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Optimizing Microsoft SharePoint 2013 with Citrix NetScaler

Solution Guide

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Optimizing Microsoft SharePoint with NetScaler

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Table of Contents

Overview of SharePoint 2013 3Why NetScaler Optimization Solution for SharePoint 2013? 3Product Versions and Prerequisites 4Key Optimization Features Used 4 Caching 4 Compression 4 Front End Optimization 4What can be optimized? 5Configuration Details 5Test Results & Conclusion 9 Factors determining degree of Optimization 9 Results 10 Conclusion 10

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Citrix NetScaler is the industry leading solution to optimize, secure and control the delivery of all your enterprise and cloud services and apps, including Microsoft applications such as SharePoint 2013. Its rich feature set includes local and global server load balancing, full web app firewall security, fast application acceleration capabilities, and an easy-to-use policy framework for simple deployment with absolutely no programming required.

Overview of SharePoint 2013

Microsoft SharePoint facilitates organizations empower their users to drive their business goals, by power of connecting with your employees wherever they are, organizing people, project & information while giving the developers an opportunity to create new customized web portals by using familiar tools and internet standards. In short, SharePoint is a browser-based collaboration, content management, and extensible platform from Microsoft.

File sharing, check in, check out, reports generation and storage, document handling, library management are some of the core components of SharePoint 2013.

Why NetScaler Optimization Solution for SharePoint 2013?

NetScaler® Optimization module takes care of the responsiveness of the application and better end user experience. Driving visitor engagement requires optimizing page performance for speed and responsiveness. SharePoint application’s web pages are highly distributed with complex applications comprised of hundreds of assets from many domains.

Improved SharePoint performance experience by enterprise’s external and internal users is the key reason for using Optimization features on NetScaler. It can be achieved by sending fewer bytes on wire, by configuring policy based rules for group of users and by reducing the load time by optimizing various web page components.

Thus we consider the varied traffic that travels across wire for SharePoint applications, as a probable source of bringing out a difference in content delivery of SharePoint apps by applying techniques like compression, caching, Front end optimization and connection reuse.

Note: For more information about NetScaler Optimization follow: http://support.citrix.com/servlet/KbServlet/download/23199-102-706011/NS-AppOptimization-Guide.pdf

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Product Versions and Prerequisites

Product Version Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Enterprise Edition NetScaler NS 10.5: Build 53.7.nc or above License: Platinum

It is expected that the NetScaler has been configured and required license has been installed. To get help for this process please see the Getting Started section of the Citrix® eDocs. You can also use the NetScaler deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 - http://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products-solutions/microsoft-SharePoint-2013-with-citrix-netscaler.pdf

Key Optimization Features Used

Following features are implemented to achieve optimization of SharePoint application traffic:

Caching Citrix NetScaler is used to cache SharePoint objects in order to quickly deliver frequently requested Content to users without going to the backend resources. Cached content includes downloaded documents, scripts, FrontPage content, audio, video, and image files.

Compression Citrix NetScaler identifies and compresses content that is compressible. This process improves data transmission times while saving CPU cycles on SharePoint content servers.

Front End Optimization Citrix NetScaler FEO module is a way to optimize the client side content delivery experience for various applications and websites. This technology reduces content size, minimizes server requests, and facilitates parallel delivery of content and execution of scripts.

The SharePoint testing was done for Front end Optimization (FEO), Compression and Integrated Caching. As FEO has umbrella of sub features in it, following is the list of applicable FEO features for SharePoint Application optimization.

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Applicable FEO featuresImage OptimizationImage Shrink to attributes

Image GIF to PNG conversion

Image Inlining

JPEG Optimization

CSS OptimizationCSS Minify

CSS Move to head Tag

CSS Image Inline

Convert Import to links

CSS Inline

JS OptimizationJS Inline

JS Minify

JS Move to End

HTML OptimizationRemove comments from HTML

Miscellaneous optimizationExtend page cache

What can be optimized?

Here are the common content types which help build dynamic SharePoint application pages and can be optimized.

1. Content & Structure reports2. DocLibrary for HTTP & HTTPS3. Gallery items4. Reusable contents5. Survey forms6. CSS Library7. Microfeeds8. Reports

Configuration DetailsFollowing are the steps required to configure NetScaler for optimization of SharePoint App traffic:

1.ConfigureCompressionPoliciesforSharePoint

• On NetScaler GUI configuration page, navigate to the Optimization > HTTP Compression > Policies and configure the compression policies to handle variety of traffic. Separate compression policies can be applied to different data types.

• The binding of compression policies should be at vserver level (CS vserver or LB vserver).

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• Following content type are candidate for compression: CSS, Javascript, Images -gif, jpeg, html files (Compression once enabled, is applied automatically on html pages in request).

• The policy used in example below is: HTTP.RES.HEADER(“Content-Type”)==”text/javascript” || HTTP.RES.HEADER(“Content-Type”)==”text/css” This policy filters the javascript and css in the request and applies action compression in the response.

Note: For more information regarding NS HTTP compression configuration follow: http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/ns-optimization-10-5-map/ns-compression-gen-wrapper-con.html

For e.g.: To compress all javascript and css in a page following is the example

2.ConfigureCachingpoliciesforSharePoint

• As pre requisite Integrated Caching should be enabled.• Follow the path to create content groups to handle storage for different content type in

incoming traffic. NS > Optimization > Integrated Caching > Content Groups• The default Content Group can cache all content types. • To configure caching policies follow the path - NS > Optimization > Integrated Caching > Policies.• The binding of cache policies should be at vserver level (CS vserver or LB vserver).• The cache optimization caches html, scripts , frontpage content, images and documents.• The policy used in the example below is to cache html, scripts and image content:

HTTP.REQ.HEADER(“Content-Type”) == “text/html”|| HTTP.REQ.URL.ENDSWITH(“/.js”)|| HTTP.REQ.URL.ENDSWITH(“/.gif”)

Note: For information regarding NS-IC configuration follow: http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/ns-optimization-10-5-map/ns-IC-gen-wrapper-10-con.html

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For e.g. To cache html, scripts and images follow the IC policy details

3.ConfigureFEOpoliciesforSharePoint

Follow the steps to configure the FEO policies and action which is a step to configure all the applicable FEO features for SharePoint application traffic.

Note: For more information regarding FEO configuration follow: http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/ns-optimization-10-5-map/ns-feo-con.html

• FEO policies Follow the path to configure FEO policiess NS > Optimization > Front End Optimization > Policies

• The policy used in the example below is to FEO optimize the html web pages: HTTP.REQ.HEADER(“Accept”).CONTAINS(“html”)

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• FEO Action Follow the path to configure FEO action: NS > Optimization > Front End Optimization > Action

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4.BindtheICpoliciesandcompressionpoliciestocontentswitchingvserverandbindtheFEOpoliciesatgloballevel For e.g. Follow the CLI command to bind the compression policy mentioned in the section “Configure Compression policies for SharePoint” of this document. Bind cs vserver <vserver name> -policyname SharePoint2013_compress -priority 20 The similar approach applies to IC policy binding.

5.BindtheFEOpoliciesglobally For e.g. Follow the CLI command to bind the feo policy mentioned in the section “Configure FEO policies for SharePoint” of this document. Bind feo global SharePoint2013_feo -priority 20 -type REQUEST_DEFAULT

Test Results & Conclusion

Factors determining degree of OptimizationCaching, compression and FEO optimize a web page to a considerable amount .While compression hits the reduction in total bytes transmitted per page, caching and FEO affects the response time of page on respective browsers.

Candidate for optimization: A page has different type of page elements inside HTML, outside HTML or in form of embedded links. Some elements are already in their optimal size or format hence need not be optimized. Therefore NS, before applying any optimization changes, scans the page and identifies the page elements which are candidate for optimization.

Total objects in a page and Optimized objects: The NetScaler first scans the page to identify the objects and objects type (js, css, html, gif etc). NetScaler also determines the number and type of objects that can be cached based on the cache policy. The degree of optimization is determined by how many objects are successfully optimized.

Load time: The total time taken to build the DOM structure or the first byte to be available on page. A good optimization technique and mix of features will reduce the load time by at least 20%.

Response time: Average time for a page to respond to the end user.

Sizeofthepage: All the elements of a page (objects of different object types) amounts to total number of bytes.

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ResultsOverallResults Optimization of candidate objects: 20 %

Overall gain in load time: 29 %

Overall gain in Response time: 23.9 %

Decrease in no of requests: 4 %

Conclusion

This concludes the NetScaler optimization solution guide for Microsoft SharePoint 2013. It has very well provided evidences to prove that NetScaler can front–end and improve the performance, availability and responsiveness for SharePoint 2013 Applications, considerably. With NetScaler Caching, FEO and compression features, we can definitely improve the delivery efficiency of SharePoint 2013 applications.