Presented at SQL Saturday Southampton (2015) An introduction to the different databases that SharePoint uses, with recommendations for High Availability, Disaster Recovery and configuration settings for SQL Server, including the constraints imposed in a single farm, a stretched farm between data centres and a separate DR farm.

1. blog.eardley.org.uk
SharePoint Databases
What you need to know
Alan Eardley - @al_eardley
SQL Saturday
05 December 2015

2. blog.eardley.org.uk
SQLSaturday #467 Admin
• Raffle prizes from Sponsors
– Will be drawn at 17:00, you need to be here in order to win if your name is drawn.
• If you need to leave early can you let registration know
– We need to know who is still here in the event of a fire evacuation etc.
Enjoy the sessions and have a great time 

3. blog.eardley.org.uk
Who Am I?
• Solution Architect at CPS
• Developer, DBA, Business Analyst, Project Manager, Architect
• SQL Server 7.0 - 2014
• SharePoint 2003 – 2013
• Office 365, Azure, Project Server/Online, Dynamics CRM
• Twitter: @Al_Eardley
• E-mail: Alan.Eardley@Outlook.com
• Blog: http://blog.eardley.org.uk

4. blog.eardley.org.uk
What will I cover?
• What does it do?
• How does it work?
• How does it use SQL?
What is SharePoint?
• How many databases does it need?
• How does it grow?
• HA & DR
Planning
• Are there any pre-requisites?
• How do I help with the build?
Roll-out
This relates to on-premises SharePoint
NOT Office 365

5. blog.eardley.org.uk
SharePoint – What does it do?
Document
Management
Content
Management
Process
Management
Search
Publishing Social Collaboration
Business
Intelligence

6. blog.eardley.org.uk
SharePoint – How does it work?
Lists & LibrariesSitesSite CollectionsWeb Applications
Intranet
Departments
HR
IT
Documents
Knowledge Base
Help Desk
Issues
Sales
Projects
Upgrade to
SP2013
Risks
Issues
Tasks
Upgrade
My Sites
Client Extranet

7. blog.eardley.org.uk
SharePoint – How does it work?
Business
Connectivity
Services
Managed
Metadata
Services
Excel Services
PerformancePoint
Services
PowerPivot for
SharePoint
Project Server Search
User Profile
Service

8. blog.eardley.org.uk
SharePoint – How does it use SQL?
• Most Service Applications utilise at least
one database
Service
Applications
• At least one database per Web Application
• Each site collection can have a database
Content
Databases
• Multiple DatabasesMy Sites
Databases should not exceed 200GB in
size
With the exception of Records Centre
databases

9. blog.eardley.org.uk
Planning – How many databases does it
need?
• Types of Database
– Administration
– Content
– Service Applications
• How many databases will be required?
• How large do they need to be?
• How fast will they grow?

10. blog.eardley.org.uk
Admin & Content Databases
Default Database Name Location Size Initial Size Growth Read/write Scaling
SharePoint_Config
Must be co-located with
the Central Administration
database Small 2GB Log files grow rapidly 90/10 Up
SharePoint_AdminContent_
<GUID>
Must be located on the
same database engine
instance with the
configuration database Small 1GB
Will grow if PowerPivot
for SharePoint is
installed with default
settings 90/10 Up
WSS_Content None <200GB Varies Varies Up or Out

11. blog.eardley.org.uk
Service Applications
Default Database Name Location Size
Initial
Size Growth
Read/writ
e Scaling
Bdc_Service_DB_<GUID> None Small Very slow 90/10 Up
Managed Metadata Service
Application_Metadata_<GUID> None Medium
Growth factors include
the amount of managed
metadata 80/20
Up per service
application
PerformancePoint Service
_<GUID> None Small 1GB Very slow 80/20
Up per service
application
DefaultPowerPivotServiceApplicatio
nDB_<GUID> None Small Very slow 80/20 Up only
ProjectWebApp None
Small to
Medium Very slow 80/20
Up per web
application

12. blog.eardley.org.uk
Search
Default Database Name Location Size
Initial
Size Growth Read/write Scaling
Search_Service_Application_DB_<
GUID>
The Administration database should fit into RAM on
the server so that the server can handle the end-user
query load most efficiently. Because of this
requirement, it is usually best not to have the
Administration and Crawl databases located on the
same server. Medium 10GB
The factors that influence
growth include the number of
best bets, the number of
content sources and crawl
rules, the security descriptions
for the corpus, and how much
traffic. 50/50 Mostly Up
Search_Service_Application_Analy
ticsReportingStoreDB_<GUID> None
Medium to
Large
Write-intensive during analytics
update 90/10
Scale out by creating additional
Analytics Reporting database
using a split operation when the
main database becomes >200
GB.
Search_Service_Application_Crawl
StoreDB_<GUID> None Medium
Depends on the growth of the
document corpus 90/10
Scale out by creating additional
Crawl database per every 20
million items crawled.
Search_Service_Application_LinkS
toreDB_<GUID>
We recommend that if you have sites that have heavy
traffic, the Link database should use separate spindles
from other databases
Medium to
Large
The Link database grows on
disk by 1 GB per 1 million
documents fed. The click
through data grows linearly with
query traffic, 1 GB per million
queries. 30/70
Scale out by creating additional
Link database per every 60
million documents crawled. Also
add additional Link database per
100 million expected queries per
year.

13. blog.eardley.org.uk
Single Farm
• Web Front EndPresentation
• Application Server
• Workflow Manager
• Office Web Apps
Application
• SQL ServerData
On-PremisesResources
SharePointSharePoint
WorkflowManagement
DataLayer
OfficeWebApplications
ApplicationPresentation
SharePoint -
WFE
SharePoint -
WFE
SharePoint -
App
SharePoint -
App
Office Web
Apps
Office Web
Apps
Domain
Controller
Database
Server
Database
Server
Load Balancer
WorkFlow
Manager
WorkFlow
Manager
WorkFlow
Manager
SQL Cluster
Load Balancer
Load Balancer

14. blog.eardley.org.uk
High Availability
• Mirroring
– SharePoint supports mirroring
• Clustering
– Preferable to mirroring as it is at server level
• Always On Availability Groups
– Builds on the benefits of Clustering

15. blog.eardley.org.uk
Backup
• As a DBA, same as any other application
– Full backups
– Differential backups
– Transaction backups
• Check consistency
• Fragmentation
– Check for index fragmentation
– Check for drive fragmentation

16. blog.eardley.org.uk
Recovery Overview
Site
• Everyone
• 30 days
• Items and documents
• Automatically moved
to site collection
recycle bin
Site Collection
• Site collection
administrator
• First in – first out
• Includes sites

17. blog.eardley.org.uk
Recovery
• When a site is required to be restored
• When a site collection has been deleted
Content
Databases
• When a Service application needs to
rebuilt
Service
Application
• When a farm needs to be recoveredCentral Admin

18. blog.eardley.org.uk
Shared Services
• SharePoint Service Applications
– Search
– User Profile
– Managed Metadata
– Secure Store
– Business Connectivity

19. blog.eardley.org.uk
Multiple Farms, Multiple Data Centres
Data Centre A
AuxiliaryServices
AppProviderHosts
Data Centre B
Storage
Layer
Data
Layer
Data
Layer
ContentFarm
ServicesFarm
WebFrontEnds
WebFrontEnds
Index&Query
HA
Crawl&Analysis
HA
DistributedCache
HA
BatchProcessing
HA
BI:Excel&SSRS
HA
BatchProcessing
HA
OfficeWebApps
WorkflowFarm
Storage
Layer
Always On
Availability
Groups
Config–AG
Content-AG
Auxiliary-AG
Storage
Layer
Data
Layer
Scheduled
Backup &
Restore
WarmStandby-AuxiliaryServices
WarmStandby–ContentFarm
WarmStandby–ServicesFarm
Project
ServerFarm
Legacy
Application
Farm
TMG TMG

20. blog.eardley.org.uk
Data Level
ActiveDirectory
Data Centre BData Centre A
AGListener
AGListener
Synchronous
Asynchronous
WindowsServer
FailoverCluster Synchronous
WindowsServer
FailoverCluster
Scheduled
Backup &
Restore

21. blog.eardley.org.uk
How Can I Help?
• Set up SQL Instance correctly
• Understand the database usage profilesConfiguration
• Standards and processes
• PowerShellInstallation
• Monitor
• Plan for growth
• Backup
Maintenance

22. blog.eardley.org.uk
Configuration
• Used a dedicated instance
• Default Collation - Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS
• MAXDOP = 1
• Disable auto-create statistics
• Define the maximum memory
• Make a note of the Port Number the Instance is listening on
• Single filegroup per DB

23. blog.eardley.org.uk
Support
• The general rules to not invalidate Microsoft Support are:
– Do not add anything to the SharePoint databases
• Stored Procedures
• Triggers
• Tables
• Indexes
– Do not run frequent queries against the SharePoint Databases

24. blog.eardley.org.uk
Summary
• The number of databases depends on the service applications
• The size of the databases will depend on
– The number of users
– The number of documents and the amount of content
– The amount of usage of SharePoint
• A database instance for SharePoint has specific requirements
• HA and DR strategies are a combination of SharePoint and SQL approaches
• SharePoint databases are the same as any other databases

25. blog.eardley.org.uk
SharePoint Database References
blog.eardley.org.uk/2015/03/sharepoint-databases-knowledge-base/
• A combination of Microsoft documentation
– SQL based
– SharePoint based
• Initial sizes
• Growth
• Usage
• HA/DR
• Links to PoSh to create the databases

26. blog.eardley.org.uk
SQLSaturday #467 Sponsors

27. blog.eardley.org.uk
Thank-you
Alan Eardley – Alan.Eardley@outlook.com
blog.eardley.org.uk
@al_eardley
Office 365 | SharePoint | Project Server | CRM | Recruitment