Slide deck from Michael Noel's session on Best Practices SharePoint 2010 infrastructure, as presented at SharePoint Saturday Sacramento, 18 June, 2011.

1. Welcome to the First Annual SharePoint Saturday Sacramento!!

2. Michael Noel Convergent Computing Twitter: @MichaelTNoel Building the ‘Perfect’ FarmBest Practices from the Field

3. Michael Noel Author of SAMS Publishing titles “SharePoint 2010 Unleashed,” “SharePoint 2007 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 Bay Area based Infrastructure/Security specialists for SharePoint, AD, Exchange, Security

4. What we will cover Examine various SharePoint 2010 farm architecture best practices that have developed over the past year Examine SharePoint Best Practice Farm Architecture Understand SharePoint Virtualization Options Explore SharePoint DR and HA strategies using Database Mirroring Explore other common best practices (RBS, SSL, NLB) Examine best practice security for SharePoint A large amount of best practices covered (i.e. Drinking through a fire hose,) goal is for you to be able to take away at least 2-3 useful pieces of information that can be used in your environment

5. Architecting the Farm

6. Architecting the FarmUnderstanding the Three Tiers of SharePoint Infrastructure

7. Architecting the FarmSmall Farm Examples ‘All-in-One’ (Avoid) DB and SP Roles Separate

8. Architecting the FarmSmallest Highly Available Farm 2 SharePoint Servers running Web and Service Apps 2 Database Servers (Clustered or Mirrored) 1 or 2 Index Partitions with equivalent query components Smallest farm size that is fully highly available

9. Architecting the FarmBest 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

10. Architecting the FarmScaling to Large 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

11. Previously a third party product ($$$$) More reasonable pricing now Highly tuned and specialised search engine for SharePoint and also as an enterprise search platform Replaces SharePoint 2010 Native Search if used ‘Net new’ features built-in. Architecting the FarmFAST Search

12. Architecting the FarmFAST Search – Comparison Matrix – Slide 1 of 2

13. Architecting the FarmFAST Search – Comparison Matrix – Slide 2 of 2

14. Virtualization of SharePoint Servers

15. Virtualization of SharePoint ServersCaveats – Be Sure to Understand Virtualization Concepts

16. Virtualization of SharePoint ServersVirtual Guest Processor and Memory Guidelines

18. Allows for separation of the database role onto a dedicated server

20. All components Virtualized

23. Virtualization of SharePoint ServersVirtualization Performance Monitoring 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 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

24. Virtualization of SharePoint ServersQuick Farm Provisioning using VMM/Virtual Center Create new Virtual Guest (Windows Server 2008 R2) Install SP2010 Binaries. Stop before running Config Wizard Turn Virtual Guest into Template, modify template to allow it to be added into domain Add PowerShell script to run on first login, allowing SP to be added into farm or to create new farm End Result - 15 minute entire farm provisioning…quickly add servers into existing farms or create new farms (Test, Dev, Prod) on demand

25. Quick Farm Provisioning with VMM 2008 R2 - Demo

26. Data Management

27. Start with a distributed architecture of content databases from the beginning, within reason (more than 50 per SQL instance is not recommended) Distribute content across Site Collections from the beginning as well, it is very difficult to extract content after the face Allow your environment to scale and your users to ‘grow into’ their SharePoint site collections Data ManagementDistribute Data Across Content DBs and Site Collections

29. BLOBs are unstructured content stored in SQL Includes all documents, pictures, and files stored in SharePoint Excludes Metadata and Context, information about the document, version #, etc. Until recently, could not be removed from SharePoint Content Databases Classic problem of structured vs. unstructured data – unstructured data doesn’t really belong in a SQL Server environment Data ManagementBinary Large OBject (BLOB) Storage

30. Data ManagementGetting your BLOBs out of the Content DBs 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

31. SQL Database Optimization

32. SQL Database OptimizationContent Databases Distributed Between Multiple Volumes Volume #1 Volume #2 Volume #3 Volume #4 DB-A File 1 DB-B File 1 DB-A File 2 DB-B File 2 DB-A File 3 DB-B File 3 DB-A File 4 DB-B File 4 Tempdb File 1 Tempdb File 2 Tempdb File 3 Tempdb File 4

33. SQL Database OptimizationContent Databases Distributed Between Multiple Volumes 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: 100GB total Content DB on Four-way SQL Server would have four database files distributed across four sets of drive spindles = 25GB pre-sized for each file.

34. SQL Database OptimizationTempDB Best practices TempDB is critical for performance Pre-size to 20% of the size of the largest content database. Break into multiple files across spindles as noted Note there is a separate TempDB for each physical instance Note that if using SQL Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) for any databases in an instance, the tempDB is encrypted.

35. High Availability and Disaster Recovery

36. Clustering is Shared Storage, can’t survive storage failure, makes Mirroring more attractive Clustering fails over more quickly Mirroring is not supported for all databases, but Clustering is Both Clustering and Mirroring can be used at the same time (Instance to Instance) High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Clustering vs. Mirroring

37. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – SQL Database Mirroring Introduced in SQL 2005 SP1 Greatly improved in SQL 2008 and now SQL 2008 R2 Available in Enterprise and Standard (Synchronous only) editions Works by keeping a mirror copy of a database or databases on two servers Can be used locally, or the mirror can be remote Can be set to use a two-phase commit process to ensure integrity of data across both servers Can be combined with traditional shared storage clustering to further improve redundancy SharePoint 2010 is now Mirroring aware!

38. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Mirroring Model #1 – Single Site Single Site Synchronous Replication Uses a SQL Witness Server to Failover Automatically Mirror all SharePoint DBs in the Farm Use a SQL Alias to switch to Mirror Instance

39. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Mirroring Model #2 – Cross-Site with HA Two Sites 1-10 ms Latency max 1Gb Bandwidth minimum Farm Servers in each location Auto Failover

40. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Mirroring Model #2 – Remote Farm Two Sites Two Farms Mirror only Content DBs Failover is Manual Read-only Mode possible Must Re-Attach and Re-Index

41. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Support for Mirroring – Slide 1 of 2

42. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Support for Mirroring – Slide 2 of 2

43. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryTwo Node/Two Instance Cluster – Take Advantage of both servers

44. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryNetwork 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)

45. High Availability and Disaster RecoveryWindows Software Network Load Balancing Recommendations Best Practice – Create Multiple Web Apps with Load-balanced VIPs (Sample below) Web Role Servers sp1.companyabc.com (10.0.0.101) – Web Role Server #1 sp2.companyabc.com (10.0.0.102) – Web Role Server #2 Clustered VIPs shared between SP1 and SP2 (Create A records in DNS) spnlb.companyabc.com (10.0.0.103) - Cluster spca.companyabc.com (10.0.0.104) – SP Central Admin spsmtp.companyabc.com (10.0.0.105) – Inbound Email VIP home.companyabc.com (10.0.0.106) – Main SP Web App (can be multiple) mysite.companyabc.com (10.0.0.107) – Main MySites Web App

46. SharePoint Installation

47. SharePoint InstallationScripted Installations Good to understand how to install SharePoint from the command-line, especially if setting up multiple servers. Allows for options not available in the GUI, such as the option to rename databases to something easier to understand. Use PowerShell with SharePoint 2010 Sample scripts available for download…

48. Function Configure-SPSearch { PARAM($AppPool, $FarmName, $SearchServiceAccount) $searchServiceInstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -local Start-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -Identity $searchServiceInstance $dbName = $FarmName + "_SearchServiceApplication" $searchApplication = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Name "$FarmName Search Service Application" -ApplicationPool $AppPool -DatabaseName $dbName $searchApplicationProxy = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplicationProxy -name "$FarmName Search Service Application Proxy" -SearchApplication $searchApplication Set-SPEnterpriseSearchAdministrationComponent -SearchApplication $searchApplication -SearchServiceInstance $searchServiceInstance $crawlTopology = New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlTopology -SearchApplication $searchApplication $crawlDatabase = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlDatabase -SearchApplication $searchApplication New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlComponent -CrawlTopology $crawlTopology -CrawlDatabase $crawlDatabase -SearchServiceInstance $searchServiceInstance while($crawlTopology.State -ne "Active") { $crawlTopology | Set-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlTopology -Active -ErrorActionSilentlyContinue if ($crawlTopology.State -ne "Active") { Start-Sleep -Seconds 10 } } $queryTopology = New-SPenterpriseSEarchQueryTopology -SearchApplication $searchApplication -partitions 1 $searchIndexPartition = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexPartition -QueryTopology $queryTopology New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryComponent -indexpartition $searchIndexPartition -QueryTopology $queryTopology -SearchServiceInstance $searchServiceInstance $propertyDB = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchPropertyDatabase -SearchApplication $searchApplication Set-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexPartition $searchIndexPartition -PropertyDatabase $propertyDB while ($queryTopology.State -ne "Active") { $queryTopology | Set-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryTopology -Active -ErrorActionSilentlyContinue if ($queryTopology.State -ne "Active") { Start-Sleep -Seconds 10 } } } SharePoint InstallationSamples Scripts – http://tinyurl.com/SPFarm-Config

49. SharePoint InstallationSome Manual Service Apps Still Required Due to complexity and/or bugs, certain Service Apps will need to be manually configured in most cases. This includes the following: PerformancePoint Service Application User Profile Service Application Web Analytics Service Application

50. Security

51. SharePoint SecurityLayers of Security in a SharePoint Environment 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 Antivirus 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

52. SharePoint SecurityInfrastructure – Sample List of Service Accounts

53. SharePoint SecurityInfrastructure – Enable Kerberos when using Classic-Auth When creating any Web Applications in Classic-mode, USE KERBEROS. It is much more secure and also faster with heavy loads as the SP server doesn’t have to keep asking for auth requests from AD. Kerberos auth does require extra steps, which makes people shy away from it, but once configured, it improves security considerably and can improve performance on high-load sites. Should also be configured on SPCA Site! (Best Practice = Configure SPCA for NLB, SSL, and Kerberos (i.e. https://spca.companyabc.com)

54. SharePoint SecurityData – Role Based Access Control (RBAC) Role Groups defined within Active Directory (Universal Groups) – i.e. ‘Marketing,’ ‘Sales,’ ‘IT,’ etc. Role Groups added directly into SharePoint ‘Access Groups’ such as ‘Contributors,’ ‘Authors,’ etc. Simply by adding a user account into the associated Role Group, they gain access to whatever rights their role requires. SharePoint Group

55. SharePoint SecurityData - Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) New in SQL Server 2008 Only Available with the Enterprise Edition Seamless Encryption of Individual Databases Transparent to Applications, including SharePoint

56. SharePoint SecurityData - Use SharePoint-Aware Antivirus (3rd Party or FPS)

57. SharePoint SecurityTransport - Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption External or Internal Certs highly recommended Protects Transport of content 20% overhead on Web Servers Can be offloaded via SSL offloaders if needed Don’t forget for SPCA as well!

58. SharePoint SecurityTransport – IPSec from Server to Server By default, traffic between SharePoint Servers (i.e. Web and SQL) is unencrypted IPSec encrypts all packets sent between servers in a farm For very high security scenarios when all possible data breaches must be addressed

59. SharePoint SecurityEdge – Forefront Unified Access Gateway

60. SharePoint SecurityRights Management - Active Directory Rights Management Services AD RMS is a form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, used in various forms to protect content Used to restrict activities on files AFTER they have been accessed: Cut/Paste Print Save As… Directly integrates with SharePoint DocLibs

61. For More Information SharePoint 2010 Unleashed from SAMS Publishing (http://www.samspublishing.com) Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed and/or Hyper-V Unleashed (http://www.samspublishing.com) Microsoft ‘Virtualizing SharePoint Infrastructure’ Whitepaper (http://tinyurl.com/virtualsp) Microsoft SQL Mirroring Case Study (http://tinyurl.com/mirrorsp ) Failover Mirror PowerShell Script (http://tinyurl.com/failovermirrorsp ) SharePoint Kerberos Guidance (http://tinyurl.com/kerbsp) SharePoint Installation Scripts (http://tinyurl.com/SPFarm-Config) Contact us at CCO.com

62. Don’t Forget SharePint!! Sponsored By….. Join us at 6:00 pm at BJs Brewhousefor a free drink, kindly provided by Rackspace! A great opportunity to network with other SharePoint Professionals! Don’t forget to fill out your bingo cards and surveys to be eligible for GREAT end of day raffles!

63. Thanks to Our Sponsors

64. Thanks for attending!Questions? Michael Noel Twitter: @MichaelTNoel www.cco.com Slides: slideshare.net/michaeltnoel