Download to read offline
Uploaded byAndy Talbot
Building enterprise platforms - off the beaten path - SharePoint User Group UK (North West Region) 2016
This document provides guidance on building enterprise SharePoint platforms. It discusses governance, roles and responsibilities, documentation, testing, hardware considerations, monitoring, patching, and more. The key recommendations are to establish governance through roles, processes, and guidelines; perform thorough testing and monitoring; plan for hardware needs and capacity over time; and keep platforms current through patching and upgrades. Understanding these areas is important for maintaining a stable and supported SharePoint environment.
More Related Content
Similar to Building enterprise platforms - off the beaten path - SharePoint User Group UK (North West Region) 2016
![Coded Agents – with UiPath SDK + LangGraph [Virtual Hands-on Workshop]](https://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/ss_thumbnails/codedagentsdeck-251215155422-5497c599-thumbnail.jpg?width=640&height=640&fit=bounds)
Building enterprise platforms - off the beaten path - SharePoint User Group UK (North West Region) 2016
- 1. Off the beatenpath……. Building SharePoint Enterprise Platforms #suguk Andy Talbot February 02nd, 2016
- 4.
- 5. Collab365 Summit 100% FREE…..100%ONLINE…..100% AWESOME! • LIVE TV Channel (from Microsoft Redmond) – 3 days covering IT PRO, DEV & BIZ • Content covering Azure, Office 365 , SharePoint and Microsoft Learning • Multiple Languages SIGN UP NOW! http://bit.ly/collab365summit
- 6. Content Covered This sessionincludes: • Pain points • Lessons learnt • Sensible questions • Common sense thoughts …you decide what applies to you!
- 7. SharePoint On-Prem ISALIVE! “When it comes to the cloud, we’re “all in,” but we’re also realistic. We have a large on-premises installed base that’s important to us, and we’re committed to future releases of the server.” – Jared Spataro, Senior Director, Microsoft Office Division, “Yammer and Enterprise Social Roadmap Update” March 2013 Ref: http://www.collabshow.com/2013/10/21/sharepoint- still-not-dead-and-even-on-prem-is-not-dead/
- 8.
- 9. The G-Spot –Governance! Governance is SERIOUS stuff and you can’t afford to not think about it. “SharePoint Governance is a guideline of rules within your organisation, including what, why, when, where and how #SPGovManifesto” – Andy Talbot(!) The SharePoint Governance Manifesto’ - http://bit.ly/AmazonSPGovManifesto
- 10. IT Governance According tothe IT Governance Institute, there are five areas of focus: • Strategic Alignment • Value Delivery • Resource Management • Risk Management • Performance Measures Read more here: http://www.cio.com/article/2438931/gover nance/it-governance-definition-and- solutions.html
- 11. Good Governance • ConsensusOrientated • Participatory • Follows the rule of law • Effective and Efficient • Accountable • Transparent • Responsive • Equitable and Inclusive
- 12. Quality Assurance • Canyou afford not too? • Maintains standards • What’s more expensive; testing or loss of service / poor user experience? • It should be baked into ALL deployments and configuration change/s
- 13. Understand test types •Understand what to test AND when • Update test plans to reflect changes: - Platform changes - New developments • Don’t undervalue your QA team REF: http://www.sharethepoint.com/Learn/Blog/Lists/P osts/Post.aspx?ID=122
- 14. Go a littledeeper Understand what each type of test area means
- 15. RACI R RESPONSIBLE: • Who is/willbe doing this task? • Who is assigned to work on this task? A ACCOUNTABLE: • Who’s head will roll if this goes wrong? • Who has the authority to take decision? C CONSULTED: • Anyone who can tell me more about this task? • Any stakeholders already identified? I INFORMED: • Anyone whose work depends on this task? • Who has to be kept updated about the progress?
- 16. RACI Example DAD MOMSON DAUGHTER Choose a recipe C A/R C C Grocery Shopping R Pre-heat the oven R Prepare ingredients A R Bake dinner in oven A/R
- 17. Roles & Responsibilities Introduceclear separation of duties e.g. • SharePoint Product Owner • Configuration Manager • Platform SMEs • Functional SMEs • Support SMEs • Trainers • QA / Testers • Requirement Gatherers
- 18. Roles & Responsibilities Differenteach role comes a mix of responsibilities. e.g. • Leadership • Support • Management • Planning • Strategy Understand who is responsible for what in your organisation
- 19. Release Management Typical responsibilities: •Deployment Management • Environments Management • Release Process Management • Build Management • Configuration Management • Change Management
- 20. Be careful.... Sometimes weoverlook things (shocking!). Maybe we didn’t stop to consider: • When will product support stop? • Base or Project cost? • How long can I keep my resources?
- 21. Staying Current It’s important: •Understand vendor product and strategy developments • Helps you to plan ahead for change • Underpins personal development planning (right?)
- 22. Documentation It’s important: • Tobe current • Relevant • Stored in an appropriate place (e.g. don’t store SharePoint DR docs in SharePoint!) • Version controlled • Maintained
- 23. Typical Documentation At aminimum the following should be documented: • On boarding process • Build & Configuration • DR plan • HLD’s & LLD’s • Test plans
- 24. Successive Layers ofDefence • Project Governance • Architecture Governance • Information Governance • Release Management • Quality Assurance
- 25. Shared Platforms • Solutiondelivery aligns to platform capacity • Changes are communicated to all platform stakeholders • Peer review opportunities (DWG?) • Switching on features may affect others (e.g. Auditing)
- 26. SharePoint Centre of Excellence SeeAndrew Woodward’s deck from SPC12: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events /SharePoint- Conference/2012/SPC214
- 27. Resources & People •Often we ask for more system resource, but don’t plan for more human resources • Do we on-board people properly, or are they left guessing on your standards, processes, etc.
- 28. Embracing Talent Ask yourself: •Do you encourage and foster learning and development? • Do you recognise emerging talent? • Shouldn’t each capability have a base achievement standard? E.g. Certification, internal standards, etc. • Does training align with product roadmap? Technology is nothing without people
- 29. Capturing User Feedback Askyourself: • Do we really LISTEN? • Is it EASY for users to feedback? • Do we REVIEW feedback? • Do we MEASURE THE VALUE of delivery against customer feedback? • Do we let GOOD IDEAS DIE?
- 30. Realignment Sometimes we needto realign for various different reasons, e.g. • Mergers & acquisitions • Improve efficiency and effectiveness • Senior management changes • Market response • Change of strategy Have we thought about how we would approach this if the need arose?
- 31. Who makes theDecisions? Carefully consider who should AND shouldn’t be making different types of decisions. Worryingly it’s not always the right people, e.g. • Project Managers making technical decisions (tick boxing?) • Techies making business decisions • Power Brokers (you know the type!) Do decisions support the vision? “To Steer…. Governance….”
- 32. Communication It’s important to: •Have a communication plan • Get across the intended value • Set expectation • Use it to promote cultural change • Show that you listened • Promote recent successes • Warn about service disruption INFORM, Awareness INVOLVE, Engagement INTEGRATE, Commitment
- 33. Guiding Principles • Setan internal expectation • Encourage commitment and quality • Encourage early warning of issues • Enjoy what you do!
- 34. Support Framework • Establishtriage process • Understand your estate • Identify trends, update training and FAQs • Encourage community feedback, possibly with Gamification techniques
- 35. Capacity Planning • Recertificationprocess? • Monitor growth • Storage reduction opportunities • Plan for Site Quotas & Content Databases • Understand boundaries, limits and thresholds, and respect them! • Migrations • Site creation control • Auditing • Service Separation • Storage Tiers / IOPS Does existing hardware meet company’s needs Determine the company’s future needs Identify opportunities to consolidate Determine if existing infrastructure can support anticipated growth Implement Capacity Planning
- 36. Load Planning • Profileexpected traffic patterns (account for time differences in different countries) • Understand usage age patterns of each web app – determine the best architectures to fit (e.g Collaboration – large read / write) • Understand caching options and what they do (which can impact platform capacity) • Office Web Apps (SP2010)
- 37. Get the Balanceright • What will come first, Load or Capacity? • Do you understand your points of failure? • Have you planned for the future?
- 38. Architecture / Topologies •Properly planned? • Physical & Logical design Documented? • Use it to understand how to change your farm/s • Traditional vs Streamlined topologies Technical diagrams for SharePoint 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc263199.aspx
- 39. Scaling • Understand thedifference between scaling UP and scaling OUT • Plan Content Databases (quotas, thresholds, warnings, migration process) • Understand caches (e.g. Blob, distributed, object, page)
- 40. Monitoring • System Logs •Performance • Growth • Usage • Functional Requests • Support Issues ….are you being PROACTIVE or REACTIVE?
- 41. Hardware Considerations • Doyou understand your hardware refresh cycle? • If on a managed platform, do you understand your suppliers refresh cycle and limitations? Understand exit strategies too • Will purchase restrictions prevent changes in topology • Does your company have a cloud strategy for the future? • Do you know what to do if you introduce new hardware (e.g. update SQL Alias, web.config, etc.)
- 42. 3rd Party Tools •Upgrade ready? • Infrastructure requirements understood? • Training • Support model • Understand your procurement framework • Licencing, perpetual or annual? Have we planned for growth e.g. enough seats
- 43. vNext Ready? • Understandyour corporate roadmap • Be as upgrade ready as possible • Understand deprecated features • Learn architectural changes, both logical and physical • Microsoft Product Line Architecture (PLA) "How would Microsoft deploy this technology?" or "how would Microsoft do it?" It was from this simple question that the PLA was born.
- 44. Outsourced Functions Typical forsupport and development capabilities. Take time to: • Understand the ‘Continuum of Cultural Characteristics’ • Agree on standards • Agree communication methods • Understand the QA process • Major public holidays (different from country to country)
- 45. Patching • 99.9% uptimereally means ‘x’ downtime allowance • Understand why you’re making a change. • SP’s, CU’s, PU’s, COD, etc. Understand the differences - http://bit.ly/JUBWLi • READ THE RELEASE NOTES! It might fix one thing and break another
- 46. What Availability UptimeReally Means Availability % Downtime per year Downtime per month* Downtime per week 90% ("one nine") 36.5 days 72 hours 16.8 hours 95% 18.25 days 36 hours 8.4 hours 97% 10.96 days 21.6 hours 5.04 hours 98% 7.30 days 14.4 hours 3.36 hours 99% ("two nines") 3.65 days 7.20 hours 1.68 hours 99.5% 1.83 days 3.60 hours 50.4 minutes 99.8% 17.52 hours 86.23 minutes 20.16 minutes 99.9% ("three nines") 8.76 hours 43.8 minutes 10.1 minutes 99.95% 4.38 hours 21.56 minutes 5.04 minutes 99.99% ("four nines") 52.56 minutes 4.32 minutes 1.01 minutes 99.999% ("five nines") 5.26 minutes 25.9 seconds 6.05 seconds 99.9999% ("six nines") 31.5 seconds 2.59 seconds 0.605 seconds 99.99999% ("seven nines") 3.15 seconds 0.259 seconds 0.0605 seconds
- 47. Backup & DR •You’ve planned for it, right? • Test annually • RPO’s/RTO’s still correct? • Have you over engineered? e.g. If no point in time recovery, why are you SQL full logging? • Understand what dependent applications and process maybe affected Facilities & Infrastructure Processes & Procedures Operational BC / DR Plan
- 48. You cannot knowit all..... • SharePoint Centre of Excellence • Developers • BA’s • Trainers • Product Owners • SMEs • Design Working Group • Information Governance (SPIG ) • Steering Committees…
- 49.
- 50. The ‘C’ Word– CHANGE! “Changing behaviours at work requires changing the environment that surrounds people when they’re at work” Marc D Anderson (@sympmarc) Is it time for gamification as an approach to facilitating changing behaviours?
- 51. Questions? “Questions are guaranteed inlife; answers aren't”
- 52. Good Bye forNow! Andy Talbot SharePoint&Office365Consultant SUGUKIOMLeader|Collab365LIVETVHost /AndyTalbot @SharePointAndy SharePointAndy.com