Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server

If you need a general overview of the health and security of your farm, you can run the Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server. You must first download the tool at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=&displaylang=en.

Alternatively, you can browse to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads and search for BestPracticeAnalyzer.exe. When the executable is run, it extracts the contents to a folder, such as C:\BPA. After the contents are extracted, you run the tool from the Central Administration server in your farm. A sample command looks like this:

 C:\bpa\sharepointbpa.exe -cmd analyze -substitutions SERVER_NAME CentralAdministrationServer 

In this example, CentralAdministrationServer should be replaced with your server name. At the time this book was published, there was very little information on extending the tool and writing custom rule sets. Visit http://technet.microsoft.com for updated details on the Best Practices Analyzer.