Building the ‘Perfect’ SharePoint 2010 Farm

Best Practices from the Field

Michael Noel

Convergent Computing (CCO.com)

@MichaelTNoel

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• Why Virtualize?• SharePoint 2010 Virtualization Guidelines and

Models● Virtualization of SharePoint Roles● Virtualization of SQL Server

• Memory Limitations and Guidelines for Guests• Microsoft Virtualization Software Options

● Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V● System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008● Third Party Virtualization Product Support

• Microsoft Licensing for Virtual Servers• Demo: Quick Farm Provisioning with VMM 2008 R2

Why Virtualize?

Why Virtualize?• Direct Server over consumption / Utility Bills / “Greener” technology

• Less Physical space to consume • Less cost to cool multiple servers

Reduce Costs

• Reduce number of physical servers• Get rid of legacy hardware• Dedicated specialty servers

Consolidate / Dedicate

• Optimized use of memory/processor• No proliferation of disk volumes• Large number of servers can run on

a single box

Optimize Investment

SharePoint 2010 Virtualization Guidelines

Virtual Host Guidelines• Dedicated hosts for SharePoint Virtual Guests

• No Software on Host OS! (Except A/V or Backup)

General

• Allocate Passthrough/RDM NIC for best perf• Aggregate NICs at a minimum• Create dedicated NIC for Management• Create dedicated NIC for Failover

NICs

• Dedicated spindles for SharePoint• Dedicated volume for Host OS• Dedicated volume for Guest OS VHDs• Dedicated volume for Databases and Logs

Disk

• Avoid overallocating (applies to memory as well)

• No more than 2 vCPUs for every Core• Ideally 1:1 ratio for best performance

Max 2:1 Core/vCPU

Ratio

  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

SharePoint Guest Guidelines

VM Guest Guidelines:SharePoint Roles• Fixed size Disk a minimum

• Pass-through (raw) disk is recommended, but not required.

• Address Disk I/O (Dedicated spindles, etc.)

Disk

• Created dedicated virtual switch for SharePoint

• Use VLAN tagging for Security• Ensure host has redundant network links• Highly consider passthrough NICs

Network

• Load balance like servers across hosts• Install Integration components on servers

(Win2008 R2 automatically does for Hyper-V)General

• Passthrough/RDM strong recommendation• If Passthrough/RDM Disk not used, scale out

the server tier• Follow best practices for tempDB, others

Disk

• Ideally Passthrough/RDM NICs• Aggregate Host NICs at a minimum• If using Virtual NICs, used a dedicated virtual

switchNetwork

• Be sure your hosts have the necessary capacity, or you will have performance bottlenecks

• SQL Mirroring and Clustering now supported on virtual guests (KB 956893)

General

VM Guest Guidelines:Database Roles

SharePoint 2010 Virtualized Farm Architecture

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

Virtualized Farm ArchitectureCost-effective Virtual Environment / No HA

Server Memory Processors DiskVirtual host 24GB RAM 2 quad-core (8

cores) C drive: OS - Windows Server 2008 R2

with Hyper-V; 50GB dedicated volume D drive: dedicated volume for OS VHDs E drive: 500GB dedicated volume for

SQL Database VHDs F drive: 100GB dedicated volume for

SQL Logs VHDs.

SQL server 10GB RAM 4 virtual processors

C drive: OS - 100GB fixed-size VHD D drive: fixed-size VHD (100GB)

dedicated for SQL logs E drive: fixed-size VHD (500GB)

dedicated for SQL Data

SharePoint Web/Query/App

10GB RAM 4 virtual processors

C drive: OS and Transport Queue Logs; 100GB fixed-size VHD

E drive: 100GB fixed-size VHD for Index/Query

Virtualized Farm ArchitectureCost-effective Virtual Environment / No HA

High-Availability across Hosts

All components virtualized

Uses only two Windows Ent Edition Licenses

Virtualized Farm ArchitectureHighly Available Farm with only Two Servers

Server Memory Processor DiskVirtual hosts 48GB RAM 2 quad-core (8

cores) C drive: OS; Windows Server 2008 R2

with Hyper-V; 50GB dedicated LUN D drive: dedicated LUN for VHDs Raw volume: 100GB dedicated LUN for

SQL Logs Raw volume: 2TB dedicated LUN for

SQL DatabasesSQL Servers 16GB RAM 4 virtual

processors C drive: OS; 50GB fixed-size VHD D drive: pass-through dedicated LUN

(100GB) for SQL Logs E drive: pass-through dedicated LUN

(2TB) for SQL DataSharePoint Web/App Servers

12GB RAM 2 virtual processors

C drive: OS; 100GB fixed-size VHD

SharePoint Search/Query Servers

12GB RAM 2 virtual processors

C drive: OS; 100GB fixed-size VHD D drive: 200GB fixed-size VHD for

Index/QuerySQL Witness Server

2GB RAM 1 virtual processor

C drive: OS; 50GB fixed-size VHD

Virtualized Farm ArchitectureHighly Available Farm with only Two Servers

Highest transaction servers are physical

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

Virtualized Farm ArchitectureBest Practice Virtual/Physical with HA/Perf

Virtualized Farm ArchitectureLarge Virtual Farms

NUMA Memory Guidelines

NUMA Memory Limitations and Guidelines• Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) Boundaries exist at the

hardware level.• Virtual guests that are allocated more memory than exist within a

single NUMA memory boundary have significantly impacted performance

• NUMA boundaries vary by processor and motherboard vendor, but good rule of thumb to calculate boundaries is to divide the amount of memory in the system by the total number of cores.

● i.e. Dual Quad-core host (2x4 cores = 8 cores) with 64GB of RAM on the host would mean NUMA boundary is 64/8 or 8GB.

● In this example, allocating more than 8GB for a single guest session would result in performance drops.

NUMA Memory Limitations and Guidelines• Keeping NUMA boundaries in mind, this means that you

will get significantly better performance provisioning two SharePoint front-ends with half the amount of RAM as a single front-end with twice as much RAM.

• This applies to any virtualization platform, as the limitation is hardware specific. NUMA allocation specifics will vary by vendor, however.

• Refer to MS Whitepaper on Virtualization of SharePoint (http://tinyurl.com/virtualsp) for more specifics.

NUMA Example: 2x Quad Core, 64GB RAM

8GB 8GB 8GB 8GB

Proc 1

8GB 8GB 8GB 8GB

Proc 2

NUMA Example: 2x Quad Core, 8GB RAM

1GB 1GB 1GB 1GB

Proc 1

1GB 1GB 1GB 1GB

Proc 2

Virtualization Performance Monitoring

• Manually with Perfmon counters• Collect data over a week minimum to look

for trends throughout the week• Use to help prove performance problems

are not because of virtualization • Consider using System Center

Operations Manager 2007 R2 for long-term performance analysis and threshold alerting

Virtualization Performance MonitoringCollect Performance Data

• 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

Virtualization Performance MonitoringPerformance Counters and Thresholds on Hosts and Guests

• 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

SharePoint Virtualization Support

Microsoft Support of SharePoint Virtualization• Microsoft’s official SharePoint support stance is that any SharePoint

role or service is supported for hardware virtualization, including SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, or SQL Server 2008 R2. There are only three requirements for virtualization that must be satisfied, these are as follows:

● Hardware-assisted virtualization, which is available in processors that include a virtualization option—specifically processors with Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology.

● Hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is available and enabled.

● Either deployed on Microsoft Hyper-V (RTM or R2 version) or a validated third-party hypervisor that is part of the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) – KB 897615

What does this mean for SharePoint on Third party?

• SharePoint supported on VMware ESX/ESXi, Citrix XenServer, or others in the SVVP

• This only covers Hypervisor products, so excludes products such as VMware Workstation or VMware Server

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V

Hyper-V R2 for SP2010Overview

• Hyper-V Introduced shortly after released of Windows Server 2008 RTM

• Hyper-V R2 included with Windows Server 2008 R2• Latest release (SP1) adds Dynamic Memory• Installs on any edition (Std., Ent, Datacenter)

Versions

• 4x Hyper-V v1 Performance• Support for up to 384 Guests or 512 VPs, whichever

comes first• Core Parking to reduce resource consumption

Performance

• Hot Add Storage• Processor Compatibility (Intel-Intel or AMD-AMD)Flexibility

• Multipathing for network availability• Cluster Shared Storage Support• Live Migration host high availability with VMM 2008• Active/Active failover with no guest downtime

Availability

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)

• Virtualization Host and Guest Management Platform• Part of the System Center Management Suite, which

includes the following:● System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2● System Center Data Protection Manager 2007● System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2● System Center Mobile Device Manager 2007● System Center Essentials 2007● System Center Service Manager 2010

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2

• New version out (VMM 2008 R2)• VMM 2008 R2 has P2V (Physical to virtual migration)

and V2V (VMware Guest migration to Hyper-V) tools• For SharePoint, allows for creation of SharePoint

template servers that can be quickly provisioned for test farms or for new farm members in production

• Can manage both Hyper-V and VMware guests (though must ‘go through’ a Virtual Center server to manage VMware guests.)

• Self-Service Portal allows end users and remote admins to be able to provision their own virtual machines based on templates

Quick SP2010 Farm Provisioning with VMM 2008 R2

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

Voila! 15 minute entire farm provisioning…

QUICK FARM PROVISIONING WITH VMM 2008 R2

Demo

Farm Provisioning Scriptshttp://tinyurl.com/SPFarm-Config

Function Configure-SPSearch {

PARAM($AppPool, $FarmName, $SearchServiceAccount)

$searchServiceInstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -local

Start-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 SilentlyContinue

if ($crawlTopology.State -ne "Active")

{

Start-Sleep -Seconds 10

}

}

$queryTopology = New-SPenterpriseSEarchQueryTopology -SearchApplication $searchApplication -partitions 1

$searchIndexPartition = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexPartition -QueryTopology $queryTopology

New-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

}

}

}

Virtualization Licensing

$ £ ¥ €

• Windows Server Virtualization Licensing● Standard Edition: One virtual guest (if host is dedicated to virtualization

role)● Enterprise Edition: Four virtual guests (if host is dedicated to

virtualization role) / Guests can be Std/Ent● DataCenter Edition: Unlimited Number of Virtual Guests / Per

processor socket license● Virtualization OS licensing applies to Hyper-V or any virtual host

software listed in SVVP (KB 897615)

• System Center Virtualization Licensing● System Center Management Suite Standard Edition License: Gives

DPM, OpsMgr, ConfigMgr, and VMM Agents for 1 server.● System Center Management Suite Enterprise Edition License: Gives

unlimited DPM, OpsMgr, ConfigMgr, and VMM Agents for all virtual guests on the host.

• Check with Microsoft for Specifics…

Virtualized Farm ArchitectureMicrosoft Virtualization Licensing Primer

Microsoft Virtualization Guest Licensing Model

• Guests can run any combination of downlevel licenses (i.e. Datacenter host, Ent or Std edition guests)

• Applies not only to OSes running virtualized with Windows Virtualization, but it also applies to 3rd party virtualization as well!

For More Information

• SharePoint 2007 Unleashed and SharePoint 2010 Unleashed (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 ‘Virtualizing SQL Server’ Whitepaper• (http://tinyyurl.com/virtualsql)• Microsoft SQL Mirroring Case Study• http://tinyurl.com/mirrorsp • Failover Mirror PowerShell Script• http://tinyurl.com/failovermirrorsp • Microsoft Edge Videos on Virtualization of SharePoint:

● http://tinyurl.com/edgenoel2● http://tinyurl.com/edgenoel3

• Contact us at CCO.com

Session Takeaways

• Understand the architecture options for SharePoint 2010• Consider Virtualization for SharePoint, but architect host

and guest environments very carefully.• Best performance comes from dedicated virtual hosts,

dedicated passthrough NICs, and dedicated passthrough disks and by not overcommitting resources.

• KB897615 outlines MS Support for 3rd Party Virtualization such as VMware and XenServer…

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V technology gives high performance and is a very cost competitive option

• MS Licensing has new virtualization support, and Datacenter edition will provide for unlimited guests under a single host.

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Thank you!

Thanks for attending!Questions?

Michael Noel

Twitter: @MichaelTNoel

www.cco.com