Navigating the turbulence on takeoff: Setting up SharePoint on Azure IaaS the right way
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Are you looking to take advantage of the scalability & power of Azure IaaS for SharePoint but don't know how to get started? Join us for this session where we will learn the proper way to get off the ground and navigate around the rough patches when standing up SharePoint on Azure IaaS. You will leave this session with a clear understanding of what it takes to get started, how best to configure your Azure environment, and some very helpful tips and scripts to make your experience smoother. Come learn from our experiences in the field so that you can find success faster!
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Navigating the turbulence on takeoff: Setting up SharePoint on Azure IaaS the right way
- 1. Navigating the Turbulence on takeoff Setting up SharePoint on Azure IaaS the right way Jason Himmelstein, MVP Senior Technical Director @sharepointlhorn
- 2. Thanks to our sponsors!
- 3. • Senior Technical Director, SharePoint • SharePoint Server MVP • SharePoint Community Leadership Board, Chair • Microsoft PTSP • Blog: www.sharepointlonghorn.com • Twitter: @sharepointlhorn • LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhimmelstein • SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/jasonhimmelstein • Email: jase@sharepointlonghorn.com • Author of Developing Business Intelligence Apps for SharePoint – http://bit.ly/SharePointBI
- 4. • What is Microsoft Azure IaaS? • Why SharePoint on IaaS? • Pieces & Parts • Use Cases • The Jumpstart Method • Recommendations Agenda
- 5. Let’s spin up some Azure VMs to look at later…
- 6. • Caveats – I HATE using the web portal – I LOVE PowerShell • Add-AzureAccount.ps1 – This loads in my profiles • C:Users%USERNAME%AppDataRoamingWindows Azure PowershellWindowsAzureProfile.xml • set-AzureVMs.ps1 – Specify a Cloud Service – Interrogates the Cloud Service for name and state of machines – Allows you to start or stop the servers Connect to Azure & Spin some VMs
- 7. What is Microsoft Azure IaaS?
- 8. Windows Azure Virtual Machines IT Pro experience Support for key server applications Easy storage manageability High availability features Advanced networking Integration with compute PaaS If it requires a developer, it’s not IaaS
- 10. Create a Trial from Image Gallery
- 11. Virtual Machine Sizes Size Name CPU Cores Memory Max. data disks Max. IOPS ExtraSmall Shared 768 MB 1 1x500 Small 1 1.75 GB 2 2x500 Medium 2 3.5 GB 4 4x500 Large 4 7 GB 8 8x500 ExtraLarge 8 14 GB 16 16x500 A5 2 14 GB 4 4X500 A6 4 28 GB 8 8x500 A7 8 56 GB 16 16x500 A8 8 56 GB 16 16x500 A9 16 112 GB 16 16x500 Each data disk can hold up to 1 TB of storage. SharePoint Virtual Machines
- 12. • – Service Level Agreements What’s included Compute Hardware failure (disk, cpu, memory) Datacenter failures - Network failure, power failure Hardware upgrades, Software maintenance – Host OS Updates What is not included VM Container crashes, Guest OS Updates 99.95% for multiple role instances 4.38 hours of downtime per year
- 13. Virtual Machine Names and DNS Resolves VMs by name within the same cloud service Machine names are modeled explicitly and registered in the DNS service
- 15. Why SharePoint on IaaS?
- 16. SharePoint Cloud Continuum Lof CONTROL COST-EFFICIENCY SharePoint (On-premises) • SharePoint Value Prop: • Full h/w control – size/scale • Roll-your-own HA/DR/scale Value Prop: • 100% of API surface area • Easy migration of existing apps • Roll-your-own HA/DR/scale SharePoint (IaaS) • Hosted SharePoint Value Prop: • Auto HA, Fault-Tolerance • Friction-free scale • Self-provisioning, mgmt. @ scale • SharePoint Service Office 365 (SaaS)
- 17. Why IaaS for SharePoint? • Maintain ownership & management of the virtual machine • Build complex solutions not supported in Microsoft’s Public Cloud • Design, implement, and develop with no hardware commitment
- 18. Why Should I Care Quickly get new SharePoint developers on your projects up and running with little downtime. Quickly get new system test environments provisioned. Tear down developer machines when vendors leave the project. Reduced capital expenditures as no laptops need to be issued to new developers. Tear down system test environments when not in use or a particular release has finished. Integrate the customer’s vendors easily. The customer doesn’t have to add the vendor to the corporate domain.
- 19. Azure footprint 16 regions worldwide in 2014
- 20. Pieces & Parts
- 22. • An AG is a container to keep your Virtual Network in a single data center – Required before you can create a Virtual Network • To create PowerShell or go to Settings at the bottom of the Management Portal Affinity Groups (AG)
- 23. • Declare your own address space in the cloud – Private and Persistent IP Addresses (unless you de-allocate the VM) – Support for Static Internal IP addresses (even if you de-allocate a VM) • Advanced Connectivity – Support for Hosting Active Directory in Azure Virtual Machines – Connect multiple cloud services privately on the same virtual network – Connect Virtual Networks in the same or separate regions – Support for Internal Load Balancing – Optional - Hybrid Connectivity – Site to Site, Point to Site and ExpressRoute • Virtual Networks are Required for a SharePoint Farm Virtual Network
- 24. Reserved IP Addresses New Feature for Virtual Machines
- 25. IP Allocation with Virtual Networks • IPs are allocated based on order of provisioning. (1st 4 IPs are reserved) • Subnet: 10.0.0.0/24 • 1. VM1 = 10.0.0.4 • 2. VM2 = 10.0.0.5 • If VMs are re-allocated in a different order they get different IP addresses • 1. VM2 = 10.0.0.4 • 2. VM1 = 10.0.0.5 • Use Static IP addresses to retain IP regardless of order • Set-AzureStaticVNetIP
- 26. • A container for VMs that acts as a network and security boundary – Required before you can create a Virtual Network • Allow external traffic into one or more VMs create an endpoint • Cloud Service IP Address – Cloud service URL is mapped to a public IP http://riroxsp.cloudapp.net = 137.135.68.130 – All external traffic to virtual machines uses this IP – IP can be lost if all VMs are de-allocated (unless using a reserved IP) Cloud Service
- 28. Availability Sets A label that tells Microsoft Azure your virtual machines perform the same workload router/switch power supply network cables physical machine
- 29. SharePoint Farms and Availability Sets For each tier create an Availability Set Availability Sets do not span cloud services SPVNET
- 30. • Operating System (OS) Disk – This disk is a copy of a source .vhd file and the new copy is registered as an OS disk – Maximum of 127 GB – Three copies of the disk are created for high durability – When using disaster recovery that is geo-replication based the VHD is replicated at a distance of greater than 400 miles – Registered as SATA drives and are labeled as the C drive • Temporary Disk – Created automatically – Used for Page File or Swap File • Data Disk – A data disk is a VHD that can be attached to a running virtual machine to persistently store application data – The maximum size of a data disk is 1 TB – Data disks are registered as SCSI drives and are labeled with a letter that you choose – The size of the virtual machine determines the number of disks that you can attach to it Azure Disks
- 31. • Azure Subscription – Affinity Group • Virtual Network –Cloud Service »Availability Set • Virtual Machines • Azure Disks How does it build?
- 32. Use Cases
- 33. SharePoint Workloads SharePoint for Internet Sites (FIS) Public facing, anonymous access sites Developer, Test and Staging Environments Quickly provision and un-provision entire environments Hybrid Applications Applications that span your data center and the cloud Disaster Recovery Quickly recover from a disaster, only pay for use
- 34. Develop and Test in Azure Writing new SharePoint code for new product features in Windows Azure virtual machines. System testing new product features and releases from the development environment. User acceptance testing: product releases once system testing is completed, the stage before going live into production.
- 35. Dev / Test Cloud Service Virtual Network SQL DR1 (A6) SP DR1 (Large) AD1 (X-Small) SQL DR2 (A6) SP DR2 (Large) SP DR4 (Large) SP DR5 (Large) SP DR3 (Large) Visual Studio Online Test Agents Load Test
- 36. IaaS and Disaster Recovery Cloud Service Virtual Network Windows Azure SQL DR1 (A6) SP DR1 (Large) AD1 (X-Small) On Premises SQL DR2 (A6) SP DR2 (Large) SP DR4 (Large) SP DR5 (Large) SP DR3 (Large) VPN Tunel SQL Server Log Shipping
- 37. Extranet and Public-Facing Internet Cloud Service Virtual Network Windows Azure On Premises Active Directory Site developers and authors VPN Tunnel SharePoint 2013 Farm Web Application Windows Azure Active Directory Internet Zone Anonymous Extranet Zone Default Zone WindowsWindows SAML FBA Active Directory Domain Services Partners and Customers Visitors
- 40. SharePoint 2013 Automation Scripts https://github.com/windowsazure/azure-sdk-tools-samples
- 41. Single Virtual Machines Template AD/DC/DNSLB WEB/APP SQL 80 20000 Cloud Service Virtual Network Windows Azure Web/App Tier 1 x Large (4 Cores & 7 GB) Data Tier 1 x A6 (4 Cores & 28 GB) Identity Tier 1 Small (1 Core & 1.75 GB) K
- 42. Highly Available Template AD/DC/DNSLB WEB SQLAPP 80 20000 Cloud Service Virtual Network Windows Azure AVSET SPWEB AVSET SPAPP AVSET SQLHA AVSET DCSET Web Tier 2 x Large (4 Cores & 7 GB) App Tier 2 x Large (4 Cores & 7 GB) Data Tier 2 x A6 (4 Cores & 28 GB) 1 x Small (Quorum) (1 Core & 1.75 GB) Identity Tier 2 Small (1 Core & 1.75 GB) K
- 43. Recommendations
- 44. SharePoint Deployment Tips SharePoint only goes on the C: drive Put each SharePoint tier into its own availability set (WFE, APP etc…) Put blob cache on a data disk to increase available IOPS. Use Static IP addresses to avoid issues if virtual machines started out of order.
- 45. SQL Server Best Practices Storage Recommendations Split content databases across multiple disks for increased IOPS Verify Disk Cache Settings on Data Disks Use Data disks for databases Put database and transaction log files on separate drives Use SQL Server File Groups instead of Disk Striping Split and move TempDB & TempLogs to separate data disks Database Recommendations Use database page compression to reduce I/O High Availability Recommendations Consider latency between primary and replica when choosing sync mode Use Availability Sets
- 46. More on Storage for SQL Server Performance Considerations Do not use the temporary disk (D:) (including for TempDB) Use SQL file groups across multiple disks instead of disk striping Put logs, data and backup on separate disks Disable geo-replication on storage account for consistency Remember storage account capacity planning. 20,000 IOPS per Storage Account – 500 IOPS per disk maxiumum Consider compressing any data files when transferring in/out of Windows Azure. Scale Out Not Up Move content databases to separate SQL Servers Move search databases to separate SQL Servers Add more WFE for scaling SharePoint services Add dedicated Search Servers and SQL Server
- 47. Storage Capacity and Planning Supports up to 40 data disks using maximum IOPS per disk Random I/O (8 KB Pages) Sequential I/O (64 KB Extents) Sequential I/O (256 KB Blocks) Reads Writes Reads Writes Reads Writes IOPS 500 500 500 300 300 300 Bandwidth 4 MB/s 4 MB/s 30 MB/s 20 MB/s 70 MB/s 70 MB/s
- 48. Active Directory Design Considerations Should only be deployed in a virtual network Predictable and stable IP Addresses Specify Static IP to ensure persistence (Set-AzureStaticVNetIP in PowerShell) Active Directory should be deployed in an AD specific subnet to guarantee the IP address will not be acquired by another virtual machine. Directory Information Tree (DIT) / SYSVOL Location Deploy DIT / SYSVOL on a data disk http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj156090.aspx
- 49. Q&A
- 50. Connect. Collaborate. Share. Toronto SharePoint Users Group http://www.meetup.com/TorontoSPUG/ Toronto SharePoint Business Users Group http://www.meetup.com/TSPBUG/ SharePoint Saturday Toronto http://spbuzz.it/spstoyam
- 51. SharePint • Drake and Firkin aka “The Drake” • 6982 Financial Drive, Unit B101
- 52. Don’t Miss the Prizes… • Xbox One with Kinect • Your favorite SharePoint books • Training vouchers • Office 365 Swag (tweet #ShareSelfie #spstoronto to win) • Vendor gifts and raffle
- 54. • Senior Technical Director, SharePoint • SharePoint Server MVP • SharePoint Community Leadership Board, Chair • Microsoft PTSP • Blog: www.sharepointlonghorn.com • Twitter: @sharepointlhorn • LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhimmelstein • SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/jasonhimmelstein • Email: jase@sharepointlonghorn.com • Author of Developing Business Intelligence Apps for SharePoint – http://bit.ly/SharePointBI
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Atrion – New England Consultancy, Global 50 MSP, Cisco Partner of the Year, Microsoft Managed Partner Blog Twitter LinkedIn Book Spurs Longhorns Jags
- There are images that are available either from Microsoft or from third parties. You can also create your own images for use within your subscription. For instance, developers may want to create a SharePoint image that includes Visual Studio, Office, SQL Server, and SharePoint installed but not yet configured. You can use sysprep to prepare the virtual machine to be reused and then create an image from that virtual machine. This allows you to quickly create new instances based off that image.
- One way to quickly familiarize yourself with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services is to simply create a virtual machine using one of the images in the gallery. There are various trial and preview images for new products as well as images for existing products. There are also images provided by 3rd parties for non-Windows operating systems and solutions.
- When provisioning a virtual machine, you pick a size for the image including the CPU, memory, data disks, and IOPS. The original names for the sizes were Extra small through extra large, and then it was determined that new sizes would be introduced to include new workloads. That is why new high memory sizes were introduced, A6 and A7. Considering minimum system requirements for a SharePoint environment, the typical installation could use a Large VM size for evaluation purposes, but would likely move to the extra large size for production. A developer environment might utilize an A6 environment that includes both SharePoint and SQL as well as developer tools such as Visual Studio.
- Understanding the SLA for Windows Azure is important to understanding the benefit of hosting a SharePoint environment in the cloud. To achieve a 99.95% SLA you must use multiple instances grouped in availability sets.
- If you are using SharePoint for a public-facing internet site, you might wonder how to use DNS to access the SharePoint server from the internet. You have full control over the machine names, and you can either use the Windows Azure provided DNS or use your own DNS server.
- Working with VMs hosted in the cloud, you may be wondering how you can access them, and more importantly, how they can access resources in your corporate environment. Windows Azure introduces two options for secure connectivity: point to site and site to site. Point to site requires that you install an agent locally to establish a VPN session, opening connectivity securely between specific points within your network. Site to site leverages a VPN gateway device that establishes the connectivity.
- This slide shows a comparison of control and cost-efficiency when deploying SharePoint for your organization. On Premises You are most likely familiar with running SharePoint within your own data center. When you run SharePoint on-premises, you have a high degree of control and responsibility. This option gives you the most control over the environment, giving you the ability to install custom solutions installed on the SharePoint server known as farm solutions and complete control over every facet of the environment such as storage components, networking appliances, and other infrastructure needed to support the solution. Not only do you need to maintain the SharePoint environment, including all SharePoint patching, OS patching, version upgrades, and regular database maintenance, but you also need to maintain the hardware. If you need to scale the environment to meet demand, this typically requires additional hardware provisioning. The hardware has a lifecycle, organizations typically plan to replace hardware on a 3 year cycle. A challenge with this approach is that many organizations do not adequately plan for high availability or disaster recovery, putting the organization at risk of data loss or loss of service due to unplanned events. Office 365 At the opposite end of the scale we see Microsoft’s Software as a Service offering, Office 365. Office 365 includes SharePoint Online where Microsoft hosts the SharePoint environment and you subscribe to the service. High availability and fault tolerance are built into the service. As your usage increases, scale is as simple as adjusting your subscription plan. Rather than your administrators manage every facet of the environment, administrative tasks are greatly reduced or eliminated. The level of control is reduced in order to provide consistency of service. Patching and regular maintenance are no longer performed by your administrators and are a part of the service. You are not able to install farm solutions, and many features that you might typically use are not available in Office 365. Further, 3d party solutions that your company relies on may not be available in Office 365. SharePoint (IaaS) Moving to Windows Azure Infrastructure Services allows you to retain control while improving cost efficiency. You are able to focus on administering the SharePoint environment without maintaining networks or hardware infrastructure. You have 100% of the API surface area, meaning any farm solutions or 3rd party solutions that your company relies on are still available in this environment. This option strikes a balance between hosting SharePoint within your own data center and subscribing to Office 365 as a SaaS offering.
- Simply put, hosting SharePoint in Windows Azure Infrastructure Services enables your organization to maintain ownership and management of the virtual machine. Your administrators still control aspects such as OS patching, firewall rules, group policy, and have access to all logging data. You have the control to build complex solutions that are not possible with Office 365, and can continue leveraging 3rd party solutions that require low-level access to your environment. The benefit is that you can build these solutions without the overhead of hardware procurement, which often negatively impacts project deadlines and budgets.
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp179889.aspx There are several very real and tangible benefits to provisioning SharePoint environments in Windows Azure. A key benefit is the ability to get developers up and running and productive with little downtime. In a matter of a few hours, you can provision a new SharePoint farm from the ground up complete with a domain controller, SQL Server, and SharePoint, provisioned according to your organization’s standards. Create reusable images and that ramp up time can be reduced to a matter of minutes. As projects need to evaluate new functionality or test solutions under load, you can quickly provision a new environment that is used during the duration of the test. Organizations that build custom solutions on top of SharePoint often utilize contracting firms outside the organization for specialty skills or improving time to completion. Those developers often require a corporate laptop that is capable of running SharePoint, requiring significant memory and CPU capabilities for the machine. You can quickly provision environments in Windows Azure that have all resources that the developer requires. The developer can now use a laptop with much lower memory, disk, and processor capabilities, providing a significant cost savings. Further, the environments can be torn down whennot in use or after a product has been released. When running SharePoint on-premises, this requires that any developers working with that environment are added to the corporate domain. When provisioning the environment in Windows Azure, this is not the case as it can utilize a stand-alone domain controller that is separated from your corporate resources, enabling vendors to be productive while reducing your corporate risk and operations overhead.
- Affinity Groups is a key concept in building highly available and performant applications in Windows Azure. This is nothing more than a way to logically group compute (Virtual Machines), Virtual Network and Storage. Basically Affinity Groups is a way to tell Windows Azure that those elements, compute, virtual network and Storage, should always be together and close to one another in the same datacenter, in the same rack, same container so on. Windows Azure will then place those as closely as possible, reducing the latency, and increasing performance. In summary, Affinity Groups provide you: Aggregation: Brings Virtual Machines, Virtual Network and Storage services closely together. Reducing latency: For instance, you get better latency when accessing storage from the compute Nodes, which makes difference in a highly available environment. Lowering costs: Eliminates cost of traffic between different data centers when compute instances need to communicate with each other.
- Affinity Groups is a key concept in building highly available and performant applications in Windows Azure. This is nothing more than a way to logically group compute (Virtual Machines), Virtual Network and Storage. Basically Affinity Groups is a way to tell Windows Azure that those elements, compute, virtual network and Storage, should always be together and close to one another in the same datacenter, in the same rack, same container so on. Windows Azure will then place those as closely as possible, reducing the latency, and increasing performance. In summary, Affinity Groups provide you: Aggregation: Brings Virtual Machines, Virtual Network and Storage services closely together. Reducing latency: For instance, you get better latency when accessing storage from the compute Nodes, which makes difference in a highly available environment. Lowering costs: Eliminates cost of traffic between different data centers when compute instances need to communicate with each other.
- Next, let’s talk about a key concept called availability sets and discover how availability sets enable high availability for your Virtual Machines. Our SLA (99.95% monthly) for Virtual Machines requires deployment of at least 2 instances in an availability set. You can ensure the availability of your application by using multiple Windows Azure Virtual Machines. By using multiple virtual machines in your application, you can make sure that your application is available during local network failures, local disk hardware failures. In order to keep our platform up to date as we release new services and capabilities, from time to time, we will have planned downtime. In order to ensure you application stays available during these planned downtimes, you will want to use multiple instances within an availability set. You manage the availability of your application that uses multiple virtual machines by adding the machines to an availability set. Availability sets are directly related to fault domains and update domains. A fault domain in Windows Azure is defined by avoiding single points of failure, like the network switch or power unit of a rack of servers. In fact, a fault domain is closely equivalent to a rack of physical servers. When multiple virtual machines are connected together in a cloud service, an availability set can be used to ensure that the machines are located in different fault domains. Windows Azure periodically updates the operating system that hosts the instances of an application. A virtual machine is shut down when an update is applied. An update domain is used to ensure that not all of the virtual machine instances are updated at the same time. When you assign multiple virtual machines to an availability set, Windows Azure ensures that the machines are assigned to different update domains. This slide shows two virtual machines running Internet Information Services (IIS) in separate update domains and two virtual machines running SQL Server also in separate update domains. You should use a combination of availability sets and load-balancing endpoints to make sure that your application is always available. Yet, this is for the Virtual Machine container and the compute platform that we provide. There are techniques you can use to build higher availability into your application by increasing the number of instances to help exceed Windows Azure SLA, when needed.
- There are 4 key workloads where hosting SharePoint in Windows Azure Infrastructure Services provides the most value. FIS Organizations frequently use SharePoint to create public-facing web sites. Many of the features needed to build highly-branded search-driven sites using SharePoint are not available in Office 365. Many organizations are not set up to easily host public-facing SharePoint sites due to the integration requirements with Active Directory. Hosting in Windows Azure eliminates these concerns. Further, scale the solution out as traffic increases, and reduce when not in use. Dev/Test Developers writing farm solutions for SharePoint require significant hardware. Often developers will require upwards of 32GB RAM, a minimum of 8 cores, and multiple SSD drives to run virtual machines locally. In cases where virtualization is not used, developers often require multiple computers: one for daily productivity and access to line of business systems and applications, and one that runs a server operating system capable of running SharePoint. Utilizing Windows Azure for developer environments provides tremendous hardware cost savings. Hybrid Applications A key benefit of hosting SharePoint in Windows Azure is that you can use the networking capabilities to establish a VPN to communicate directly to required internal systems within your data center. This opens up scenarios such as business intelligence reporting and integration with key line of business systems that would not be possible using Office 365. Windows Azure Infrastructure Services has full access to the Platform as a Service components of Azure, further extending your solution capabiltiies. Additionally you can build hybrid solutions that incorporate Office 365 with your IaaS deployment to take advantage of the cost efficiency of Office 365 while integrating with specialized workloads in your Azure environment. Disaster Recovery Finally, many organizations heavily utilize SharePoint within their own data center. What impact would there be to your organization if the environment were not available? If you back up your data to tape, how long will it take you to full y recover, including provisioning new hardware? By leveraging Windows Azure Infrastructure Services for disaster recovery, you can provide a cost-efficient means of cold, warm, or hot standby DR options that
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp179889.aspx Instead of deploying hardware for each developer to run their own SharePoint farm to facilitate software development, Windows Azure provides a significant savings by enabling developers to provision the resources they require and developing using those virtual machines. Need more disk space for a project you are working on? You can add new resouces in minutes. Another key advantage of using Azure for dev/test is the ability to perform system testing without affecting the development or production environments. Quickly provision an entire new environment isolated from other environments and evaluate new product features and releases. Finally, hosting in Azure opens up the ability to test solutions at scale. Run load tests on an environment closely matching the capabilities of your production environment without hardware procurement costs, ensuring that the solutions you deploy are capable of performing when deployed to production. Separate user acceptance testing from the development environment to improve release quality.
- As SharePoint becomes more pervasive within organizations, more business processes depend on the availability of the environment. Without an established disaster recovery plan, the availability of those critical business processes is at risk. If your organization relies on tape backup or farm backups for the environment, how quickly could you acquire and provision new hardware in the event of disaster? A simple solution is to use SQL Server log shipping to copy transaction log data asynchronously to another farm. Many organizations see this as cost-prohibitive because it requires provisioning hardware that goes unused. Using Windows Azure Infrastructure Services provides a very cost-effective option for DR because you only pay for what you use. During normal operations, the Active Directory instance is largely unused, requiring only a minimal virtual machine. The SQL Servers that are used for log shipping are on and available while the transaction logs are being backed up. At the point of failover or during maintenance (such as patching or deploying solutions), you would turn on the SharePoint virtual machines as necessary and perform failover maintenance. This provides disaster recovery for minimal cost, decreasing the impact of unforeseen events and reducing your organization’s risk for lost productivity.
- As SharePoint becomes more pervasive within organizations, more business processes depend on the availability of the environment. Without an established disaster recovery plan, the availability of those critical business processes is at risk. If your organization relies on tape backup or farm backups for the environment, how quickly could you acquire and provision new hardware in the event of disaster? A simple solution is to use SQL Server log shipping to copy transaction log data asynchronously to another farm. Many organizations see this as cost-prohibitive because it requires provisioning hardware that goes unused. Using Windows Azure Infrastructure Services provides a very cost-effective option for DR because you only pay for what you use. During normal operations, the Active Directory instance is largely unused, requiring only a minimal virtual machine. The SQL Servers that are used for log shipping are on and available while the transaction logs are being backed up. At the point of failover or during maintenance (such as patching or deploying solutions), you would turn on the SharePoint virtual machines as necessary and perform failover maintenance. This provides disaster recovery for minimal cost, decreasing the impact of unforeseen events and reducing your organization’s risk for lost productivity.
- Using SharePoint for public-facing internet sites with Windows Azure provides the ability to easily separate the public-facing SharePoint resources from your internal resources, while still providing your internal users access to the environment. Using a VPN tunnel, users can access the environment as if it were any other machine in your network. You can either leverage content publishing to publish content from one SharePoint farm to another, or your users can authenticate directly to the environment and author content in the public-facing SharePoint farm. Once approved, it is then visible to anonymous users outside the firewall. If those external users need to authenticate, you can leverage a solution such as Windows Azure Active Directory to provide a federated sign-on experience for your external users.
- This slide shows some of the opportunities for creating hybrid environments. Use Office 365 to take advantage of cost efficiencies for common workloads such as MySites and collaboration. This will provide the best cost savings while addressing common use cases. For specific purpose solutions that are not possible in Office 365, such as business intelligence solutions, using SharePoint in Azure IaaS is a great option. You want to be able to leverage capabilities from each environment, such as federating search results, in which case establishing a hybrid environment makes this possible. Your IaaS deployment can integrate with on-premises line of business solutions and services, and take advantage of the platform as a service capabilities in Azure.
- Deploying the SharePoint farm can be as simple as running a PowerShell script. A sample script for you to get started with is shown here. This script will not only provision the virtual machines as specified in your configuration, but will also configure the virtual machines. For instance, a domain controller is established, SQL is installed, and SharePoint is configured with user profile and search service applications. The scripts come with two templates, but you can customize this to suit your needs.
- The first template size that the PowerShell script uses establishes just 3 virtual machines: 1 Large VM for the single SharePoint server, an A6 high memory server for SQL Server, and 1 small VM for Active Directory. All machines are provisioned within a single cloud service. This configuration could be useful for a developer who needs an environment but does not have adequate resources on their laptop to run such a farm. Prepare for “why 1 cloud service” question: give me a minimum amount of stuff for a developer environment.
- The second template is the high availability template. This template establishes a single cloud service, and each server is duplicated for high availability. To ensure that two virtual machines that provide HA are not in the same fault domain, an availability set for each fault domain is created to ensure the virtual machines are not on the same physical rack in the data center. Prepare for “why 1 cloud service” question: this is a starting point but you will want to tweak it to use multiple cloud services.
- DIT – Directory information tree http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/the-enterprise-cloud/microsoft-shares-considerations-for-extending-ad-into-windows-azure/#.
- Atrion – New England Consultancy, Global 50 MSP, Cisco Partner of the Year, Microsoft Managed Partner Blog Twitter LinkedIn Book Spurs Longhorns Jags