Despite the rumors of its demise, SharePoint On-Premises is still very much alive and kicking, and it is still critical to architect it for performance. During this session, we walk you through some of the highlights of the content that will be presented in the 'Ultimate SharePoint Infrastructure Best Practices' session that the speaker will present at the European SharePoint Conference in May. Topics discussed are SharePoint infrastructure security, database performance and optimization, server virtualization, and high availability.

1. Infrastructure Best
Practices for
SharePoint OnPremises
Michael Noel - CCO

2. 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.

3. What’s new in
Infrastructure for
SharePoint 2013

4. What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
Software/Hardware Requirements
• 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

5. What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
Changes in Service Applications and New Service Applications
• 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

6. What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
Distributed Cache Service
• 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

7. What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
Request Management (RM)
• 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

8. What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
User Profile Sync – Three Options for Deployment
• 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

9. What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
Claims-based Authentication - Default
• 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

10. What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
Shredded Storage
• Stores new versions of documents as ‘shredded
BLOBs that are deltas of the changes
• Promises to reduce storage size significantly

11. What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
Search – FAST Search now included
• New Search
architecture (FAST
based) with one
unified search
• Personalized
search results
based on search
history
• Rich contextual
previews

12. ARCHITECTING THE FARM

13. Architecting the Farm
Three Layers of SharePoint Infrastructure
Web
Service Apps
Data

14. Architecting the Farm
Small Farm Models
• ‘All-in-One’ (Avoid)

DB and SP Roles Separate

15. Architecting the Farm
Smallest Highly Available Farm
• 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

16. Architecting the Farm
Best Practice ‘Six Server 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

17. Architecting the Farm
Ideal – Separate Service App Farm + Content Farm(s)
•
•
•
•
Separate farm for
Service Applications
One or more farms
dedicated to content
Service Apps are
consumed crossfarm
Isolates ‘cranky’
service apps like
User Profile Sync and
allows for patching in
isolation

18. Architecting the Farm
Large SharePoint Farms
• 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

19. SharePoint Virtualization

20. SP Server Virtualization
Sample 1: Single Server Environment



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

21. SP Server Virtualization
Sample 2: Two Server Highly Available Farm


HighAvailability
across Hosts
All
components
Virtualized

22. SP Server Virtualization
Sample 3: Mix of Physical and Virtual Servers


Highest
transaction
servers are
physical
Multiple farm
support, with
DBs for all
farms on the
SQL AOAG

23. SP Server Virtualization
Scaling to Large Virtual Environments

24. Virtualization of SharePoint Servers
Virtualization Performance Monitoring
• 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

25. Data Management

26. Data Management
Sample Distributed Content Database Design

27. Data Management
Remote BLOB Storage (RBS)
• Can reduce dramatically the size of Content DBs, as upwards
of 80%-90% of space in content DBs is composed of BLOBs
• Can move BLOB storage to more efficient/cheaper storage
• Improve performance and scalability of your SharePoint
deployment – But highly recommended to use third party

28. SQL Database Optimization

29. SQL Server Optimization
Multiple Files for SharePoint Databases
Volume #1
DB-A
File 1
DB-B
File 1
Tempdb File 1
Volume #2
DB-A
File 2
DB-B
File 2
Tempdb File 2
Volume #3
DB-A
File 3
DB-B
File 3
Tempdb File 3
Volume #4
DB-A
File 4
DB-B
File 4
Tempdb File 4

30. SQL Server Optimization
Multiple Files for SharePoint Databases
• Break Content Databases and TempDB into multiple files (MDF, NDF), total
should equal number of physical processors (not cores) on SQL server.
• Pre-size Content DBs and TempDB to avoid fragmentation
• Separate files onto different drive spindles for best IO perf.
• Example: 50GB total Content DB on Two-way SQL Server would have two
database files distributed across two sets of drive spindles = 25GB pre-sized
for each file.

31. SQL Database Optimization
SQL Maintenance Plans
• Implement SQL Maintenance Plans!
• Include DBCC (Check Consistency) and either Reorganize
Indexes or Rebuild Indexes, but not both!
• Add backups into the
maintenance plan if they
don’t exist already
• Be sure to truncate
transaction logs with a TSQL Script (after full
backups have run…)

32. High Availability and Disaster Recovery

33. HA and DR
Comparison of High Availability and
Disaster Recovery Options
High Availability and Disaster Recovery
SQL Server Solution
AlwaysOn Availability Groups – Synchronous (Dual-phase
commit, no data loss, can’t operate across WAN)
AlwaysOn Availability Groups – Asynchronous (Latency tolerant,
cross WAN option, potential for data loss)
AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) – Traditional shared
storage clustering
Database Mirroring - High-safety (Synchronous)
None
Potential
Recovery Time
(RTO)
5-7 Seconds
Seconds
Minutes
No
0-4
NA
30 Seconds to
several minutes
(depending on
disk failover)
5-10 seconds
Yes
N/A
Yes
N/A
Manually
initiated, can be a
few minutes if
automated
Manually
initated, can be a
few minutes if
automated, by
typically hours
Typically multiple
hours, days, or
weeks
No
N/A
No
Not during
a restore
No
Not during
a restore
Potential Data
Loss (RPO)
Zero
Database Mirroring - High-performance (Asynchronous)
Seconds
SQL Log Shipping
Minutes
Traditional Backup and Restore
Hours to Days
Automatic
Failover
Additional
Readable Copies
Yes
0-2

34. HA and DR
AlwaysOn Availability Groups in SQL 2012

35. Creating SQL 2012 AOAGs
Demo

36. HA and DR
Network Load Balancing
• Hardware Based Load Balancing (F5,
Cisco, Citrix NetScaler – Best
performance and scalability
• Software Windows Network Load
Balancing fully supported by MS, but
requires Layer 2 VLAN (all packets must
reach all hosts.) Layer 3 Switches must
be configured to allow Layer 2 to the
specific VLAN.
• If using Unicast, use two NICs on the
server, one for communications between
nodes.
• If using Multicast, be sure to configure
routers appropriately
• Set Affinity to Single (Sticky Sessions)
• If using VMware, note fix to NLB RARP
issue (http://tinyurl.com/vmwarenlbfix)

37. Security and Documentation

38. Security
Five Layers of SharePoint Security
• Infrastructure Security and Best practices
– Physical Security
– Best Practice Service Account Setup
– Kerberos Authentication
• Data Security
– Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
– Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) of SQL Databases
• Transport Security
– Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) from Server to Client
– IPSec from Server to Server
• Edge Security
– Inbound Internet Security (Forefront UAG/TMG)
• Rights Management

39. Document SharePoint
SPDocKit
•
•
•
Document all key settings in IIS, SharePoint, after
installation
Consider monitoring for changes after installation for
Config Mgmt.
Fantastic tool for this is the SPDocKit - can be found at
http://tinyurl.com/spdockit

40. Michael Noel
Twitter: @MichaelTNoel
www.cco.com
Slides: slideshare.net/michaeltnoel
Travel blog: sharingtheglobe.com
SharePoint 2013 Unleashed:
tinyurl.com/sp2013unleashed