Presentation from the Toronto Azure Group (http://tagif.ca/) on November 12, 2014. Lessons from the field on setting up SharePoint on Microsoft Azure.

1. Setting up SharePoint 2013 on Azure:
Lessons from the Field
Zach Millis, Senior Consultant
imason inc, www.imason.com

2. The Azure Group: Infrastructure Focus
November 12, 2014

3. “A train, a database, bad
internet, and a small
farming town in Quebec.”

4. Agenda
 Quick overview of…
 Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks
 Microsoft Azure Storage
 Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
 Running SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure
 How to set up your environment
 Azure Traffic Manager
 Preview Portal: New SharePoint Server Farms option

5. Microsoft Azure Technical Overview

6. Overview of Microsoft Azure Virtual
Networks

7. Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks
Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks:
 Provides a logical boundary around a
group of VMs
 Allows Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines to
communicate with each other
Building Blocks:
 IP Addressing scheme (subnets)
 DNS server(s)
 VPN (optional)

8. Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks

9. Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks

10. Overview of Microsoft Azure
Storage

11. Microsoft Azure Storage
Types of storage:
 Blob *
 Table
 Queue
Replication Options:
 Locally redundant (3x)
 Geo-Redundant (6x) *

12. Microsoft Azure Storage – By the numbers…
 Each Storage account is limited to 5,000 IOPs
 Each Virtual Disk on a Standard VM is limited to 500 IOPs (300 for
basic)
Putting it together..
 ~10 VHDs max out a storage account

13. Microsoft Azure Storage – More numbers…
 SharePoint Servers would max out around 1,500 IOPs
 OS Disk
 Data Disk (Logs)
 Data Disk (Index)
 SQL Servers could use more (depending on configuration)
 OS Disk
 Data X # of disks
 Backups

14. Overview of Microsoft Azure Virtual
Machines

15. Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
Compute Instance
Name
Virtual Cores RAM Max Data Disks IOPS
Extra Small (A0) Shared 768 MB 1 1x500
Small (A1) 1 1.75 GB 2 2x500
Medium (A2) 2 3.5 GB 4 4x500
Large (A3) 4 7 GB 8 8x500
Extra Large (A4) 8 14 GB 16 16x500
A6 4 28 GB 8 8x500
A7 8 56 GB 16 16x500
Note: Standard Tier sizes above

16. Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines

17. “That cloud be changin’ like
wicked fast!”

18. Running SharePoint 2013 on
Microsoft Azure

19. Active Directory, Security
Active Directory
 Required for a SharePoint Farm (1+ SharePoint Servers)
 Standalone Domain (no VPN)
 Corporate Domain or One-way Trust (Azure VPN)
 Least-privilege accounts
Security
 Server Hardening
 Non-default ports, named SQL instances
 Always use SSL, with SHA-2 Certificates

20. SQL on Microsoft Azure
 High-Availability Support
 SQL Server Failover Cluster  Not Supported!
 AlwaysOn Availability Groups
 Note: Limited to a single Availability Group; High IO needs
 Multiple Standalone SQL Servers
 Use Aliases so you can scale out later
 Disk Layout
 What is supported?

21. SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure
Design:
 Plan your Azure Virtual Network topology
 Plan for your HA requirements
 Plan your SQL topology – how will you scale out?
 Plan your Azure Storage Accounts – how many IOPs do you need?
 Software Versions (Windows, SQL, SP, etc)
“Measure twice, cut once”

22. SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure
 What do you put on all those disks?
 Disk 1: SharePoint Logs, IIS Logs
 Disk 2: Program Files, SharePoint Index
 SQL
 Disk 1: Content DB 1 (mdf and ldf)
 Disk 2: Content DB 2 (mdf and ldf)
 Disk 3: System & Service Applications (non-Search)
 Disk 4: Search DBs
 Disk 5: TempDBs
 Disk 6: Backup files

23. SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure
App
SQL
AD/DNS
WFE
OS Data Data
OS Data Data
OS Data Data Data
OS Data

24. SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure
Other considerations
 Monitoring
 Detailed server monitoring (i.e. SCOM)
 Application monitoring (i.e. is www.yoursite.com up?)
 Patching
 WSUS
 SCCM
 Manually (Do *NOT* have Windows Update automatically install updates!)
 Backups
 SQL backups? Local disk backups?
 Standalone backup system?

25. “A 3am phone call… the
woes of Windows Update”

26. How to Set Up Your Environment

27. Setting Up Your Environment
Azure Provisioning
1. Create a new Azure subscription
2. Plan your network topology (subnets, IPs, etc)
3. Create virtual network
4. Create storage accounts
5. Create VMs
6. Add Data disks

28. Setting Up Your Environment
AD & SQL Provisioning
1. Initialize & format data disks
2. Install AD/DNS on your DC
3. Promote it to a domain controller
4. Join servers to the domain
5. Download SQL binaries
6. Create Service Accounts
7. Install & configure SQL

29. Setting Up Your Environment
SharePoint Setup
1. Install SharePoint
2. Patch SharePoint
3. Configure Farm
4. Create Web Application(s)
5. Configure Service Application(s)
6. Publish Externally
Note: You can use scripts to do this (http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com)

30. “A bad host, a LOT of
downtime, and one heck of
a Citrix Netscaler!”

31. Azure Traffic Manager

32. What is Traffic Manager?
 Allows for routing of traffic to your site (WaaS or IaaS) based on
three options:
 Failover *
 Performance
 Weighted round-robin
 Leverages DNS CNAME records

33. Using Azure Traffic Manager for Automatic
Failover

34. Why should you use this?
 Allow for planned maintenance while still providing a static page
 Provide a semi-automated Failover to a maintenance page / “site is
down” page
 Note: You still need to know that something went wrong! Suggest using an
external / 3rd party monitoring system

35. Key Considerations for Traffic Manager
 Failover Scenarios:
 IIS Response code that is NOT 200
 This does not include:
 SQL is down (IIS still returns a 200)
 Any redirects (301/302 redirects)
 AD is down
 Etc
 Usually need to set this to a specific URL (i.e.
http://yoursite.com/Probe.aspx)

36. Provisioning a Full SharePoint
Server Farm in the new Azure Portal

37. New “SharePoint Server Farm”

38. SharePoint Server Farm Options
 High-Availability (9 servers)
 Two Web Front End Servers
 Two App Servers
 SQL AlwaysOn Cluster with file share witness
 Two Domain Controllers
 Non-HA (4 servers)
 Single WFE; Single App
 Single SQL; Single DC

39. SharePoint Server Farm Options
 All servers, accounts, DBs have a prefix
 i.e. “MySP”
 Can use different passwords for some of the
accounts
 A few clicks… some forms… and then it runs
 ~2hrs for non-HA Farm
 ~4hrs for HA Farm

40. So what does it look like?

41. SharePoint Server Farm Issues
 General:
 Single Storage Account for all VHDs
 OS Version is 2012 for SP, 2012R2 for everything else
 Azure Agent isn’t fully configurable
 WinRM enabled publicly by default
 SQL Setup
 SQL Version compatibility with SharePoint Version
 No SQL Alias
 SQL Data / Log files are on different disks

42. SharePoint Server Farm Issues
 SharePoint:
 Install & Farm Accounts are the only two used
 Secondary disk not used (although it is provisioned)
 Central Admin port not configurable; Published externally
 No Service Applications are provisioned

43. Questions?

44. “I know I wrote a blog post
on that, but where is it?”

45. More reading!
 How to Fully Patch SharePoint 2013 with SP1: http://tinyurl.com/imas-patch
 Creating a SharePoint Server Farm in Azure: http://tinyurl.com/imas-spfarm
 Traffic Manager on Microsoft Azure: http://tinyurl.com/imas-trafficman
 Architecture of SharePoint 2013 Farms: Search Components and Tier
Performance: http://tinyurl.com/imas-spsearch

46. I just want the content!
 Available on Slide Share at 9pm EST tonight!
 http://www.slideshare.net/ZacharyMillis/lessons-from-the-field-setting-up-sharepoint-
on-azure
 http://tinyurl.com/tagif-Nov12
46 11/12/2014

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