sharing the point south america 2013 (stpsa) - ultimate sharepoint infrastructure best practices...

The ‘Ultimate’ SharePoint Infrastructure Best Practices Session

Michael Noel - CCO

Michael Noel• Author of SAMS Publishing titles “SharePoint 2013 Unleashed,” “SharePoint 2010

Unleashed”, “Windows Server 2012 Unleashed,” “Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed”, “ISA Server 2006 Unleashed”, and a total of 19 titles that have sold over 300,000 copies.

• Partner at Convergent Computing (www.cco.com) – San Francisco, U.S.A. based Infrastructure/Security specialists for SharePoint, AD, Exchange, System Center, Security, etc.

What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013

• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or Windows Server 2012 (Preferred)

• SQL Server 2008 R2 w/SP1 or SQL Server 2012 (Preferred)

Type Memory Processor

Dev/Stage/Test server 8GB RAM 4 CPU

‘All-in-one’ DB/Web/SA 24GB RAM 4 CPU

Web/SA Server 12GB RAM 4 CPU

DB Server (medium environments) 16GB RAM 8 CPU

DB Server (small environments) 8GB RAM 4 CPU


Software/Hardware Requirements

• Office Web Apps is no longer a service application• Web Analytics is no longer service application, it’s part of

search• New service applications available and improvements on

existing ones– App Management Service – Used to manage the new SharePoint app

store from the Office Marketplace or the Application Catalog– SharePoint Translation Services – provides for language translation of

Word, XLIFF, and PPT files to HTML– Work Management Service – manages tasks across SharePoint, MS

Exchange and Project.– Access Services App (2013) – Replaces 2010 version of Access Services


Changes in Service Applications and New Service Applications

• A new Windows service – the Distributed Cache Service – is installed on each server in the farm when SharePoint is installed

• It is managed via the Services on Server page in central admin as the Distributed Cache service

• The config DB keeps track of which machines in the farm are running the cache service


Distributed Cache Service

• The purpose of the Request Management feature is to give SharePoint knowledge of and more control over incoming requests

• Having knowledge over the nature of incoming requests – for example, the user agent, requested URL, or source IP – allows SharePoint to customize the response to each request

• RM is applied per web app, just like throttling is done in SharePoint 2010


Request Management (RM)

• Option 1 (AD Import): Simple one-way Sync (a la SharePoint 2007)

• Option 2: Two-way, possible write-back to AD options using small FIM service on UPA server (a la 2010)

• Option 3: Full Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) Synchronization, allows for complex scenarios – Larger clients will appreciate this


User Profile Sync – Three Options for Deployment

• SharePoint 2013 continues to offer support for both claims and classic authentication modes

• However claims authentication is THE default authentication option now– Classic authentication mode is still there, but can only be

managed in PowerShell – it’s gone from the UI – Support for classic mode is deprecated and will go away in a

future release– There also a new process to migrate accounts from

Windows classic to Windows claims – the Convert-SPWebApplication cmdlet


Claims-based Authentication - Default

• Stores new versions of documents as ‘shredded BLOBs that are deltas of the changes

• Promises to reduce storage size significantly


Shredded Storage

• New Search architecture (FAST based) with one unified search

• Personalized search results based on search history

• Rich contextual previews


Search – FAST Search now included

ARCHITECTING THE FARM

Web

Service Apps

Data

Architecting the Farm

Three Layers of SharePoint Infrastructure

• ‘All-in-One’ (Avoid)

DB and SP Roles Separate


Small Farm Models

• 2 SharePoint Servers running Web and Service Apps

• 2 Database Servers (AlwaysOn FCI or AlwaysOn Availability Groups)

• 1 or 2 Index Partitions with equivalent query components

• Smallest farm size that is fully highly available


Smallest Highly Available Farm

• 2 Dedicated Web Servers (NLB)

• 2 Service Application Servers

• 2 Database Servers (Clustered or Mirrored)

• 1 or 2 Index Partitions with equivalent query components


Best Practice ‘Six Server Farm’

• Separate farm for Service Applications

• One or more farms dedicated to content

• Service Apps are consumed cross-farm

• Isolates ‘cranky’ service apps like User Profile Sync and allows for patching in isolation


Ideal – Separate Service App Farm + Content Farm(s)

• Multiple Dedicated Web Servers

• Multiple Dedicated Service App Servers

• Multiple Dedicated Query Servers

• Multiple Dedicated Crawl Servers, with multiple Crawl DBs to increase parallelization of the crawl process

• Multiple distributed Index partitions (max of 10 million items per index partition)

• Two query components for each Index partition, spread among servers


Large SharePoint Farms

SharePoint Virtualization

Allows organizations that wouldn’t normally be able to have a test environment to run one

Allows for separation of the database role onto a dedicated server Can be more easily scaled out in the future

Sample 1: Single Server Environment

SP Server Virtualization

High-Availability across Hosts

All components Virtualized

Sample 2: Two Server Highly Available Farm


Highest transaction servers are physical

Multiple farm support, with DBs for all farms on the SQL AOAG

Sample 3: Mix of Physical and Virtual Servers


• Processor (Host Only)– <60% Utilization = Good– 60%-90% = Caution– >90% = Trouble

• Available Memory – 50% and above = Good– 10%-50% = OK– <10% = Trouble

• Disk – Avg. Disk sec/Read or Avg. Disk sec/Write– Up to 15ms = fine– 15ms-25ms = Caution– >25ms = Trouble

• Network Bandwidth – Bytes Total/sec– <40% Utilization = Good– 41%-64% = Caution– >65% = Trouble

• Network Latency - Output Queue Length– 0 = Good– 1-2= OK– >2 = Trouble

Virtualization of SharePoint ServersVirtualization Performance Monitoring

Data Management

Sample Distributed Content Database Design

Data Management

SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups

AlwaysOn Availability Groups in SQL 2012HA and DR

DemoCreating SQL 2012 AOAGs

Thanks for attending!

Michael NoelTwitter: @MichaelTNoel

www.cco.comSlides: slideshare.net/michaeltnoelTravel blog: sharingtheglobe.com

Pre-order SharePoint 2013 Unleashed:tinyurl.com/sp2013unleashed

Michael NoelTwitter: @michaeltnoelfacebook.com/michaelnoellinkedin.com/in/michaeltnoelInstagram: SharingTheGlobeTravel blog: SharingTheGlobe.com

Joel OlesonTwitter: @joelolesonfacebook.com/jolesonlinkedin.com/in/joelolesonInstagram: joelolesonTravel blog: TravelingEpic.com

Paul Swider Twitter: @pswiderfacebook.com/pswiderlinkedin.com/in/pswiderInstagram: pswiderBlog: paulswider.com

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