1. Michael Noel
Convergent Computing
michael @cco.com

2.  Author of SAMS Publishing titles “SharePoint 2007 Unleashed,” the upcoming “Teach
Yourself SharePoint 2007 in 10 Minutes,” “SharePoint 2003 Unleashed”, “Teach Yourself
SharePoint 2003 in 10 Minutes,” “Windows Server 2008 Unleashed,” “Exchange Server 2007
Unleashed”, “ISA Server 2006 Unleashed”, and many other titles with over 250,000 books
translated into 10 languages in circulation worldwide.
 Partner at Convergent Computing (www.cco.com / 510.444.5700) – SF Bay Area based
Infrastructure/Security specialists for SharePoint, AD, Exchange, Security

3.  Why Virtualise?
 What SharePoint components can be virtualised?
 Memory Limitations and Guidelines for Guests
 Virtualisation of Dev/Test/Prod
 Virtualisation Software Options
 Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
 System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
 VMware Products
 Citrix XenServer
 Microsoft Licensing for Virtual Servers

4. Understanding the need and rationale for
Virtualising server infrastructure

5.  Reduce Costs
 Direct Server over consumption / Utility Bills /
“Greener” technology
 Less Physical space to consume (smaller data centers
= less rent)
 Less cost to cool multiple servers

6.  Consolidate / Dedicate
 Reduce number of physical servers
 Get rid of legacy hardware
 Make it easier to provision more dedicated specialty
servers (i.e. Separate SharePoint roles onto multiple
dedicated virtual servers instead of one ‘all-in-one’
server
 Dedicated servers tend to have less issues as they run
‘without surprises’ that can be caused by bundling
services

7.  Optimise Investment
 Idle Servers free up their memory for other servers to
use
 No proliferation of disk volumes
 Very large number of servers can run on a single box
(key word is RAM and Procs here)

8. How does virtualisation help in a SharePoint
environment?

9.  Production Database Servers are generally bad
candidates for virtualisation
 Good candidates include the remaining front-
end roles, including:
 Web
 Query
 Index (with caveats)
 Application

10.  Test/Dev environments can potentially virtualise
all components
 In some cases, (such as if stress testing),
Database role for test environments can use
existing server or another physical server

11.  SQL Server I/O Ratio is generally quite high (it takes
advantage of a higher proportion of its hardware) so
less reason to virtualise from a cost perspective
 High Disk and Network Activity – at large
transaction volumes virtualisation layer tends to
break down
 Improved performance when on physical server

12.  Can easily provision multiple web role servers for
redundancy and scalability
 ‘Stateless’ servers, no real data stored on them
 Can be quickly provisioned, taken in and out of
farm
 Be sure to keep all components, applications,
and patch levels the same!

13.  Same concept as web role…can built HA into the
Search service
 Requires a secondary disk (virtual, but could be
physical LUN on SAN) for Index Query
propagation
 Can be combined onto Web role server, good fit

14.  The ‘heaviest hitter’ of the SharePoint front-end
roles
 This role should get the lion’s share of the RAM if
possible
 If you had to choose which server would remain
physical, this would be it
 Also requires second disk to store the Index. Index
quorum will be anywhere from 10% to 40% of total
size of content being indexed.

15.  Moves the rather ‘busy’ application roles such as
Excel Services and Infopath Forms Services off
the Web role servers
 If Excel Services or other app roles are heavily
utilised, this can improve rendering performance
fairly quickly

16.  Create separate farms for Development, Testing, and
Production or even Demo or DR farms
 Potential to host each farm’s databases on same physical
SQL Box (potentially separate instances)
 Creates logical separation…installation of solutions or
applications in Test won’t affect Prod farm
 In certain scenarios, where network connectivity doesn’t exist
between environments, may require separate virtual SQL
servers

17.  Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) Boundaries exist at the
hardware level.
 Virtual guests that are allocated more memory than exist within a
single NUMA memory boundary have significantly impacted
performance
 NUMA boundaries vary by processor and motherboard vendor, but
good rule of thumb to calculate boundaries is to divide the amount
of memory in the system by the total number of cores.
 i.e. Dual Quad-core host (2x4 cores = 8 cores) with 64GB of RAM on the
host would mean NUMA boundary is 64/8 or 8GB.
 In this example, allocating more than 8GB for a single guest session would
result in performance drops.

18.  Keeping NUMA boundaries in mind, this means that you will
get significantly better performance provisioning two
SharePoint front-ends with half the amount of RAM as a
single front-end with twice as much RAM.
 This applies to any virtualisation platform, as the limitation is
hardware specific.
 Refer to MS Whitepaper on Virtualisation of SharePoint
(http://tinyurl.com/virtualsp) for more specifics.

19.  NOT Supported on Virtual PC
 Supported MS platforms include Virtual Server 2005
R2 or Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (better)
 Only MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 Supported (SPS 2003
and WSS 2.0 are NOT)
What about 3rd Party (i.e. VMware, XenServer), you ask?

20. “…for vendors with whom Microsoft has established a support relationship that
covers virtualization solutions, or for vendors who have Server Virtualization
Validation Program (SVVP) validated solutions, Microsoft will support server
operating systems subject to the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy for its
customers who have support agreements when the operating system runs
virtualised on non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. This support will
include coordinating with the vendor to jointly investigate support issues. As part
of the investigation, Microsoft may still require the issue to be reproduced
independently from the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. Where
issues are confirmed to be unrelated to the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization
software, Microsoft will support its software in a manner that is consistent with
support provided when that software is not running together with non-Microsoft
hardware virtualization software. “

21.  Cisco Systems, Inc.
 Citrix Systems, Inc.
 Novell, Inc.
 Oracle, USA Inc.
 Sun Microsystems
 Unisys Corp.
 Virtual Iron Software
 VMware, Inc.

22.  SharePoint now ‘supported’ on VMware, Citrix
XenServer, or others, with some caveats
 Support still remains the most robust (i.e. no
need for SVVP validation) for MS Premier
Support clients
 Less chance that MS will require you to
reproduce problems in physical environment

23. Samples of real-world virtualised SharePoint
environments

24.  Allows organisations 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

25.  High-
Availability
across Hosts
 All
components
virtualised
 Uses only
two
Windows
Ent Edition
Licenses

26.  Highest
transaction
servers are
physical
 Multiple farm
support, with
DBs for all
farms on the
SQL cluster
 Only five
physical
servers total,
but high
performance

28. Fully supported, robust platform for SharePoint
server virtualisation. Addition of VMM 2008 for
Management.

29.  Available as a free download for Windows Server
2008 (Be sure to update from the RTM version)
 Can be installed on any 64bit version of Windows
Server 2008 (Std, Ent, Datacenter)
 Hypervisor based application, performance gains
over Virtual Server 2005 R2 in the range of 30-
40%

30.  Uses Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) format for disks,
which can be shared with Virtual PC or legacy
Virtual Server 2005
 Allows for re-hosting of legacy applications and
OSes
 x64 HOST and GUEST support
 Supports clustering and NLB across guests

31.  Supports Intel-V and AMD-V Chips for improved
virtualisation support
 Integrates with Active Directory using Service
Connection Points (SCPs)
 Comprehensive Virtual Networking support

32.  One highly redundant scenario would be to
deploy two Virtual Hosts, then distribute guests
across the hosts.
 Load-balance the guests across the two hosts,
i.e. one SP Web server on each side, one Query
on each side, etc.
 SP Database would be physically clustered in this
case
 If a Virtual host fails, SP stays active.

33.  Virtualisation Host and Guest Management Platform
 Part of the System Center Management Suite, which
includes the following:
 System Center Operations Manager 2007
 System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
 System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2
 System Center Mobile Device Manager 2007
 System Center Essentials 2007
 System Center Capacity Planner 2007
 System Center Service Manager (Beta)

34.  Released to Manufacturing in October, 2008
 VMM 2008 has P2V and V2V (VMware Guest
migration to Hyper-V) tools
 For SharePoint, allows for creation of SharePoint
template servers that can be quickly provisioned for
test farms or for new farm members in production
 Can manage both Hyper-V and VMware guests
(though must ‘go through’ a Virtual Center server to
manage VMware guests.)

35.  Licensed either ‘a la carte’, with individual VMM
2008 licenses for each managed Host machine, or
you can purchase the following:
 System Center Server Management Suite – Standard
Edition
 Provides for DPM, ConfigMgr, OpsMgr, and VMM 2008 Agents for a
single guest
 System Center Server Management Suite – Enterprise
Edition (List $1497 USD)
 Provides for DPM, ConfigMgr, OpsMgr, and VMM 2008 Agents for all
virtual guests running on a single host server

36. Current Industry Leader for virtualisation

37.  VMware Workstation
 VMware Server
 VMware ESX Server
 VMware Virtual Infrastructure
 VMotion
 Update Manager
 Storage Vmotion
 VirtualCenter
 Converter (P2V)

38.  Low-cost tool that is designed to run on a
desktop, can virtualise and run a few systems at a
time
 Not recommended for SharePoint, unless simply
testing on a limited basis
 Typically used to virtualise Desktop OSes or
when testing Servers in a lab

39.  Free download
 Typically used for stand-alone VMware host
servers
 Runs on a ‘host’ OS, such as Windows Server
2003/2008 x64 or Linux
 Missing range of VMware tools such as VMotion,
Virtual Center management, etc.

40.  Full function VMware Virtualisation platform running
on Linux Host OS
 Designed for enterprise environments, integrates
with other Virtual Infrastructure components to
provide HA, DR, and easy server provisioning
 Very scalable, currently industry leader
 Both versions of VMware Server support wide range
of Guest OSes (Windows, Linux, etc.)

41.  Standalone version of ESX, uses same kernel and
Linux OS
 Positioned for remote and small offices
 No-cost, though management requires licensing
Virtual Center

42.  Can be used to failover sessions automatically
from one ESX server to another (Virtual Disks on
shared storage)
 Can be integrated as one layer of SharePoint DR
strategy
 Only available as an add-on or if buying the
whole VI3 Suite

43.  Very slick tool that can be used to scan a physical
server and ‘export’ it to a virtual disk which can
be then mounted.
 Essentially converting Physical to Virtual (P2V)
 Often used to get rid of older hardware that is
running application software that can’t be retired
 Free tool

44.  Centralized console for managing VMware
sessions
 Allows for quick provisioning of new Server OSes
 Add-on component or part of VI3

45. Functional Citrix solution for SharePoint
virtualisation

46.  Part of the Citrix Xen line of application, desktop,
and server virtualisation products
 Open-source virtualisation offering using Xen
Hypervisor as base
 Xen Hypervisor, developed at University of
Cambridge, is slim, with only 50,000 lines of
code. Xen performance is substantial.

47.  Simplified interface, quick setup and
configuration
 Includes ‘Xenmotion’ HA capability, similar to
VMware’s Vmotion
 Can be installed as part of a suite, including the
popular XenDesktop (formerly known as
Presentation Server/Citrix Metaframe.)

48.  Express Edition
 No Cost – Single host, max 2 CPU
 Standard Edition
 Adds multi-host and multi-VLAN capabilities, unlimited
CPUs
 Enterprise Edition
 Adds Resource Pools, XenMotion live migration, and QOS
 Platinum Edition
 Adds Dynamic Provisioning of physical and virtual servers

49.  Server License Options have been changed to allow
for multiple Guest licenses per single license as
follows:
 One Standard Edition License = 1 Physical/Virtual OS
License (Can be one physical host plus one physical
guest if host is only used for virtualisation.
 One Enterprise Edition License: One Physical (dedicated
to VMs) and Four Virtual OS License
 One DataCenter Edition License = One Physical
Processor (socket) and UNLIMITED Virtual OS Licenses
running under that host.

50.  Guests can run any combination of downlevel
licenses (i.e. Datacenter host, Ent or Std edition
guests)
 Applies not only to OSes running virtualised with
Windows Virtualisation, but it also applies to 3rd
party virtualisation as well!

51. Virtual Windows VMware VMware Citrix
Server Server Server ESX XenServer
2005 R2 2008
Hyper-V
SharePoint Production * * * (Via SVVP) * (Via * (Via SVVP)
Support SVVP)
Hypervisor based, High * * *
Performance
64 bit Guest Support * * * *
Server Templates (with VMM (with VMM * * *
2008) 2008)
Resource Pools * * (with Ent and
Platinum
editions)
Intelligent Assignment to (with VMM
Hosts based on Application 2008 and
Performance Counters OpsMgr
2007)
Automatic Failover between * *
hosts

52.  VMware ESX
 Mid to large size organisations
 Organisations looking for automatic session failover with
VMotion
 Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
 Microsoft ‘friendly’ shops
 Organisations looking for cost-effective virtualisation
 Mixed VMware/Hyper-V/Virtual Server 2005 shops looking for
central management
 Citrix XenServer
 Organisations heavily invested in Citrix Products
 Open-source friendly environments

53.  Virtualisation is a key emerging technology that allows
organisations to be able to cut costs, consolidate equipment,
and take greatest advantage of hardware resources.
 SharePoint 2007 Servers are supported in virtualisation
environments (within limits), in Dev/Test and on the front-
end roles in Production, use caution for DB role
 KB897615 outlines MS Support for 3rd Party Virtualisation
such as VMware and XenServer…support exists but has some
caveats
 Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology gives high
performance and is a very cost competitive option
 MS Licensing has new virtualisation support, and Datacenter
edition will provide for unlimited guests under a single host.

54.  SharePoint 2007 Unleashed (SAMS Publishing)
(http://www.samspublishing.com)
 Windows Server 2008 Unleashed and/or Hyper-V Unleashed
(http://www.samspublishing.com)
 Microsoft ‘Virtualising SharePoint Infrastructure’ Whitepaper
(http://tinyurl.com/virtualsp)
 VMware Server Products (http://www.vmware.com)
 Citrix XenServer Products (http://www.citrix.com)
 Microsoft TechNet Edge Videos on Virtualisation of
SharePoint:
 http://tinyurl.com/edgenoel2
 http://tinyurl.com/edgenoel3

55. Michael Noel
michael @cco.com
www.cco.com
510.444.5700