1

SharePoint Architecture: Governance and Best

Practices fundamentals

SharePoint Saturday JerseySeptember 27th 2014

Gokan OzcifciSharePoint MVPManaging Consultant Neoxy

@gokanozcifci

Apologies for accentWith Turkish blood, Dutch educated and a French speaking guy..

My Contributions

Opening Credits

What about this session?• Provide some insights and tips when designing and architecting your SharePoint Farm.• TechNet/MSDN is not always your answer• Business requirements and budget – things that really matters

• A lot to cover, so please keep the questions at the end…• DISCLAIMER: Opinions may differ but these are my own thoughts

For who is this session• Who is the SharePoint

Administrator?• Who is the SharePoint

Architect?• Who is the SQL Administrator• Who is the SharePoint

Developer?• Who is a Business User?

For who is this session40%40%1%8%1%

• Who is the SharePoint Administrator?• Who is the SharePoint

Architect?• Who is the SQL Administrator• Who is the SharePoint

Developer?• Who is a Business User?

SPS Jersey Agenda

SharePoint

Understand SharePoint

Statistics

Architecture On Premises

Architecture on Cloud

Understand SharePoint• SharePoint covers a huge set of individual technologies under

the SharePoint Platform umbrella• Application Domain• Active Directory• SQL Server• Office Web Apps Server• …

• It requires time, patience and experience• It’s continuously changing• Know when to use OOTB vs Custom Components• Know your users

Understand SharePoint• The same core Infrastructure : Very similar as SharePoint

2010 in terms of infrastructure : More powerful hardware is needed • More RAM• More CPU• More everyhing

Understand SharePoint• New Service Applications ( Distributed Cache, Request

Management, Machine Translation, …)• (New) Offloaded Services and Functionalities : Yammer, OneDrive

for Business, Office Web Apps, Workflow Manager…• Improved Service Applications ( Search Service Application )• Not UI Bindended Services (Subscription Management Service

Application)• Re-architected Service Applications ( Search and Office Web Apps )

• Different release schedule• OWA can be used for other platforms like Lync, Exchange, …

Understand Infrastructure• Not supported: Dynamic Memory VS Discontinued : Web Analytics• Prerequisites : Hardware and software requirements

• Single server with a built-in database or single server that uses SQL Server• 24 GB• 64-bit, 4 cores• 80 GB for system drive

• SQL Server 2014 requires the May 2014 Cumulative Update to be installed

• Windows Server 2012 R2 is only supported on a SharePoint Server 2013 Service Pack 1 environment

Understand SQL Server• SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012• Standard or Enterprise

• License costs• New functionality with SQL Server 2012

• Use of Report Server and Reporting Services Add-in with SharePoint 2013

• New Excel Features (advanced data models, define KPI’s, etc.)

• Power View

Understand how it works• Share services across farms

• Business Connectivity Services, Managed Metadata Service, Search Service (Crawl, Index, Query), Secure Store Service, User Profile Service

• App Management Service Applicaiton = NOT!• Use different application pools for isolation : HNSC• Claims: big deal expect if you have custom code who is

dealing with Classic code, and upgrades.. It’s a recommendation to set your authentication model in 2010 as Claims then to migrate.

N-Tier, N-Layer

3 is the new 2 | 7 is the new 53 webserver ( 2 load balanced – 1 Maintenance – HA - DR ). If only 2, if one for maintenance, 1 has a problem, farm is down (Not only Load balancer, …)

3 Web Server / 2 Application / 2 SQL Redundant.

It’s not all about SharePoint

Training Active Directory Infrastructu

reDevices Browsers

Network / F5

Office Clients

Licensing $$$ SLA

Some Statistics#Gartner | @BurckleyPlanet

18

According to Gartner early last year (2013) and repeated by Microsoft at their Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC13) in Houston, in the next 6-8 years:•35% of existing SharePoint customers will never move to the cloud•15% will become “pure cloud” customers•50% will adopt a hybrid SharePoint platform

One year later, at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington DC (WPC14), a senior Microsoft leader admitted hybrid was bigger than earlier estimated:•15-20% of existing SharePoint customers will never move to the cloud•10% will become “pure cloud” customers•70-75% will adopt a hybrid SharePoint platform

Office 365 AdoptionMicrosoft has shared limited statistics on how Office 365 is being adopted, but did provide some detail into the reasons why customers purchased O365:• 90% use the platform for Exchange• 6% for Lync• 4% for SharePoint

SharePoint ArchitectureOn-Premises

22

How do you begin?#TechNet?

#TechNet?#Google?

@Wictor : There is no perfect farm that you can download that rule them all..

Your architecture depends• Structure of content and data

• What kind of? • What is the purpose?

• Accessibility of content and data• Which groups of people can you identify?• How is access handled?

• Availability (content, data, services)• Public Facing Websites• Intranet• Collaboration sites

Your architecture depends• Amount of Content

• Current amount of content• Expected growth• Backups

• Infrastructure • On-Premises• Hybrid• Pure Cloud

• External systems• Home made applications

Your architecture depends• Usage of custom components

• Is there any custom development?• Are they going to use SharePoint Apps?

• App Service Application in D, Q, P DNS zones and Subzones

• Keep track of your boundaries• Maximum size of content databases• Number of web applications and site collections• Number of application pools

Your architecture depends• Virtualization

• VMWare• Hyper-V• Number of hosts

• Content is accessed through• NTLM through Active Directory• Form Based Authentication • Claims-based authentication• Third-party authentication method• Combination of above

Your architecture dependsWorkload

• Social• Business Intelligence

Operations• Do they have skills to operate the new

farm• Are they good to handle

Available resources• Who is writing the PowerShell scripts

( hopefully not you as an architect)…

Role Traditional Topology Streamlined Topology(each tier optimized)

Streamlined Topology(Optimize for)

Web Server Fast, Light-weight server which responds to user requests from web pages. All web servers are mirrors of each other and load balanced. Directs requests to the appropriate application servers

Service Applications, Services and components that serve user requests directly

Low latency

Access Services, BCS, Metadata, User Profile

Application Server Runs one or more services in the SharePoint Farm. Load balancing possible by redundant application servers

Service Applications, Services and components that process background tasks. Also called batch processing.

Load

User Profile Synchronization, Workflow, Machine translation, Work management

Search on separate dedicated machines

Database Server Stores content and service data. Databases can be clustered or mirrored for failover protection

Stores content and service data. Databases can be clustered or mirrored for failover protection

Throughput

Topologies – Farm typesFarm Number of

serversPurpose

Limited Deployment 1-2 Used for product evaluation, development and testing with a limited number of users

Small farm 3-4 Serve a large number of users and scales out based on how heavily services are used. These types of farms are not always fault-tolerant

Medium farm 6+ Serve a large number of users and scales out based on how heavily services are used. Their goal is a multi-purpose environment with possible optimalisation. These farms are always fault-tolerant.

Large farm Mostly a lot Serve a large number of users. Group service applications, services or databases that have similar performance characteristics on dedicated servers

Your architecture dependsTopology planning is very iterative

Customer will say it costs You change

Mise en Production, you need more RAM You change

You need a new Service Application You change

And it will change over time You change

Know the BoundariesSoftware Bounderies and limits for SharePoint 2013

• Avialable on TechNetBounderies, Thresholds and limits

• Boundary – Static, cannot be exceede• Threshold – configuratble BUT it’s not because

you …• Supported Limit – configurable

Continuously updated but try to memorize them!

#ESNMy Sites are a requirement!• Required for SharePoint Social, Task Rollup,

OneDrive for Business• Office365 / Yammer• SP1 of SharePoint Server 2013• Office 365 25 GB of storage per MySite

• Branding

DirSync or Dsync• More servers and/or SQL Licenses

ADFS

Search

Think wiseIt will cost many mandates and budget. Maybe is the cloud a solution?

• Licenses• Server costs• Maintain and Operational

excellence• Consultant costs

On Premises Hybrid with Office 365

Microsoft Azure SharePoint 2013 in Office 365

SharePoint 2013 Platform OptionsWeb servers

All databases

Application servers

Dedicated application servers for search components

Active Directory

On Premises

On-Premises• Capacity planning and sizing.• Server acquisition and setup.• Deployment.• Scaling out, patching, and operations. • Backing up data.• Maintaining a disaster recovery environment. • Customizations are not limited.

Office 365• Software as a Service (SaaS).• (Rich) feature set is always up to date.• Includes a Microsoft Azure Active Directory tenant (can be

used with other applications). • If single sign-on is a requirement, ADFS can be implemented. • Client communication over the Internet through encrypted and

authenticated access (port 443).

Microsft Azure• Microsoft Azure is a platform that provides the infrastructure and app

services needed to host a SharePoint 2013 farm. • Infrastructure Services.· Best native cloud platform for SQL Server and

SharePoint.• Computing resources are available almost immediately with no

commitment.• Focus on applications, instead of datacenters and infrastructure.• Inexpensive development and test environments.• SharePoint solutions can be accessible from the Internet

HybridCombine the benefits of Office 365 with an on-premises deployment of SharePoint 2013

Best for…What to choose between these platforms?

42

On Premises• In-country farms (when data is required to reside within a jurisdiction).• Complex BI solutions that must reside close to BI data.• Highly customized solutions.• Legacy solutions with third- party components that depend on hardware and

software that are not supported on Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Services.• Privacy restrictions that prevent synchronization of Active Directory accounts

with Microsoft Azure Active Directory (a requirement for Office 365).• Organizations that desire control of the entire platform and solution.

SharePoint in Office 365• Secure external sharing and collaboration (unique

feature!).• Intranet/Extranet — team sites, My Sites, and

internal collaboration.• Document storage and versioning in the cloud.·

Basic public-facing website.

Hybrid• Move My Sites (OneDrive for Business) to the cloud

to make it easier for users to access their files remotely. • Get 25GB of free space

• Push Service Applications

Microsoft Azure• SharePoint for Internet Sites — Public facing sites.• Developer, test, and staging environments — Quickly

provision and un-provision entire environments.• Hybrid applications — Applications that span your

datacenter and the cloud• Disaster recovery environment — Quickly recover from a

disaster, only pay for use.· Farms that require deep reporting or auditing.

License requirementsOffice 365: Subscription model, no additional licenses neededHybrid:

• Office 365 - Subscription model, no additional licenses needed.• On-premises - All on-premises licenses apply.

Microsoft Azure subscription (includes the server operating system)• SQL Server• SharePoint 2013 Server License• SharePoint 2013 Client Access License

On-Premises : Everything!

Architecture tasks

48

On-PremisesDesign the SharePoint environment in an existing on-premises environment:• SharePoint farm topology and logical architecture.• Server hardware.• Virtual environment, if used.• Load balancing.• Integration with Active Directory and DNS. • Design the disaster recovery environment.

Office 365• Password sync (requires one 64-bit server).• Single sign-on (requires ADFS and multiple servers).• Ensure network capacity and availability through firewalls,

proxy servers, gateways, and across WAN links.• Acquire third-party SSL certificates• Plan the tenant name, design site. collection architecture and

governance.• Plan customizations, solutions, and apps for SharePoint Online.

HybridIn addition to tasks for both the Office 365 and on-premises environments:• Determine how much feature integration is desired

and choose the hybrid topology. • If required, determine which proxy server device will

be used.

Microsoft Azure• Design the Microsoft Azure network environment• Integration with on-premises servers.• IP addresses and DNS.• Design the SharePoint environment• SharePoint farm topology and logical architecture.• Virtual machines sizes. • Load balanced endpoint.• External Endpoints for public access, if desired. • Design the disaster recovery environment• …

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4633.what-is-infrastructure-as-a-service.aspx

Build

Buy

In HouseOut Source

Partner Hosted Private Cloud

• Dedicated environment• Externally hosted• Externally or internally

managed• Internally designed

Self Hosted Private Cloud

• Dedicated environment• Internally hosted• Internally managed• Internally designed

Shared or Dedicated Public Cloud

• Shared or dedicated environment

• Externally hosted• Externally managed• Externally designed

Dedicated Public Cloud

• Partially or fully dedicated• Externally hosted• Externally or internally

managed• Minimal customization

Traditional on prem

Takeaways

54

Architecture• Architecture is based on:

• Chosen infrastructure• Budget and Business Requirements• Based on your tests and experience• The needs will change, over time• Don’t believe everything you read… expect this one

Architecture is based on everything!!!

56

Thank You!

Raffle Prizes at 16:00

1st #SharePint in the Hotel Bar sponsored by Cloudshare 16:30

Gokan OzcifciSharePoint MVP

@gokanozcifci | gokanx.wordpress.com