Keynote from SharePoint Saturday Michigan on the Top 5 SharePoint 2010 Infrastructure Concerns.

1. Michael Noel Convergent Computing Twitter: @MichaelTNoel The Top 5 Infrastructure Concerns of a SharePoint Environment

2. 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

3. Top 5 Infrastructure Concerns Data Management 1 Server and Farm Sprawl 2 Security 3 Upgrade and Migration 4 High Availability/Disaster Recovery 5

4. Concern #1Data Management

5. SharePoint Content Growth Issues SharePoint Products and Technologies are growing faster than any other MS product SharePoint Document Management environments are on the rise All of that content is being stored in SharePoint Content Databases

6. SharePoint Content Database Limitations Every version of every document in SharePoint is stored in full in the content database This can lead to Content Databases growing in size quickly Microsoft recommends 100GB-200GB max for Content DBs Site Collections can only reside in a single Content DB.

8. Binary Large OBject (BLOB) Storage 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

9. Getting your BLOBs out of SharePoint 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

10. Concern #2Server and Farm Sprawl

11. Infrastructure Sprawl and Scalability

12. SharePoint 2010 ArchitectureBest Practice “Six Server 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

13. SharePoint 2010 ArchitectureScalable to Large Farms 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

14. Service Application Matrix

15. Tool for Combating Sprawl?– Server Virtualization

17. Allows for separation of the database role onto a dedicated server

19. All components Virtualized

20. Uses only two Windows Ent Edition Licenses

22. Multiple farm support, with DBs for all farms on the SQL cluster

24. Address all Layers of Security Infrastructure Security and Best Practices Best Practice Service Account Setup Kerberos Authentication Data Security SharePoint Security ACLs and 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 Inbound Internet Security (Forefront UAG/TMG) / Certs Rights Management

25. Use Multiple Service AccountsSample Service Accounts

26. KerberosBest practice: Enable Kerberos! When creating any Web Applications for Content, 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.

27. Use SharePoint-Aware Antivirus

28. Protecting the Edge Exchange CRM SharePoint IIS based IBM, SAP, Oracle Mobile HTTPS / HTTP Home / Friend / Kiosk Terminal / Remote Desktop Services Layer3 VPN Internet HTTPS (443) DirectAccess Non web Business Partners / Sub-Contractors AD, ADFS, RADIUS, LDAP…. NPS, ILM Employees Managed Machines

29. Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) New in SQL Server 2008 Only Available with the Enterprise Edition Seamless Encryption of Individual Databases Transparent to Applications, including SharePoint

30. Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) When enabled, encrypts Database, log file, any info written to TempDB, snapshots, backups, and Mirrored DB instance, if applicable Operates at the I/O level through the buffer pool, so any data written into the MDF is encrypted Can be selectively enabled on specific databases Backups cannot be restored to other servers without a copy of the private key, stolen MDF files are worthless to the thief Easier Administration, Minimal server resources required (3%-5% performance hit)

31. Rights Protection of ContentActive Directory Rights Management Services 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

32. Concern #4Upgrade and Migration

33. Upgrade and Migration Data Management Challenges Most risk-averse migration/upgrade approach is Database Attach model or 3rd Party tool model Requires double the current amount of disk space as the new farm needs to be built as a ‘greenfield’ Disk IO levels are also generally higher in SharePoint 2010

34. Concern #5High Availability and Disaster Recovery

35. High Availability at the 3 Tiers Web = Network Load Balancing (Hardware or Software) Service Application = Install on Multiple Systems Data = MCSC Clustering or High Availability Mirroring

36. Mirroring vs. Clustering Clustering is Shared Storage, can’t survive storage failure, makes Mirroring more attractive Clustering fails over quicker Mirroring is not supported for all databases, but Clustering is Both Clustering and Mirroring can be used at the same time

37. SQL Database MirroringProviding for HA and DR for SharePoint Content 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!

38. Mirroring Limitations Some Service Apps store data outside of the data tier, including: Excel Services Application Access Services If a Service App Server hosting these functions goes down, the end user is affected (for that session only.) They can still use another server to re-initiate the session Only Content DBs and the Secure Store DB are supported for Asynchronous Mirroring All DBs except a few minor ones are supported for Synchronous Mirroring

39. Single Site HA Mirrored Farm 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

40. Cross-Site Mirrored HA Farm Two Sites 1 ms Latency 1GB Bandwidth Farm Servers in each location Auto Failover

41. Two Farm / Mirrored Content DBs Two Sites Two Farms Mirror only Content DBs Failover is Manual Must Re-index and recreate Svc. Apps

42. Configuring the FarmNetwork 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)

43. Clustering Best PracticeTake Advantage of both Nodes on SQL Server

44. For More Information SharePoint 2010 Unleashed (SAMS Publishing) http://www.samspublishing.com Microsoft ‘Virtualizing SharePoint Infrastructure’ Whitepaper http://tinyurl.com/virtualsp Microsoft ‘SQL RBS’ Whitepaper http://tinyyurl.com/remoteblobsp Microsoft SQL Mirroring Case Study http://tinyurl.com/mirrorsp Failover Mirror PowerShell Script http://tinyurl.com/failovermirrorsp Contact us at CCO.com

45. Thanks! Michael Noel Twitter: @MichaelTNoel www.cco.com