Optimizing public facing SharePoint sites

Gunnar PeipmanIIS/ASP.NET MVP

http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/me@gunnarpeipman.com

About me

Name: Gunnar PeipmanFrom: Tallinn, EstoniaMVP: ASP.NET MVP for 4 yearsJob: developer, architect and

consultantCommunity: ENETA, speaker,

bloggerHobbies: new technology,

heavy metal, beers, national cuisines, travelling

Happy boyfriend, father, step father and owner of funny white rabbit

Agenda

Characteristics of public facing sitesWhy SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure?Caching filesOutput cacheUsing CDN-s

Session objectives

After this session you should understand:performance problems of public facing

siteshow caching works in SharePointhow to plan and configure cachinghow to measure cache

Characteristics

Accessible by anonymous usersHarder to estimate server loadMostly one-way communication

(this is what MS thinks)Different needs (design, SEO)Different publishing process

SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure

Targeted to public web sites and corporate in-house portals

Perfect fit for corporate information publishing

Publishing workflowsDifferent optimization options

Caching files

Request to page

Every file referencemeans new request

Most files are kept inSharePoint libraries

Professional designmeans hundreds offiles

Plus dynamically loaded files

Same time in server...

What is BLOB cache?

Files from doc libraries are cached to front-end servers

Perfect fit if per page load many requests are made to server

Perfect fit also for large filesSupport for e-tagsYou save:

◦Some database connections and queries◦Loading files to database server memory◦Moving files from db server to web server◦Some traffic

How to optimize

Keep blobs on separate physical diskEvery front-end server must have its own

blobs folder or diskIf disk crashes or you delete files from

blob cache you must reset blob cacheBlob cache may slow down your site for a

moment when files are copied to diskWhen measuring start from second

request

Output cache

Caching pages

Built on ASP.NET cachingOutput cache is served from memoryPossible to define cache profilesProfiles can be assigned to page layoutsCode-based policiesPossible to define non-cached areas

(called also donut hole caching)

Don’t over-cache!

Again: Output cache uses server memory!

Morning:

Noon:

Afternoon:

Evening:

How to measure cache?

Use ASP.NET and SharePoint performance counters

Make sure counters are not updated too often – it puts markable load on server

Measuring must be long enough to see how cache is actually used

No app-pool recycle or iisresetIf ~85% of requests are served from

cache you are okay

Output cacheData from real-life scenario

About measuring process

Performance counters on productionInterval 15 secondsCounters:

◦Total number of objects added◦Total object discards◦Cache hit count◦Cache hit ratio

Duration: 12h (work hours fully covered)No interruptions

Results

Content Delivery Networks (CDN)

CDN servers

Using CDN-s

Files are hosted on other serversUsers get files from closest serversMany popular JS libs are available in

Google and MS CDN serversYou can build your own CDN using

Windows Azure servicesPoint of trouble: wider internet outage

Q&A

Thank you!