headless CMSs maybe. In any case this is very important and greatly welcomed step ahead for the platform!

Update: there is another great blog post from my MVP-colleague Jeremy Davis on that same topic, where he also tried drilling into these resurce files with ProtoBuff.Net library.

I am no working on troubleshooting claims for Sitecore and Active Directory. Just want to share this admin-folder page that helps me seing the AD mapping.

1. Save this file from my GitHub into your admin folder under Sitecore:

https://github.com/MartinMiles/Sitecore.Pages/blob/master/sitecore/admin/AD-Groups.aspx

2. Run it in browser and the result will shop up as something as below:

This year I am celebrating my fifth in a row year as a Sitecore MVP! I am very excited to announce that I have been named Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Sitecore for 2021 - that's the most prestigious award in whole ecosystem of Sitecore!

As a Technology MVP I am one of only 170 Sitecore professionals worldwide that have been awarded with an MVP title in this category. It really means a lot to me to be part of such a great community and to be able to contribute to sharing knowledge within this community.

Imagine a case where you need having two Sitecore instances in parallel next to each other. That may be cause by several legit reasons.

WHY?

For example, in my case I am moving (by reworking, not just migrating) some functional areas from one legacy instance to another that will features SXA. The legacy instance has been passed from one hand to another with numerous configuration artifacts, with a limited maintenance options, so that it becomes next to impossible to combine it with a brand new SXA stuff under the same roof. I know, that is doable in principle (and have done it myself before), but the amount maintenance and lack of knowledge / documentation on existing codebase makes its maintenance inappropriately risky and non-acceptable. Therefore, it becomes reasonable keeping them both in isolation, only uniting at the URL level (by rewriting a (sub)domain of a new instance into a primary domain's folder level).

Things you have to consider in that case would turn to almost doubling your infrastructure and related expense as well as checking if your Sitecore licence permits you that. Currently doing quite an unusual setup where both the above concerns give me a green light for going ahead and I am OK to run both instances in parallel (as on-prem solution).

Once agreed, the next thoughts come to Identity Server, where keeping two instances for that same activity does not make much sense. Keeping them both is exhaustive, but the good news is that one can re-use and existing ID Server for any number of instances (namely CM boxes). That comes to making two extra steps and below I will show you how-to:

HOW?

Let's assume we have two instances, called old and new. Old one has all the bits configured and running, so we only want re-using ID Server of old instance with a new instance.

1. Get rid ow ID Server for a new instance (you can stop its web app and app pool for now). That makes sure it is not used.

2. Find Sitecore.Owin.Authentication.IdentityServer.config file on a new instance (App_Config\Sitecore\Owin.Authentication.IdentityServer.config) and substitute identityServerAuthority variable to point to an existing ID Server

3. Now CM for a new instance knows which ID Server to talk through, but will ID Server accept those calls? The answer is no, unless you explicitly permit it doing so. Navigate to Config\production folder of old instance ID Server and add addition allowed CORS origin group into Sitecore.IdentityServer.Host.xml file. You will end up having smth. as below:

4. There is also Identity Server secret stored below at the same xml file, with a matching counterpart at App_Config\ConnectionStrings.config, so you also need updating config for new instance with the value from shared Identity Server:

5. Finally, recycle Identity Server application pool, then you're OK to test it. To make things more visual, I've recorded all the steps and testing it and sharing resulted video below:

Things to consider: as you're re-using existing old instance Identity Server, it will itself re-use all the assets. When it comes to Active Directory then it brings a desired result, but speaking about internal users (those normally you have got at Sitecore domain) - they will all get reused all as well, including admin. This comes because ID Server has a reference to core database (or security database extracted from the core) and that one belongs by default to an old instance too.

Hope you find this helpful!

There are a variety of Reverse Proxy solutions on the market. You may have already heard about some:

• Traefik (a container-aware one that is used by Sitecore)
  
• NGINX
• Envoy
• HAProxy

Major cloud providers also have their proprietary solutions:

• AWS Elastic Load Balancer
• Google Cloud Load Balancer
• DigitalOcean Load Balancer
• Azure Load Balancer

Every year I create a special Christmas postcard to congratulate my readers with a new oncoming year, full of changes and opportunities. Wish you all the best in 2021!

Few years ago, I made a walkthrough on setting up search for SXA-based website. However, it does not cover one important thing - out-of-the-box SXA uses two own indexes. As a good practice "one index - one core" it assumes you create two additional cores for each of those indexes.

It is also assuming that you may follow the same principle used for existing Sitecore Solr cores naming them <INSTANCEPREFIX>_sxa_master_index and <INSTANCEPREFIX>_sxa_web_index. But how do you create those cores?

I would like to introduce the easiest way achieving that using Sifon and its existing plugin for creating SXA Solr cores. All you need to do is updating plugins from public repository by executing "Plugins" - "Get Sifon plugins" command.

Once updated, you will see corresponding plugin at the menu:

And that's it! After a bit of waiting Sifon will complete installation of both new cores into a Solr instance references with the selected profile. You'll see the confirmation:

As it prompts, the cores have been created at the named location, managed schema has been also published but you still need to rebuild these new indexes. Sifon also has a plugin for that (fastest, but SPE Remoting must be enabled for that instance):

Alternatively, you can use Control Panel as you normally do:

Confirmation:

Hope this helps enjoying search with SXA which is really taken to the new level!

Cannot use a Hyper-V disk VHDX image you've been shared with? It can be your colleague's shared VM or a disk exported from Azure VM. Below I am going to describe the steps required to managed it properly.

The first thing one is likely to perform is either importing this disk or creating a new VM without disk and attaching it later. Despite it seems absolutely valid, that will end up with:

If you see the above error it means you've most likely created a VM of 2-nd Generation of Hyper-V, and attached you drive to it. That won't work, but why?

To answer this question let's define the difference between both generations. The main fact about Generation 1 is that it emulates hardware - all required hardware components must be emulated to make the virtual machine work! Special software that can imitate the behaviour of real hardware is included in Hyper-V, as a result the VM can operate with virtual devices. Emulated hardware (that behaves identical to real hardware) includes drivers to most operating systems in order to provide high compatibility.

Generation 1 the emulation works way less productive compared to native equipment and has numerous limitations. Among those:

• a legacy network adapter
  
• IDE controllers with only 2 devices could be attached to each
• MBR with max disk size of 2TB and not more than 4 partitions.
  

The 2-nd Generation uses:

• UEFI BIOS
• GPT support (without size and partitions legacy limit) and Secure Boot
• because of the above - VMs boot (and operate) much faster
• fewer legacy devices and new faster synthetic hardware used instead
• better CPU and RAM consumption
  

UEFI is not just a replacement of BIOS, UEFI extends support of devices and features, including GPT (GUID Partition Table).

Secure Boot is a feature that allows protection against modifying boot loaders and main system files, done by comparing the digital signatures that must be trusted by the OEM.

The solution is quite simple.

What you need to do is create a 1-st Generation VM (without creating a new disk drive) and reference existing VHDX file. That would work and OS will load (slowly but will do). The laziest person would probably stop at this stage, but we progress ahead with converting it to the 2-nd Generation VM. But, how do we?

All you need to do is convert legacy BIOS to UEFI running the following command executed within a 1-st Generation VM:

mbr2gpt.exe /convert /allowFullOS

Please pay attention to the warning: since now you need to boot in UEFI mode.

Now you can turn off the Windows VM, delete existing 1-st Generation VS from Hyper-V Manager (but not the disk drive!), and then create a new 2-nd Generation VM referencing the converted VHDX disk image. Also make sure the attached hard Drive stands first for at the boot sequence order (Firmware tab) and also you may want unchecking Enable Secure Boot switch from the Security tab.

Now you may successfully start your received Hard Drive with a fast and reliable 2-nd Generation VM that manages resources of your host machine in a much reliable and savvy way!