Dodge the bullet10 ways to avoid common mistakes in SharePoint Administration

#SPSUK08

Benjamin Athaweswww.benjaminathawes.com@benjaminathawes

2

Who am I?

− SharePoint server junkie for just over 3 years

− Head of IT Infrastructure at eShare Limited in West Berkshire (near Reading)

− SharePoint 2010 admin/dev MCTS, MCITP & MOS

− SharePoint User Group speaker (#SUGUK)

• The only specialist provider of “governance” software

• 220 + trusts

• Pensions / Health / Charities / Corporates

• UK / Holland / Australia / South Africa

• Hosted solution based on SharePoint Server and K2

• Data centre located in Newbury, Berkshire

The slide my boss made me add…

Our clients

Who are you?

• IT PRO?

• Dev?

• Business?

• A bit of everything?

• Wrong session?

6

Why this session?Similar administration questions keep recurring with each new version of SharePoint...

“I have 100 Web apps and my farm

seems slow. How do I speed things up?”

“I’ve made changes in

<SQL/IIS/the file system>, why have I got “an unexpected

error”?

“Why am I getting a warning in Central

Administration saying that the Farm

Account shouldn’t be a local admin?”

“I have a 500GB content database

and I’m having trouble upgrading

to SharePoint <version>, what

can I do?”

Dodge the bullet.wmv

Why the same old questions?

• Sophisticated product

• Poor documentation

• Success involves collaboration

• Growing complexity!

SharePoint is a complex platform – it gets tougher

every time!

“Why?”

Ok, so how do we dodge the bullet?

“If someone has dodged a bullet,

they have successfully avoided a

very serious problem.”

1. Put SharePoint in your job title

Failure to dodge means...

Too much to juggle

− BIG product - not just SharePoint

− Training

− ‘One man army’ probably not realistic

2. Start with an appropriate topology

Yup, another standalone install

− Beware of SharePoint’s default settings:

− Plan the install

SQL Server Express (R2 =10GB/DB limit)

No User Profile Service!

Failure to dodge means...

Limited scalability / no redundancy

The evil button

SQL Server Express

Full fat SQL – use this

3. Understand capacity planning recommendations

− Easy to push under the rug

− Software boundaries normally involve a trade-off

− No magic numbers or a silver bullet (e.g. RBS)

− Not always documented e.g. Web application scalability

Failure to dodge means...

Risk to supportability and potential

performance issues

Capacity Planning Example: too many Web apps

Web

Ap

ps

Sit

e C

oll

ecti

on

sC

on

ten

t D

atab

ases

Department A

Department B

Public Site A Project A Project B

Department A

Department B

Public Site A

…n Web apps; up to a recommended maximum of 20/farm

Project A Project B

Department A

Department B

Public Site A Project A Project B

Capacity Planning Example: scaling with site collections

Web

Ap

ps

Sit

e C

oll

ecti

on

sC

on

ten

t D

atab

ases

Secure Web App (HTTPS)

Public Web Sites (HTTP)

SPCA MySites CTHub

SPCA

…n site collections; recommended max 2000/content DB (!)

CTHub

Secure Web App (HTTPS)

Public Web Sites (HTTP)

SPCA MySites CTHub

A B C D EF G H I JK L M N OP Q . . .

A B C D EF G H I JK L M N OP Q . . .

A B C D EF G H I JK L M N OP Q . . .

Common reasons for Web apps…

Reason Potential Solution

Vanity URLs Host named site collections

Authentication provider Extend Web app (2007); multiple providers in 2010 in single Web app

SSL Extend Web app

Partitioning Multi-tenancy (not trivial to implement)

Web.config customisations Try to avoid them!

4. Utilise SharePoint's provisioning capability

− If it’s not packaged in a solution, don’t deploy it!

− Solutions are:− Scalable− Backed up− Quicker (e.g. branding

artefacts on file system)

Failure to dodge means...

Farm inconsistencies and a brittle

configuration

Provisioning example: manual assembly deployment

5. Avoid the default SQL DB growth settings

Pre size ldf/mdf files Autogrow in MB not %

− Default SQL autogrowth settings mean fragmentation

− Index maintenance still relevant to SSDs

− Mechanical disks – don’t forget OS fragmentation!

Failure to dodge means...

Steady reduction in performance due to

fragmentation

6. Remember that virtualisation isn’t magic sauce

Failure to dodge means...

Inexplicable performance issues and risk

to supportability

− You can’t get away from normal physical limitations:

− SQL IOPS− Hardware failure− NIC throughput

− Ensure Non Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) has a direct impact on:

− RAM installed in box− Allocation of RAM to VMs

NUMA NUMA?

The NUMA misnomer?

The NUMA myth…

Don’t assume the NUMA guidance

applies to your kit – check!

− NUMA = a scalable CPU design for multi core processors (a good thing).

− The “rule of thumb” guidance for determining NUMA boundaries:

− RAM / logical cores− E.g. 64 GB RAM / [2 * quad

core CPU] = 8GB boundary

− My guidance: “It depends” on your hardware:check your specific configuration using CoreInfo & PerfMon

− Hypervisor agnostic

NUMA exampleA HP DL380 G7 with 64GB RAM and 2 hex core processorsHyper threading enabled

In this particular case, there is a 1:1 ratio between CPU sockets and NUMA nodes, meaning that there are 2 NUMA nodes of 32 GB each.

7. Design and test a back up strategy

− Document your farm configuration using PowerShell or 3rd party tools e.g. SPDocKit

− Remember SQL backups don’t cover everything (farm config)

− Align strategy with SLAs

Failure to dodge means...

Potential RPE* *Résumé Producing Event nnn

What’s backed up?Configuration Setting 2007 SP2010 farm-only config SP2010 with SPDocKitA/V settings. N Y YDiagnostic logging settings. N Y YIRM N Y YFarm solution store N Y YApplication pool settings, including service accounts (all accounts that run as Web applications, including the crawler account and the search account).

N NY

Alternate access mapping settings. N N YFarm-level search settings. N N YExternal service connection settings. N N YWorkflow management settings. N N YE-mail settings. N Outbound only YUsage analysis processing settings. N N YContent deployment settings. N N YTimer job settings. N N YRecycle Bin settings and other Web application general settings.

N NY

Administrator-deployed form templates. N N YDefault quota templates. N N YDatabase names and locations. N N YWeb application names and databases. Be sure to document the content database names associated with each Web application.

N NY

Crawler impact rules. N N YActivated features. N N YBlocked file types. N N Y

Check out SPDocKit at http://tinyurl.com/c6p6lus

8. Test, test and test again

Failure to dodge means...

Impact on availability / reputation

“No test farm equals no production farm!”

Andrew Woodward

− Includes: Cumulative updates Service Packs Topology changes IIS changes

− Every environment is different

9. Utilise PowerShell− STSADM is deprecated

− Not just for developers

− MS product agnostic

− Dozens of uses: removing GUIDs, automating installs, log checking, etc

…but don’t forget to test your scripts!

Failure to dodge means...

Lack of readiness for future versions of

SharePoint

10. Use crowd wisdom

− “Many Are Smarter Than the Few”

− Use social networking tools to keep up to date, e.g.

“RBS is not ‘the solution to world hunger’”Spencer Harbar

“Cumulative Updates are not Service packs”Todd Klindt

“SharePoint’s farm-only config leaves a lot to be desired”Sean McDonough

Failure to dodge means...

Risk of out-dated practices and limited

networking opportunities

Summary

28

− Understand the capabilities and supported scenarios

− It’s not just SharePoint

− “Default settings” aren’t always sufficient

− Plan early to “dodge the bullet”

− Social tools can aid decision making

Technical success depends largely on our

understanding of SharePoint's underlying

technologies

Thanks…

…to you for listening

…to Sean McDonough

for reviewing most of the slides