High Availability Solutions with SharePoint Server 2013Bill BaerSenior Product Marketing ManagerMicrosoft

Rick TaylorPrincipalIGotIT Technical Services, LLC

SPC111

IntroductionBill Baer is a Senior Product Marketing Manager and Microsoft Certified Master for SharePoint in the SharePoint product group in Redmond, Washington; having previously worked at Hewlett-Packard Bill Baer has a proven background in infrastructure engineering and enterprise deployments of SharePoint Products and Technologies. While at Hewlett-Packard Bill Baer was awarded the MVP award for his contributions in the Technology Solutions Group, now known as HP Enterprise Business, which encompasses server and storage hardware, technology consulting, and software sales.

Twitter @williambaer

LinkedIn /billbaer

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Bill Baer (ˈbɛər)Senior Product Marketing Manager

SharePoint Microsoft Corporation

www.wbaer.net

IntroductionRick Taylor is a SharePoint Infrastructure architect and has assisted numerous, large companies in their implementations including the US Air Force, Charles Schwab, and Nestle. He is a published author, co-author, and contributing author. Rick worked for Microsoft on the Platform Engineering Team for BPOS. Rick is based in Phoenix, AZ and is an avid Triathlete (Clydesdale class), enjoys playing chess and is active in the Boy Scouts of America.

Twitter @SLKRCK

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TechNet /b/ritaylor

Rick TaylorPrincipal

IGotIT Technical Services, LLC

• Who am I???• Who am I ??????????

The Guardian of Lost SoulsThe Powerful

The Pleasurable

The IndestructibleRick Taylor

Slick Rick – if you prefer

ObjectivesUnderstand the core concepts of high availabilityUnderstand the features and capabilities support high availability solutions with SharePoint Server 2013Understand base technologies that drive highly available designs

AgendaHigh Availability OverviewInfrastructure CapabilitiesTopologiesClient Capabilities

Overview

Availability LayersFailover Clustering/Network Load

BalancingActive/Passive, Active/Active, etc.

FailoverManual, Automatic

BackupFull, Incremental, Differential, etc.

Data Centric

Application Centric

Ava

ilabili

tyRec

over

y

High AvailabilityGenerally expressed as a percentage of uptime in a given year

Uptime Annual Downtime AllowanceDays Hours Minutes

99% 3 15 36

99.5% 1 19 48

99.9% 8 46

99.95% 4 23

99.99% 53

99.999% 5

99.9999% ½ (30 seconds)

99.99%

53

DefinitionsRTO = Recovery Time ObjectiveHow long until the application becomes available

RPO = Recovery Point ObjectiveHow much data can be lost

MTBF = Mean Time Between FailureFrequency of failure

MTTR = Mean Time To Repair/ResolveEstimated time to repair/resolve an issue

Deterministic CalculationAvailability = MTBF/(MTBF + MTTR)Useful definition for theoretical and practical

MTBF is Mean Time Between FailureWhat, when, why and how does it fail?

MTTR is Mean Time To RepairHow long does it take to fix?

Goal = Increase MTBF, decrease MTTR

PlanningCapabilities drive limitations:Infrastructure constraintsTopology constraints

High availability is not limited to just component and content-based redundancy, it also encompasses capacity

PlanningUnderstand what to protect before how to protect itApply objectivesService Level AgreementsRecovery Point ObjectivesRecovery Time Objectives

Understand what is provided out of the boxUnderstand business continuity management is an ongoing process

PlanningImpact AnalysisWorkload granularityThreat identificationObjectives

Solution DesignMeet SLA within constraintsConduct cost/benefit analysis

ImplementationDeployment and configuration

TestingValidate solutions meets SLA

MaintenanceAnnual review of solution

Analysis

Solution Design

ImplementationTesting

Maintenance

PlanningUnplanned Downtime

• SAN/RAID• Backup/Restore• Log Shipping• Database Mirroring• Failover Clustering

Planned Downtime

• Rolling Upgrades/Patches• Online Operations• Database Snapshots

DriversUnplanned downtimeProtection against failures

Machine level: hardware outages, service failures, data corruption …Site level: hurricanes, fires ..

Recovery from errors (User or Application)Incorrect data modifications, accidental changes…

Planned downtimeOnline administration

Software/hardware upgrades, index rebuilds, MACs… Predictable Resourcing

Features that enhance concurrency

Infrastructure

Application Load Balancer ServiceProvides service application load balancingMaintains a list of available endpoints to round-robin requestsRemoves specified endpoint when Service Application Proxy reports endpoint failure

Configurable using Set-SPTopologyServiceApplicationProxy cmdletPrevents endpoint removal where only one endpoint remains

Request ManagementPrioritizes and routes incoming requestsRoute requests to Web servers that have good health characteristics Identify and block known bad requestsPrioritize requests by throttling lower-priority requests (such as services that run in the background) and serving higher priority requests (such as end user requests)Route requests of specific types (such as search) to specific servers in the farm

request manager

Request routingSelects which servers should receive one or more requests

Request throttling & prioritizationFilters which servers should receive one or more requests based on health

Request load balancingSelects a servers to route a request based on weighting schemes (i.e. health)

Network/Application Load BalancingWindows Network Load BalancingIntroduced in Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Datacenter Server Operating SystemsDistributes IP traffic across multiple cluster hostsRuns within cluster hosts as part of the operating system and requires no dedicated hardware

Failover ClusteringIncreases application and service availabilitySet of independent computers that work together to increase the availability of applications and servicesApplicable to SharePoint backend architecture

Database MirroringSoftware-based solution for increasing database availabilityImplemented on a per-database basis

Protects from physical and logical failuresMaintains a two (2) copies of a single database on separate, distinct SQL Server instancesTransactions are replayed on the mirror server* Provides rapid failover without a loss of data from committed transactions

Supports sequential upgrade of instances of SQL Server that are participating in a database mirroring sessionThis feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature. We recommend that you use AlwaysOn Availability Groups instead.

Data Flow

Database Mirroring CharacteristicsLight OLTPMarginal impact on throughputSupports network bandwidth >10 Mbps

20 0

238

241 241

TPS

MIR

RO

RIN

G O

FF

SA

FETY O

FF

SA

FETY F

ULL

Mbps

10

Database Mirroring CharacteristicsHeavy OLTPSignificant impact on throughput35%+ performance degradation when using High Safety operating mode

1.0

1.0

215

211

158

TPS

MIRRORING OFF

SAFETY OFF

SAFETY FULL

Database Mirroring CharacteristicsIndex RebuildRebuilding clustered indexes Online should be reserved for non-peak periods to reduce incremental increases in latency reducing overall performance Mirror ing OFF Safety OFF Safety FULL

4.1 4

.4

7.7

2.2 2.3

3.2

Clustered Index Non-Clustered Index

Database Mirroring MechanicsWeb Server

Principal SQL

Server

Mirror SQL Server

Transaction completed on mirror

Write transaction

to log

Acknowledge message

sent to principal

Transaction submitted to mirror

Confirmation sent to client

1

2

2

3

Write transaction to database

2

4

Principal Log Principal Data Mirror Log Mirror Data

Database Mirroring Best PracticesDatabase Mirroring Log Compression ~ 85% compression (Log Bytes Sent/sec vs. Log Compressed Bytes sent /sec) Tremendously reduces send queue, data latency between sites, network traffic and long haul bandwidth needed

Backup Compression Reduces disk space, allowing for disk cost savings or more backups being retained on the same disksBackup times reduced by ~ 50% Speeds up Log Shipping (less data to transfer)

Database Mirroring AdvantagesHardwareWorks with standard computers, storage, and networksNo shared storage components, virtually no distance limitations

Impact to transaction throughputZero to minimal, depending on environment / workload

* Provides some self healing capabilitiesPrincipal and mirror servers can be failover clusterNative support in SharePoint 2013

Database Mirroring DisadvantagesRelatively new solution with SharePointIT operations learning curve

Special considerations with Agents and JobsRestrictions on latency in most scenarios with SharePointLimited support

Database Mirroring Support MatrixDatabase Name Support

HA Capable

Configuration Synchronous Y

Web Application: Central Administration Content Synchronous Y

Web Application: Content Database Synchronous, Asynchronous Y

Usage and Health Data Collection Database Synchronous, Asynchronous Y

Business Data Connectivity Database Synchronous Y

Application Registry Database Synchronous Y

Subscription Settings Database Synchronous Y

Secure Store Database Synchronous Y

State Database Synchronous, Asynchronous Y

Staging: Web Analytics Asynchronous N

Database Mirroring Support MatrixDatabase Name Support

HA Capable

Reporting: Web Analytics Synchronous, Asynchronous Y

Search Service Application Administration Database Synchronous Y

Search Service Application Crawl Database Synchronous Y

Search Service Application Property Database Synchronous Y

User Profile Service Application Profile Database Synchronous Y

User Profile Service Application Synchronization Database N/A N

User Profile Service Application Social Tagging Database Synchronous Y

Managed Metadata Synchronous, Asynchronous Y

Word Automation Services Synchronous Y

Database Mirroring Support MatrixDatabase Name Support

HA Capable

PerformancePoint Service Application Database Synchronous Y

AlwaysOnSuccessor to Database Mirroring

AlwaysOn OverviewHelp reduce planned and unplanned downtime with the new integrated high availability and disaster recover solution, SQL Server AlwaysOn.

AlwaysOn Availability GroupsProvides availability for application databasesBuilds upon Database Mirroring investments adding:Multi-database failoverAutomatic application redirectionMultiple and active secondaries with synchronous and synchronous data movement

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster InstancesProvides instance level availabilityLeverages Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) functionality to provide local high availability through redundancy at the server-instance levelSupports multi-subnet failover (no VLAN required)Flexible failover policy for granular trigger events for automatic failovers

AlwaysOn Multi-subnet Failover SupportSupport specific to AlwaysOn Availability GroupsCannot modify connection string directlySharePoint 2013 implements new Windows PowerShell syntax to modify database property MultiSubnetFailover:

     $dbs = Get-SPDatabase | ?{$_.MultiSubnetFailover –ne $true}     foreach ($db in $dbs)     {          $db.MultiSubnetFailover = $true           $db.Update()     }

AlwaysOn requirements:• The 64-bit edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2012

OR The 64-bit edition of SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 (NO WOW64)

• Ensure that the system is not a domain controller.

• Ensure that each computer is a node in a Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) cluster.

• The following hotfixes:KB2494036 KB2687741KB2616514 KB2531907KB976097 KB980915KB2582281KB2578103 – WS2K8KB2578113 – WS2K8R2

AlwaysOn AdvantagesHardwareWorks with standard computers, storage, and networksNo shared storage components, virtually no distance limitations

Impact to transaction throughputZero to minimal, depending on environment / workload

* Provides some self healing capabilitiesStraightforward migration from Database Mirroring

AlwaysOn DisadvantagesRelatively new solution with SQL ServerIT operations learning curve

Restrictions on latency in most scenarios with SharePointLimited support

Topologies

ArchitecturePlan and distribute topology across three (3) tiersWeb

Responds to HTTP requests from usersApplication

Provides and hosts application services (search components, service applications, etc.)

DatabaseProvides database services and hosts databases

Physical Architecture

Web

Application

Database

Requests Handling*Query Processing*Request Routing and Prioritization*Distributed Caching

Service Hosting*Query Processing*Request Routing and Prioritization*Distributed Caching

Database Hosting/Storage

Logical Architecture

Web Application

Site Collections/Sites

Application Pool

Service Application Web Application

Application Pool

Site Collections/Sites

Server Farm

Topology Planning0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, …

Single server with built-in database or single instance

Simple small farm

Minimum scale-out topology for high availability

Web Server Topologies

Web Server (IIS) Role

SER

VE

R 1

Web Server (IIS) Role

SER

VE

R 2

Network Load Balancing

Admin component 1

Crawl component 1

Content processing

component 1Analytics

processing component 1

Query processing component 1

Index component 1 (that belongs to index partition 0)

Admin component 2

Crawl component 2

Content processing

component 2Analytics

processing component 2

Query processing component 2

Index component 2 (that belongs to index partition 0)

SER

VE

R 1

SER

VE

R 2

SER

VE

R 3

SER

VE

R 4

Enterprise Search Topologies

Enterprise Search Architecture

Index Partition 0

Applic

ati

on S

erv

ers

Database Server Topologies

Databases Databases

SER

VE

R 1

SER

VE

R 2

Data

base

Serv

ers

Database Mirroring

Client

VersioningProvides multiple copies of the same documentProtects documents from overwriteEnabled at the library or list levelItems and files can be versionedRelatively unchanged in 2013New Efficient File Transfer (FSSHTTP) between client and server (introduced in SharePoint 2010)Added Shredded Storage capabilities distribute individual items across BLOBs and reduces IO and compute utilization

Recycle BinRecycle BinTwo-stage implementation

Self service recovery of most content in first stageSite collection administrator recovery in second stage

Enabled by defaultConfigured on per Web application basisRelatively unchanged in 2013

SummaryHigh availability is an iterative process that begins with what you have and encompasses both components, content, and capacity

Get started with SharePoint

Download the evaluation and experience SharePoint Serverhttp://office.com/preview

Learn morehttp://sharepoint.microsoft.com/

Build knowledge through training on SharePoint Server http://technet.microsoft.com/sharepoint/fp123606

Additional ResourcesSharePoint Server 2013 Preview IT Professional Reviewer’s Guide [http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34023]SharePoint Server 2013 on TechNet [http://technet.microsoft.com/sharepoint]

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