1. SACRAMENTO
SharePoint Infrastructure Tips and
Tricks for On-Premises and Hybrid
Cloud Environments

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. SharePoint 2013
Infrastructure

4. • OS
– Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
– Windows Server 2012
– Windows Server 2012 R2 (only if using SP 2013 SP1)
• SQL
– SQL Server 2008 R2 w/SP1
– SQL Server 2012
– SQL Server 2014 (only if using SP 2013 SP1)
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
What’s new in Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013
Software/Hardware Requirements

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

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

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

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

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

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

12. ARCHITECTING THE FARM

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

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

15. • 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
Architecting the Farm
Smallest Highly Available Farm

16. • 2 Dedicated Web
Servers (NLB)
• 2 Service Application
Servers
• 2 Database Servers
(Clustered or Mirrored)
• 1 or 2 Index Partitions
with equivalent query
components
Architecting the Farm
Best Practice ‘Six Server Farm’

17. • 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
Architecting the Farm
Ideal – Separate Service App Farm + Content Farm(s)

18. • 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
Architecting the Farm
Large SharePoint Farms

19. SharePoint Virtualization

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

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

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

23. Scaling to Large Virtual Environments
SP Server Virtualization

24. • 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
Virtualization of SharePoint Servers
Virtualization Performance Monitoring

25. Data Management

26. Sample Distributed Content Database Design
Data Management

27. • 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
Remote BLOB Storage (RBS)
Data Management

28. SQL Database Optimization

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

30. • 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.
Multiple Files for SharePoint Databases
SQL Server Optimization

31. • Implement SQL Maintenance Plans!
• Include DBCC (Check Consistency) and either Reorganize Indexes or Rebuild
Indexes, but not both!
SQL Database Optimization
SQL Maintenance Plans
• 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…)

32. High Availability and Disaster Recovery

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

34. AlwaysOn Availability Groups in SQL 2012/2014
HA and DR

35. • 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)
Network Load Balancing
HA and DR

36. Security and Documentation

37. • 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
Five Layers of SharePoint Security
Security

38. • 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
SPDocKit
Document SharePoint

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

41. Join us right after at The Blue Prynt
Socialize and unwind after our day of learning.
Blue Prynt Restaurant & Bar
815 11th St, Sacramento, CA 95814
bluepryntsacramento.com
SACRAMENTO