Himmat Singh Dulawat (3x Sitecore MVP)

While working on Sitecore PaaS you have a Redis issue. This time we have a Redis timeout issue but with a different message: Solution: After conducting research and using Google, I have discovered that there are 2 links from the above exception: https://stackexchange.github.io/StackExchange.Redis/Timeouts https://stackexchange.github.io/StackExchange.Redis/ThreadTheft I am experiencing the "thread theft" of the reader. The parameter "rs" in the error message tells me the state of the reader. If this is frequently reporting CompletePendingMessage , it is possible that the reader loop has been hijacked when trying to set results. It's further elaborated in the Thread Theft. To address this issue try adding the following early on in your application startup: ConnectionMultiplexer.SetFeatureFlag("preventthreadtheft", true); The issue is more related to the StackExchange.Redis commun...

I was encountering frequent time-out issues with Redis and my application deployed on Azure PaaS. Following are the sample exceptions from logs: Solutions: I have reviewed config files from our CD server according to Sitecore's recommendation in this KB article here  Excessive load on ASP.NET Session State store , and checked some of the points. In the Web.config and Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.config files, increase the pollingInterval attribute value on both Private and Shared session state provider definitions from 2 to 60 seconds. => For my case, the pollingInterval value is in the Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.Azure.config file and the value is still 30. I have considered increasing the value further. In the Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.config file, find the timeoutBetweenLockAttempts parameter. Increase its value from 10 to 200 milliseconds. => The value should be defined in the ...

If you are on Sitecore Managed Cloud and your SOLR is with Managed Cloud Server Searchstax then it is not easy to manage it. In today’s blog, I am going to discuss how to manage Managed Cloud SOLR Server, especially Restart SOLR. After successfully setting up Sitecore and SOLR instance by Sitecore, Sitecore provides you the URL of SOLR Server and the following details: Solr server connection string Solr server URL Zookeeper Ensemble API key Solr server user Solr server password To access the SOLR admin UI: Open the https://<server_name>-azure.searchstax.com/solr/ URL and enter the Username and Password. Get a List of Nodes: Before doing this exercise, you need to find the number of nodes in your SOLR server (a standard server consists of 3 nodes). For example, if your server_name provided by Sitecore is "ss123456" then ideally your nodes will be ss123456-1, ss123456-2, ss123456-3. By using the below URL, you can ...

In continuation of the cache tunning, if your website is multilingual then you may need to tune the isLanguageFallbackValid field cache value. The initial thought was it could be tuned using the Small Cache Size as <setting name="Caching.SmallCacheSize" set:value="200MB" />  But "Caching.SmallCacheSize" no longer controls isLanguageFallbackValid due to a Feature Request with reference number 221831.  Starting with Sitecore 9.2, the cache size now depends on setting Caching.IsFallbackValid.DefaultCacheSize To find out about how to tune cache in Sitecore,  See the blog post- Cache Tunning in Sitecore To find out more about monitoring and tuning cache on CD Server, see the blog post- Monitor and Tune Cache on CD Server Happy Sitecoreing  😊

While Installing the Sitecore 10.3 on my local machine (Windows 11), I encountered with the following error: The root cause of the issue is that a connection to the SqlServer is established without the "TrustServerCertificate" parameter. Solution: Go to the xconnect-xp0.json  in your Sitecore download setup files, open it in any editor tool, and search the following parameters: CreateShardApplicationDatabaseServerLoginInvokeSqlCmd CreateShardManagerApplicationDatabaseUserInvokeSqlCmd CreateShard0ApplicationDatabaseUserInvokeSqlCmd CreateShard1ApplicationDatabaseUserInvokeSqlCmd Add the "TrustServerCertificate": true , to all parameters. For example: Reference:  https://support.sitecore.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1003015 Happy Sitecoreing  😊

Instead of redirecting to the "Item Not Found" page, Sitecore may generate the following error messages when it receives a request containing Illegal characters in the path: Solution: I saw a similar issue and it could depend on the "requestPathInvalidCharacters" settings in <httpRuntime> in Web.config . Go to the web.config and search for httpRuntime node. Check if the requestValidationMode is there, if it is not then add the attribute requestValidationMode="2.0"   Make sure validateRequest attribute in the page node is set to false. <pages validateRequest="false"> If you want to add these characters to the path, add the requestPathInvalidCharacters attribute to the httpRuntime node. <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.8" ...... requestPathInvalidCharacters="&lt;,&gt;,*,%,&amp;,:,\,?"/> Reference: ...

Sitecore Managed Cloud Service provides the default setting for the Custom Backup of our CD instance. In your environment, you can see all default settings from the Backup Action tab. As our custom backup had a limit of 10GB with a linked database of 4 GB so due to the size of the logs and other files we are sometimes getting failed custom backups. Automatic vs. Custom Backups Hence regarding your backup failures, that is mostly due to " The website + database size exceeds the 10 GB limit ". I did a quick check and it seems that the folder in site/wwwroot/App_Data/Logs is using up to 6GB of available space. To view the file usage of each folder, you can go to KUDU, open the PowerShell console, and run this command in the WWWroot: Solutions: Regarding the solution to the failed backups and why Sitecore prefers the use of Custom Backup as it supports. It is due to Partial backups being supported for custom backups. Partial b...

Recently, Sitecore security bulletin SC2023-003-587441 addresses Critical (582720) and High (584731) severity vulnerabilities in Sitecore software and provides the cumulative hotfix for the same. I have applied this hotfix in my solution and deployed it, but I have encountered the following error while publishing the Sitecore Items. If you are looking for how to install the Sitecore Cumulative hotfix OnPrem and PaaS instances, see the blog post: Sitecore Cumulative Hotfixes Installation on OnPrem and PaaS Solution: This Security Hotfix might add a security layer that prevents the execution of unexpected methods through reflection. As I have customized the publishing method for Sitecore items, I am getting this issue while publishing the Sitecore items. Go to the path " \App_Config\Sitecore\CMS.Core\ " and open the " Sitecore.Reflection.Filtering.config " file. Add the method name to the " Sitecore.Reflect...

In the continuation of my previous blog Steps to be Performed after Multisite Configuration, I am going to discuss two important functionalities in terms of Google search crawling ranking and every website core functionality which are Sitemap and Robots txt implementation.  Create a new Template with two fields Sitemap and Robots. Inherit the above template on the Home page template of both Site nodes. Create a patch file: This patch file will have one pre-processor to allow the URL extension for XML and Txt files and another processor in the httpRequestBegin pipeline to serve Sitemap and Robots txt files. Create a class in your project for the custom processor and use the below code Deploy your application and browse pages: Website-a.com/sitemap.xml Website-b.com/sitemap.xml Website-a.com/robots.txt Website-b.com/ robots.txt If you want to implement the same functionality using A...

After upgrading the solution to Sitecore version 10.2, I have started facing the Value that cannot be a null error. More details log and error you can find below: After investigating this issue, I have found that this is a known issue in Sitecore and Sitecore described the solution here Retrieving the child items of resource items is not thread-safe . But as we were on Sitecore XM instead of the XP version, so will it work for XM? Yes, the cumulative hotfix works for XM as well, so do not be confused with it. Note: This hotfix is a Cumulative hotfix and does not use the installation wizard to install it. Such hotfixes are not intended to be installed using the Installation wizard. Instead, you need to refer to the following articles describing by Sitecore, how to install the hotfixes for OnPrem and PaaS instances: Install a Sitecore XP pre-release using SIF Deploy a Sitecore XP pre-release to a PaaS solution But I h...

In this blog post, I will discuss how to install the cumulative hotfix on Sitecore OnPrem and PaaS instances. For example, Sitecore provided the Cumulative hotfix for Sitecore XP 10.2  and it's available for both XM and XP 10.2 instances. Usually, to install the hotfix we use the Sitecore installation wizard, but such cumulative hotfixes are not intended to be installed using the Installation wizard. Instead, we need to refer to the following articles describing how to install the hotfixes for OnPrem and PaaS instances: Install a Sitecore XP pre-release using SIF Deploy a Sitecore XP pre-release to a PaaS solution My application has been deployed with Sitecore Managed Cloud Service (Azure PaaS) . I have found that there is less instruction about how to install the cumulative hotfix, so I decided to install it via project solution. Solution: Create one separate project in your solution named SitecoreHotfix...

Over the weekend suddenly Log Search Alert Rule appeared on our UAT and PROD MCS Azure account dashboard and it’s not easy to find the actual app services. It has never existed before on Portal. These resources always existed but were hidden on the portal, to see it in the portal we had to check the "show hidden types" checkbox. But now these resources are visible by default, it looks like a recent change on the portal. Azure support has confirmed that this is the recent change on the portal. The Azure team has made rules and action groups a first-class asset, official documentation will follow. We are still in contact with them on the matter of question if it's still possible to hide them as before. The solution is adding specific tags to resources and then filtering by the tags in the Azure portal, below are the steps describing how to do it: Assign Tags for the resource (Alert rules/Action Group), filter the Type with a t...

On the CM server, it's easy to monitor the Sitecore cache in CMS and we can tune it accordingly. It's under the Administration tool provided by Sitecore. You can access it directly from the URL i.e. {your-sitecore-instance}/sitecore/admin/cache.aspx OR browse it from the Administrative page. But on a Content Delivery server, access to the administrative pages usually is not available hence there is no direct option available to monitor Sitecore Cache for the CD server. In this blog, I will explain how to monitor cache tunning on a CD server. Go to the CD server and check the App_Data\diagnostics\health_monitor folder. You will get their file named CacheStatus.20230412Z.141522Z.html where 20230412Z.141522Z is a time stamp. (Sitecore saves a copy of the cache.aspx page every ten minutes) Note: Most of the cases you will get the file under the folder but in case you cannot find the file then you need to enable ...

While working on the Sitecore multisite, I faced the following issue while accessing the API with website-B. This happens when you want to use your web API with another website in Sitecore multisite setup. Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a W3C standard that allows a server to relax the same-origin policy. When you use CORS, a server can explicitly allow some cross-origin requests while rejecting others. Sitecore provides CORS support for Web API services. You can configure CORS in three ways: Globally for all Web API services (configured in the Sitecore.Services.Client.config file). Using an API key. Using the EnableCors attribute. I have used the first option to solve my issue. You need to modify "Sitecore.Services.Client.config" at path {instance}/ \App_Config\Sitecore\Services.Client with registered origins. Create a patch file in the project and add the following section of code and allow origin...

We had encounter the following error frequently in our application. Problem Id: System.NullReferenceException at Sitecore.SessionProvider.Redis.StackExchangeClientConnectionAsync+<EvalAsync>d__22.MoveNext Message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Exception type: System.NullReferenceException Failed method: Sitecore.SessionProvider.Redis.StackExchangeClientConnectionAsync+<EvalAsync>d__22.MoveNext Call Stack: StackExchange.Redis DLL version: 2.1.58 The application is deployed on Sitecore Managed Cloud Service Azure PaaS and uses Redis app service . I have applied the below fixes as well as the following articles but the issue is not resolved: Increased the min worker thread pool to 100 Increased polling Interval to 60 Tuned Redis Configuration as described here: Tuning Redis Configuration Settings Added sslprotocols=tls12 to Redis connection string Sitecore PAAS Redis Exce...

We understand that Sitecore provides an option to store media library assets either in DB (defaults to DB) or in the filesystem or we can store it in the Azure Blob Storage. But the question is what is the best option from all three options and why? Here in this blog, I will discuss the pros and cons of all three options and help you to find the best possible option. 1. Sitecore Database: By default, Sitecore provides this option while uploading the media items to the Sitecore Media Library. If you will delete the Media item from the library, it will be deleted from the Sitecore database and Sitecore also provides a database clean-up tool Cleanup database. 2. File Storage: To upload the media library assets (Image, Video, Pdf, etc) to the file storage you need to update the value of the following variable in the Sitecore. config file: <setting name="Media.UploadAsFiles" value="false" /> Set it to true. <setting name...

Getting the badge of Sitecore MVP the second time in a row particularly in Technology for me is one of them. My journey for Sitecore MVP begins in the Year 2019. I commenced with Sitecore Technology blogs , and actively participate in the Sitecore Stack Exchange Platform , Sitecore Slack Channel , and SUGCON public speaking. I am honored to be named Sitecore Technology MVP 2023 . I feel fortunate to be participating with a Sitecore Community, Technology, and Product. I am happy that my all efforts and contributions are recognized by Sitecore and Community. My next focus for this year would be: Exploring more in Sitecore Project including Personalize and CDP, Content Hub, and XM Cloud. Continuing with sharing and helping others in Sitecore Community. Participating in Sitecore MVP mentorship program. A big thanks to my family, colleagues, and Sitecore Team, and congratulations to all the Sitecore 2023 MVP award winners. Happy Sitecor...

Wish you all a very Happy New Year 2023😊 In today’s blog I will discuss the basic authentication implementation is Sitecore 10. Basic Authentication may be required for you to protect and restrict the page, and website access from the external source or you can apply it on the UAT, staging, or prod before going live. You can implement it multiway either by Sitecore Pipeline or Global.asax page. Here I will describe the Sitecore pipeline approach, issues, and solutions. I would like to give the credit to the original blog post mentioned here , but in Sitecore 10 you will need to perform some extra steps that I will describe in this blog. Pipeline: Config file: After execution of it, you will get the below infinite loop issue: Solution: Add the below key in your web.config : <add key="owin:AutomaticAppStartup" value="false" /> Next, you will get the credential windows and after entering it, it will show...

This year, I got the opportunity to work on upgrading Sitecore projects from Sitecore versions 8.2, and 9.X to Sitecore version 10.2. To find the complete details with the steps Sitecore provides Sitecore SC-XP-10.2.0-Upgrade-Guide for Sitecore experience platform 10.2 from Sitecore Experience Platform 8.1.0 or later. You can refer to this PDF file and start working on the upgrade. While upgrading the projects I have written my all findings, issues, research, and solutions in individual blogs. That you may or may not face while upgrading your project. In this blog post, I am summarizing all these within a single blog. Upgrade the framework and Database: Dot NET Framework Migrator: To upgrade Sitecore from a lower version to Sitecore 10.2, you need to change the .net framework to 4.8. See the blog post- Dot NET Framework Migrator Upgrade Sitecore XP Database to the XM: The database upgrade is one of the most...

The database upgrade is one of the most important steps while upgrading the Sitecore version to the latest 10.2. Sitecore provides its upgrade guide for Sitecore experience platform 10.2 from Sitecore Experience Platform 8.1.0 or later. Here in this blog, I have taken reference to the pdf document provided by Sitecore SC-XP-10.2.0-Upgrade-Guide and I am going to discuss only the database upgrade steps for the XM topology. Prerequisites for upgrading: Back up the database. Download the Sitecore 10.2.0 rev. 006766 (upgrade files).zip  It contains: Database Upgrade Script.zip - contains the SQL scripts that upgrade the database schemas and data. MarketingDefinitionsUpgrade.zip – contains the .aspx pages that help you prepare your marketing definitions for the upgrade from Sitecore XP 8.x. Download the tools Sitecore.UpdateApp 1.2.0 for Sitecore X.X.X rev XXXXXX.zip ...