Michael Noel is an author of several books on SharePoint and other Microsoft technologies. He is a partner at Convergent Computing, an infrastructure and security consulting firm focused on SharePoint, Active Directory, Exchange, and security. In his presentation, he discussed best practices for architecting and optimizing SharePoint 2013 infrastructures, including farm designs, server virtualization approaches, high availability and disaster recovery options, security strategies, and SQL Server and data management techniques.

1. Michael Noel - CCO
THE ULTIMATE SHAREPOINT 2013
INFRASTRUCTURE BEST
PRACTICES SESSION

2. Michael Noel
Author of SAMS Publishing titles “SharePoint 2007 Unleashed,” the upcoming
“SharePoint 2010 Unleashed,” “SharePoint 2003 Unleashed”, “Teach Yourself
SharePoint 2003 in 10 Minutes,” “Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed,”
“Exchange Server 2010 Unleashed”, “ISA Server 2006 Unleashed”, and many
other titles .
Partner at Convergent Computing (www.cco.com / +1(510)444-5700) – San
Francisco, U.S.A. based Infrastructure/Security specialists for
SharePoint, AD, Exchange, Security
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3. SharePoint dnevi 2012 Kranjska gora, 26. in 27. november

4. Architecting the Farm
Three Layers of SharePoint Infrastructure
Web
Service Apps
Data
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5. Architecting the Farm
Small Farm Models
„All-in-One‟ (Avoid)
 DB and SP Roles Separate
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6. 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
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7. 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
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8. 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 cross-
farm
• Isolates „cranky‟
service apps like
User Profile Sync
and allows for
patching in
isolation
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9. 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
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10. SharePoint dnevi 2012 Kranjska gora, 26. in 27. november

11. 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
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12. SP Server Virtualization
Sample 2: Two Server Highly Available Farm
 High-
Availability
across Hosts
 All
components
Virtualized
 Uses only
two
Windows
Ent Edition
Licenses
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13. SP Server Virtualization
Sample 3: Mix of Physical and Virtual Servers
 Highest
transaction
servers are
physical
 Multiple
farm
support, wit
h DBs for all
farms on the
SQL cluster
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14. SP Server Virtualization
Scaling to Large Virtual Environments
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15. Virtualization of SharePoint Servers
Virtualization Performance Monitoring
Processor (Host Only) • Network Bandwidth –
• <60% Utilization = Good Bytes Total/sec
• 60%-90% = Caution – <40% Utilization = Good
• >90% = Trouble – 41%-64% = Caution
Available Memory – >65% = Trouble
• 50% and above = Good
• 10%-50% = OK
• Network Latency - Output
• <10% = Trouble Queue Length
Disk – Avg. Disk sec/Read or – 0 = Good
Avg. Disk sec/Write – 1-2= OK
• Up to 15ms = fine – >2 = Trouble
• 15ms-25ms = Caution
• >25ms = Trouble
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17. Data Management
Sample Distributed Content Database Design
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18. 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
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19. Data Management
Shredded Storage in SharePoint 2013
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21. SQL Server Optimization
Multiple Files for SharePoint Databases
Volume #1 Volume #2 Volume #3 Volume #4
DB-A DB-B DB-A DB-B DB-A DB-B DB-A DB-B
File 1 File 1 File 2 File 2 File 3 File 3 File 4 File 4
Tempdb File 1 Tempdb File 2 Tempdb File 3 Tempdb File 4
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22. 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.
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23. 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 T-
SQL Script (after full
backups have run…)
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25. High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Comparing the Options
High Availability and Disaster Potential Potential
Automatic Readable
Recovery Data Loss Recovery
Failover Secondaries
(RPO) Time (RTO)
SQL Server Solution
AlwaysOn Availability Group - synchronous- Zero Seconds Yes 0-2
commit
AlwaysOn Availability Group - asynchronous- Seconds Minutes No 0-4
commit
AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instance NA Seconds Yes NA
-to-minutes
Database Mirroring - High-safety (sync + witness) Zero Seconds Yes NA
Database Mirroring - High-performance (async) Seconds Minutes No NA
Log Shipping Minutes Minutes No Not during
-to-hours a restore
Backup, Copy, Restore Hours Hours No Not during
-to-days a restore
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26. HA and DR
AlwaysOn Availability Groups in SQL 2012
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27. 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)
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28. HA and DR
Network Load Balancing
Best Practice – Create Multiple Web Apps with
Load-balanced VIPs (Sample below)
• Web Role Servers
o sp1.companyabc.com (10.0.0.101) – Web Role Server
#1
o sp2.companyabc.com (10.0.0.102) – Web Role Server
#2
• Clustered VIPs shared between SP1 and SP2
(Create A records in DNS)
o spnlb.companyabc.com (10.0.0.103) - Cluster
o spca.companyabc.com (10.0.0.104) – SP Central Admin
o spsmtp.companyabc.com (10.0.0.105) – Inbound Email
VIP
o home.companyabc.com (10.0.0.106) – Main SP Web
App (can be multiple)
o mysite.companyabc.com (10.0.0.107) – Main MySites
Web App
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30. 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
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31. 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
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32. For More Information
SharePoint 2013 Unleashed from SAMS Publishing
(http://tinyurl.com/sp2013unleashed)
Microsoft „Virtualizing SharePoint Infrastructure‟
Whitepaper (http://tinyurl.com/virtualsp)
Microsoft SQL Mirroring Case Study
(http://tinyurl.com/mirrorsp )
SharePoint Kerberos Guidance
(http://tinyurl.com/kerbsp)
SharePoint Installation Scripts
(http://tinyurl.com/SPFarm-Config)
SharePoint Documentation Toolkit
(http://tinyurl.com/SPDocKit)
Contact us at CCO.com
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33. Michael Noel
Twitter: @MichaelTNoel
www.cco.com
Slides: slideshare.net/michaeltnoel
Pre-order SP2013 Unleashed
(http://tinyurl.com/sp2013unleashed)
SharePoint dnevi 2012 Kranjska gora, 26. in 27. november