top 10 non-sharepoint technical issues that can doom your...

Top 10 Non-SharePoint Technical

Issues That Can Doom Your

ImplementationRobert Bogue

Rob.Bogue@ThorProjects.com

(317)844-5310

Agenda

• Background

• Categories

• Do the Top 10 thing

• Close out

My Background

• Memorized the pinout of an RS-232 serial connection

• Assembled computers when memory was chips and not sticks

• Ran Ethernet when it was coax

• Built servers when SCSI was a dirty word and RAID was used to get rid of bugs

My Present

• 13 Microsoft MVP Awards

• Author credit on 25 books

• Passionate about driving business value

Issue Types

• Performance

• Functionality

• Reliability

Performance

Functionality

Reliability

Abandonment

10. SQL Server Performance

What to Check• SQL Server Buffer Manager: Page

Life Expectancy > 300 (seconds)

What You’ll See• Slow performance across the board• Long search crawl times

What’s Wrong• SQL Server is the bottleneck in

SharePoint implementations

What to do• Add memory• Add memory• Improve disk performance• Add another SQL instance

Head

Arm

Platter

Around the mulberry bush…

RAID 5

Dp

C1

B1

A1

Disk 0

D1

Cp

B2

A2

Disk 1

D2

C2

Bp

A3

Disk 2

D3

C3

B3

Ap

Disk 3

RAID 1+0

D1a

C1a

B1a

A1a

Disk 0

D1b

C1b

B1b

A1b

Disk 1

D2a

C2a

B2a

A2a

Disk 2

D2b

C2b

B2b

A2b

Disk 3

It Bugs Me!

Physics are Physics

Even if you don’t want them to be.

9. SAN Configuration

What to Check• Average time per read < 20ms• Average time per write < 20ms• RAID configuration is RAID 10 not

5/6 (DP)

What You’ll See• Slow performance, especially initial

loading of a site• Less effectiveness in adding RAM to

the SQL server

What’s Wrong• Disks aren’t producing enough IOPS

What to do• Reconfigure from RAID 5/6(DP) to

RAID 10• Buy more, faster, smaller disks (or

SSD)

Storage and Speed

8. Load Balancer Configuration

What to Check• Session affinity• Session identification

What You’ll See• First hit response times, even after

the first hit

What’s Wrong• The load balancer isn’t configured

for session affinity (sticky sessions)

What to do• Configure the load balancer for

session affinity (sticky sessions)

7. SharePoint Server Disk

What to Check• Every query server has 30% of the

total size of everything you want to search

What You’ll See• SharePoint Server disks get filled up

What’s Wrong• The full text (non-SQL) indexes get

copied to every query server (and they’re big)

What to do• Add disks until you have enough

6. Core Network

What to Check• No Firewall between servers• Network adapter transmit buffer < 1

What You’ll See• Weird SharePoint errors• Erratic and unpredictable

performance

What’s Wrong• Insufficient bandwidth between

servers• Packet loss

What to do• Remove firewall and proxy servers

between SharePoint and SQL• Ensure all network ports plugged in

and bonded• Plug all SharePoint servers into a

single switch

Virtualization

5. Lack of Quality

What to Check• The value of downtime in

production to the organization

What You’ll See• Unknown problems in your

production environment

What’s Wrong• There’s no way to validate your code

and configuration changes

What to do• Get at least one controlled

environment before production

The Impact of Developers

4. Crosstalk

What to Check• Production can not communicate

with development

What You’ll See• Random outages in production• Random performance issues in

production

What’s Wrong• Production is referencing

development resources (which are being shutdown)

What to do• Put production (and QA) on a

separate subnet that can’t talk to development resources

3. Abstract IP

What to Check• Configuration of the proxy server or

load balancer• IIS Logs to verify client IP addresses

are being recorded

What You’ll See• All clients look like they’re coming

from one IP address

What’s Wrong• The proxy server or load balancer is

NATing (abstracting) the IP address• Difficult to diagnose specific client

problems when you can’t find them

What to do• Reconfigure the network to transmit

client IP addresses to the server

Split Path Networking

2. Lack of Monitoring

What to Check• Monitoring options available to you

What You’ll See• Nothing

What’s Wrong• You can’t fix what you can’t find

What to do• Install monitoring• Configure monitoring

1. Login Prompts

What to Check• IE settings• Time synchronization

What You’ll See• Prompts for login (like every 30

seconds)

What’s Wrong• IE with your web site not in the

Intranet zone

What to do• Set a group policy• Make workstations a member of the

domain

Claims

Thank You

Rob Bogue

Shepherd@SharePointShepherd.com

(317) 572-5310