Expert Reference Series of White Papers

Managing SharePoint
in an Enterprise
Environment

1-800-COURSES www.globalknowledge.com
Managing SharePoint in an Enterprise
Environment
Scott Bishop, MCP, MSCA 2003/2008, MSCE 2003/2008, MCTSServer2008

Introduction to Storage Planning

Planning is a very important part of any project. Without a good plan, you could find yourself without essential
components that could leave you with a poorly performing infrastructure that is hard to manage. It is always a
good idea to plan your implementation for optimal performance, scale, and manageability.

Knowing your logical structure and approximate sizing, as well as reliability and performance needs, can save
your company money when purchasing any necessary new hardware. Keep in mind that if you are upgrading,
newer SharePoint technologies consume more resources than previous versions. Included below is a link to
help you with the planning for the implementation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

For additional information, see

• Planning and Architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-
us/library/0ed0b44c-d60d-4b85-87de-19065d9688351033.mspx Courtesy Technet2.Microsoft.com

Planning Recommendations
Planning goals are to optimize performance, scale, and manageability. You always want to get the best possi-
ble performance from your hardware. You need to know when your current resources are being used at the
best possible level or when you need to increase resources. Planning for scale includes ensuring that you have
storage space, and that database and sites are deployed so that they allow for future growth without needing
to rebuild any part of the infrastructure. The infrastructure should be planned so that administrative jobs after
the implementation are easy to perform.

Microsoft recommendations for planning the implementation of MOSS 2007 are the best place for you to start.
These recommendations include information architecture, physical topology, network topology, and physical
storage.

When planning your information architecture there are several things you should keep in mind. Your content
database should be kept at a size that is easy to manage and performs as you need it to. When using SQL
Server, Microsoft recommends content databases stay under 100 GB. Single-site collections nearing 100 GB
should be split into a new content database with a new site collection if possible. Multiple site collections
should always be kept under 100 GB. These numbers, according to Microsoft, apply only to an SQL Server host-
ing SharePoint Technologies and are not normal standards for SQL Server.

Versioning and Recycle Bins will affect your site quota. If you are using versioning, previous versions count
against the quota and you should plan for the extra storage. Recycle Bins can be enabled in two stages. The

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first stage, User and Site Recycle Bins, count against your site quota. The second stage, Site Collection Recycle
Bin, does not count against your site quota. The number of days you keep deleted items should also be consid-
ered. Plan your storage requirements to accommodate these items. Quota templates are a useful tool for man-
aging site collections. They set size limits, send email alerts when size limit is reached, and will not affect previ-
ously built sites.

SharePoint Technologies support large lists that will impact performance, but you can plan how users view
these lists to lessen this impact. Indexing and filtering these lists will help. Microsoft recommends not going
over 2,000 items in a list level and keeping lists as narrow as possible. This will help keep your performance
levels higher.

Physical Topology
For example, purposes, and best practice recommendations, we will use SQL Server 2005. Since SQL Server is a
Microsoft technology, it is the best choice for ease and management with a MOSS 2007 implementation.

A good starting point is to have SQL Server 2005 running on a dedicated server that should not be running
any other roles. This is, of course, a Microsoft best practice recommendation. It will be fine if you are running
only one server. It is also recommended that you have the latest service pack and ensure that you do not share
I/O channels with any other applications.

Microsoft also recommends that you scale out instead of or in addition to adding resources to keep perform-
ance levels up. Memory is a big part of any software running correctly. Several factors come into play when
ensuring you have sufficient memory. Size of deployment (including content database size, number of databas-
es, user base, size of lists, and number of requests to SQL Server), the use of SQL Server mirroring and frequent
use of files over 15 MB. Minimum required memory for SQL Server is 4 GB. Cache size also should be consid-
ered at this point. L2 cache of 2 MB per CPU is recommended.

Interface and disk topology can also affect performance and reliability. Be sure to choose the interface that
best suits your needs. Advantages and disadvantages to each type of HDI should be considered when choos-
ing. Below are links to useful papers with a breakdown of the different interfaces and topologies.

For additional information, see

• HDD Interface Technologies: http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/MAG/vol42-1/paper10.pdf
• HDD Topologies: http://www.fortuitous.com/docs/primers/SAN_NAS_Intro.pdf Courtesy of fortuitous.com

Network Topology and Physical Storage

Microsoft recommends, when planning network connections, that you use a network with a low latency. The
servers in the farm should have LAN bandwidth and have latency to the SQL Server of less than 1ms.
As with any deployment, faster and more is better, with the important thing being low latency and queuing on
all disks. RAID 10 is the recommended array because of its high availability and performance. It is important
for you to make sure which array your database will benefit from most. Consult your documentation for this
and to ensure that the array is aligned per the vendor’s recommendations.

Another point to keep in mind is priority of data among disks. Testing has shown that if the tempdb disk I/O is
insufficient that the MOSS farm performance can be affected. Allocating disk space for the tempdb will resolve

Copyright ©2008 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. Page 3
this problem. For best performance, Microsoft recommends that a RAID 10 array be used, and that the number
of data files be the same size and the number be equal to the number of core CPUs. They also recommend that
you pre-size your data and log files, don’t rely on AUTOGROW, and allocate dedicated spindles for the search
database.

Monitoring
The following list of performance counters and approximate healthy values is recommended by Microsoft.

Physical Servers
• Processor: % Processor Time: _Total. This value should be kept between 50% and 75% on the serv-
er running SQL Server 2005.
• System: Processor Queue Length. This should be kept below 2 times the number of core CPUs.
• Memory: Available Mbytes. This should be kept at least to 20% of the total physical RAM free.
• Memory: Pages/sec. This value should be kept below 100.

Disk Counters
Logical Disk: Disk Transfers/sec. This counter is used to monitor and forecast growth trends.

Logical Disk: Disk Read Bytes/sec & Disk Write Bytes/sec. This counter measures the total bandwidth for
a particular disk.

Logical Disk: Average Disk sec/Read (Read Latency). Ideal values are 1-5 ms for logs, and 4-20 ms for
data. Higher latencies can occur in peak times.

Logical Disk: Average Disk sec/Write (Write Latency). This counter indicates the time it takes the disk to
write the data. Ideal values would be 1-5 ms for log, and 4-20 ms for data. Higher latencies can occur in
peak times.

Logical Disk: Average Disk Byte/Read. This counter indicates the size of I/Os being read. This value may
impact disk latency and larger I/Os may result in higher latency. When used to monitor SQL Server, this will
tell you the average size of the I/Os SQL Server is issuing.

Logical Disk: Average Disk Byte/Write. This counter indicates the size of I/Os being written. This value
may impact disk latency and larger I/Os may result in higher latency.

Physical Disk: % Disk Time: This value should be kept below 2 times the number of disks.

Logical Disk: Current Disk Queue Length. For this counter, lower values are better. Values above 20 may
indicate a bottleneck.

Logical Disk: Average Disk Queue Length. This should be kept at 2 or fewer outstanding I/O requests per
spindle.

Logical Disk: Average Disk Reads/Sec and Logical Disk: Average Disk Write/Sec. This value should remain
below 85% of the disk capacity.

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This is not an iron-clad set of counters; you should monitor what you need to. These will help you keep
SharePoint and SQL Server running at optimum levels.

Summary
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and other SharePoint technologies are excellent tools for a modern,
web-based office environment. Through proper planning and implementation, it can be a high-performing,
easy-to-maintain platform that will grow with your needs.

Learn More
Learn more about how you can improve productivity, enhance efficiency, and sharpen your competitive edge.
Implementing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

For more information or to register, visit www.globalknowledge.com or call 1-800-COURSES to speak with a
sales representative.

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About the Author

Scott Bishop is a consultant, trainer, and troubleshooter on multiple IT platforms. He has over 10 years of expe-
rience troubleshooting and designing computer systems and computer infrastructure. He has performed exten-
sive troubleshooting in corporate environments including, but not limited to, all versions of Windows and Mac,
with some Linux/UNIX. He is a Microsoft-certified trainer and engineer who has been employed, trained, and
consulted for the City of Jacksonville, America Online/Time Warner, National Safety Council, Lockheed Martin,
NEFAR, Ponte Vedra Chamber of Commerce, multiple Hospital and Medical offices with strong emphasis on
HIPPA, including over a hundred more small- and medium-sized businesses.

Copyright ©2008 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. Page 5