building the perfect sharepoint 2010 farm - sharepoint saturday nyc 2011
DESCRIPTION
Session from SharePoint Saturday New York City 2011 - Building the Perfect SharePoint 2010 Farm, Best Practice Infrastructure from the field.TRANSCRIPT
Best Practices from the FieldMichael NoelCCO.com / @MichaelTNoel
Building the ‘Perfect’ SharePoint 2010 Farm
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
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
Architecting the Farm
Web
Service Apps
Data
Architecting the FarmUnderstanding the Three Tiers of SharePoint Infrastructure
‘All-in-One’ (Avoid)
DB and SP Roles Separate
Architecting the FarmSmall Farm Examples
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
Architecting the FarmSmallest Highly Available 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
Architecting the FarmBest Practice ‘Six Server Farm’
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 FarmScaling to Large Farms
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
Feature
SharePoint Foundation
2010
Search Server 2010
Express
Search Server 2010
SharePoint Server 2010
FAST Search Server
2010 for SharePoint
Basic search X X X X XBest Bets X X X XSearch Scopes X X X XCrawled and Managed Properties
X X X X
Query Federation X X X XQuery Suggestions X X X XRelevancy Tuning by Document or Site Promotions
X X X X
Shallow Results Refinement X X X XWindows 7 Federation X X X X
Architecting the FarmFAST Search – Comparison Matrix – Slide 1 of 2
Feature
SharePoint
Foundation 2010
Search Server 2010
Express
Search
Server 2010
SharePoint Server
2010
FAST Search Server
2010 for SharePoint
People Search X XSocial Search X XTaxonomy Integration X XMulti-Tenant Hosting X XVisual Best Bets XSimilar Results XDuplicate Results XSearch Enhancement based on user context
X
Sort Results on Managed Properties or Rank Profiles
X
Deep Results Refinement XDocument Preview XRich Web Indexing Support X
Architecting the FarmFAST Search – Comparison Matrix – Slide 2 of 2
Virtualization of SharePoint Servers
• Dedicated hosts for SharePoint Virtual Guests
• No Software on Host OS! (Except A/V or Backup)
• Don’t overallocate memory (ballooning) or Processor (2:1 ratio max)
Virtual Hosts
• Ensure proper amount of IO (0.75 IOPs / GB)
• Allocate Passthrough/RDM disk for best perf
• If using virtual disks, use fixed-sized, not dynamically expanding
Disk
• Aggregate multiple NICs on host for the guest networks
• Allocate Passthrough/RDM NICs for best perf
Network• Web Role is best candidate, but be
cautious if using multiple app pools (800MB/pool)
• Service App systems generally good candidates
• Use caution with the database role!
Virtual Guests
Virtualization of SharePoint ServersCaveats – Be Sure to Understand Virtualization Concepts
vCPU RAM (Bare Minimum)
RAM (Recommend)
RAM (Ideal)
Web Only* 2 6GB 8GB 12GB
Service Application Roles Only
2 6GB 8GB 12GB
Dedicated Search Service App
2 8GB 10GB 16GB
Combined Web/Search/Service Apps
4 10GB 12GB 18GB
Database* 4 10GB 16GB 24GB
Virtualization of SharePoint ServersVirtual Guest Processor and Memory Guidelines
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
Virtualization of SharePoint ServersSample 1: Small Single Server Environment / No HA
High-Availability across Hosts
All components Virtualized
Uses only two Windows Ent Edition Licenses
Virtualization of SharePoint ServersSample 2: Two Server Highly Available Farm
Highest transaction servers are physical
Multiple farm support, with DBs for all farms on the SQL cluster
Virtualization of SharePoint ServersSample 3: Mix of Physical and Virtual Servers – Best Perf
Virtualization of SharePoint ServersSample 4: Scaling to Large Virtual Environments
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 ServersVirtualization Performance Monitoring
1. Create new Virtual Guest (Windows Server 2008 R2)
2. Install SP2010 Binaries. Stop before running Config Wizard
3. Turn Virtual Guest into Template, modify template to allow it to be added into domain
4. 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
Virtualization of SharePoint ServersQuick Farm Provisioning using VMM/Virtual Center
Quick Farm Provisioning with VMM 2008 R2 - Demo
Data Management
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
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
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
Data ManagementGetting your BLOBs out of the Content DBs
SQL Database Optimization
SQL Database OptimizationContent Databases Distributed Between Multiple Volumes
DB-AFile 1
DB-BFile 1
Volume #1
DB-AFile 2
DB-BFile 2
Volume #2
DB-AFile 3
DB-BFile 3
Volume #3
DB-AFile 4
DB-BFile 4
Volume #4
Tempdb File 1 Tempdb File 2 Tempdb File 3 Tempdb File 4
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.
• 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.
SQL Database OptimizationTempDB Best practices
High Availability and Disaster Recovery
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
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!
High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – SQL Database Mirroring
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
High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Mirroring Model #1 – Single Site
Two Sites 1-10 ms
Latency max
1Gb Bandwidth minimum
Farm Servers in each location
Auto Failover
High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Mirroring Model #2 – Cross-Site with HA
Two Sites Two Farms Mirror only
Content DBs
Failover is Manual
Read-only Mode possible
Must Re-Attach and Re-Index
High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Mirroring Model #2 – Remote Farm
Synchronous Mirror Support
Asynchronous Mirror Support
Configuration XCentral Administration content XContent Databases X XUsage and Health Data Collection
Business Data Connectivity XApplication Registry service * (BDC Upgrade)
Subscription Settings service * (PowerShell Enabled)
X
Search – Search Administration XSearch - Crawl XSearch - Property X
High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Support for Mirroring – Slide 1 of 2
Synchronous Mirror Support
Asynchronous Mirror Support
User Profile - Profile XUser Profile - Synchronization
User Profile – Social Tagging
Web Analytics - Staging
Web Analytics - Reporting XSecure Store X XStage XManaged Metadata XWord Automation Services XPerformancePoint X
High Availability and Disaster RecoveryData Tier – Database Support for Mirroring – Slide 2 of 2
High Availability and Disaster RecoveryTwo Node/Two Instance Cluster – Take Advantage of both servers
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)
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
High Availability and Disaster RecoveryWindows Software Network Load Balancing Recommendations
SharePoint Installation
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…
SharePoint InstallationScripted Installations
Function Configure-SPSearch {PARAM($AppPool, $FarmName, $SearchServiceAccount)
$searchServiceInstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -localStart-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"){$crawlTopology | Set-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlTopology -Active -ErrorAction SilentlyContinueif ($crawlTopology.State -ne "Active"){Start-Sleep -Seconds 10}}
$queryTopology = New-SPenterpriseSEarchQueryTopology -SearchApplication $searchApplication -partitions 1$searchIndexPartition = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexPartition -QueryTopology $queryTopologyNew-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryComponent -indexpartition $searchIndexPartition -QueryTopology $queryTopology -SearchServiceInstance $searchServiceInstance
$propertyDB = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchPropertyDatabase -SearchApplication $searchApplication
Set-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexPartition $searchIndexPartition -PropertyDatabase $propertyDB
while ($queryTopology.State -ne "Active"){$queryTopology | Set-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryTopology -Active -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if ($queryTopology.State -ne "Active"){Start-Sleep -Seconds 10}}}
SharePoint InstallationSamples Scripts – http://tinyurl.com/SPFarm-Config
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
Security
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
Service Account Name
Role of Service Account Special Permissions
COMPANYABC\SRV-SP-Setup
SharePoint Installation Account Local Admin on all SharePoint servers (for install of SP).
COMPANYABC\SRV-SP-SQL SQL Service Account(s) – Should be separate admin accounts from SP accounts.
Local Admin on Database Server(s) (Generally, some exceptions apply)
COMPANYABC\SRV-SP-Farm
SharePoint Farm Account(s) – Can also be standard admin accounts. RBAC principles apply ideally.
N/A
COMPANYABC\SRV-SP-Search
Search Account N/A
COMPANYABC\SRV-SP-Content
Default Content Access Account Read rights to any external data sources to be crawled
COMPANYABC\SRV-SP-Prof Default Profiles Access Account Member of Domain Users (to be able to read attributes from users in domain) and ‘Replicate Directory Changes’ rights in AD.
COMPANYABC\SRV-SP-AP-SPCA Application Pool Identity account for SharePoint Central Admin.
DBCreator and Security Admin on SQL. Create and Modify contacts rights in AD OU used for email.
COMPANYABC\SRV-SP-AP-Data
Application Pool Identity account for the Content related App Pool (Portal, MySites, etc.) Additional as needed for security.
N/A
SharePoint SecurityInfrastructure – Sample List of Service Accounts
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)
SharePoint SecurityInfrastructure – Enable Kerberos when using Classic-Auth
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.
User1
User2
Role Grou
p
SharePoint Group
SharePoint SecurityData – Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
• New in SQL Server 2008
• Only Available with the Enterprise Edition
• Seamless Encryption of Individual Databases
• Transparent to Applications, including SharePoint
SharePoint SecurityData - Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
SharePoint SecurityData - Use SharePoint-Aware Antivirus (3rd Party or FPS)
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!
SharePoint SecurityTransport - Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption
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
SharePoint SecurityTransport – IPSec from Server to Server
SharePoint SecurityEdge – Forefront Unified Access Gateway
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
SharePoint SecurityRights Management - Active Directory Rights Management Services
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
59 | SharePoint Saturday New York City 2011
Housekeeping Please remember to visit the ATE & Open
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Thanks for attending!Questions?
Michael NoelTwitter: @MichaelTNoel
www.cco.comSlides: slideshare.net/michaeltnoel