H12130.1:EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 with ...

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

EMC VSPEX FOR VIRTUALIZED MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT 2013 WITH VMWARE VSPHERE Enabled by EMC Next-Generation VNX and EMC Backup

EMC VSPEX Abstract This Implementation Guide describes the high-level steps required to deploy a Microsoft SharePoint 2013 farm on an EMC® VSPEX® Proven Infrastructure enabled by VMware vSphere, EMC VNXe® or EMC Next-Generation VNX®, and EMC backup. The guide provides information on two SharePoint 2013 implementations; one is based on a Publishing Portal, the other is on a Document Management Portal. November 2013

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. Published November 2013 EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided “as is”. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. EMC2, EMC, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 with VMware vSphere Enabled by EMC Next-Generation VNX and EMC Backup Implementation Guide Part Number H12130.1

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EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 with VMware vSphere Enabled by EMC Next-Generation VNX and EMC Backup Implementation Guide

Contents

Contents Chapter 1

Introduction

9

Purpose of this guide................................................................................................10 Business value .........................................................................................................10 Scope .......................................................................................................................11 Audience ..................................................................................................................11 Terminology..............................................................................................................12

Chapter 2

Before You Start

15

Overview ..................................................................................................................16 Pre-deployment tasks ...............................................................................................16 Deployment workflow ...............................................................................................17 Deployment prerequisites ........................................................................................17 Planning and sizing SharePoint 2013 .......................................................................20 Essential reading ......................................................................................................23 Design Guide .......................................................................................................23 VSPEX Solution Overviews ...................................................................................23 VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides .....................................................................24 VSPEX with EMC backup and recovery guide ........................................................24

Chapter 3

Solution Overview

25

Overview ..................................................................................................................26 Solution architecture ................................................................................................26 Key components .......................................................................................................27 Microsoft SharePoint 2013 ..................................................................................28 Microsoft SQL Server 2012 ..................................................................................29 EMC Next-Generation VNX....................................................................................30 EMC VNXe ............................................................................................................35 EMC backup and recovery solution ......................................................................36 VMware vSphere 5.1 ............................................................................................36 EMC XtremSW Cache............................................................................................36 EMC PowerPath/VE ..............................................................................................37

Chapter 4

Solution Implementation

39

Overview ..................................................................................................................40 Physical setup ..........................................................................................................40


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Contents

Overview of physical setup ..................................................................................40 Network implementation ..........................................................................................40 Storage implementation ...........................................................................................41 Overview of storage implementation....................................................................41 Example architecture ...........................................................................................42 Setting up initial VNXe or VNX configuration ........................................................42 Provisioning storage for iSCSI datastore ..............................................................42 Provisioning storage for application pool disks ....................................................43 Example storage layouts ......................................................................................47 FAST VP configuration on Next-Generation VNX ....................................................49 FAST Cache configuration on Next-Generation VNX ..............................................50 ESXi and vCenter implementation.............................................................................52 Multipathing implementation ...................................................................................54 Overview..............................................................................................................54 PowerPath configuration for iSCSI storage ...........................................................54 SharePoint Server virtualization implementation ......................................................55 Overview..............................................................................................................55 Creating SharePoint virtual machines ..................................................................55 Installing the SharePoint guest OS .......................................................................56 Assigning an IP address .......................................................................................56 Creating a user account .......................................................................................56 Creating an NLB cluster ........................................................................................57 Creating virtual disks for SharePoint servers ........................................................57 Application implementation .....................................................................................60 Overview..............................................................................................................60 Installing Microsoft SharePoint 2013 farm ...........................................................61 Creating a new SharePoint 2013 farm and add servers to the farm.......................64 Creating a Search Service Application ..................................................................66 Configuring search topology ................................................................................67 Configuring a web application .............................................................................69 Implementing a SharePoint publishing Portal ......................................................69 Implementing a SharePoint Document Management Portal..................................70 Provisioning SharePoint services .........................................................................70 Customization .....................................................................................................70 Running a full crawl .............................................................................................70 Creating a search center site and scheduling an incremental crawl ......................71 Configuring MySites .............................................................................................71 Backup and recovery implementation.......................................................................72

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Contents

Chapter 5

Solution Verification

73

Baseline infrastructure verification ...........................................................................74 Overview..............................................................................................................74 Verifying ESXi functionality ..................................................................................74 Verifying solution components redundancy .........................................................74 Verifying SharePoint farm configuration ...............................................................75 Monitoring the solution’s health ..........................................................................75 SharePoint Publishing Portal verification ..................................................................77 Overview of SharePoint Publishing Portal verification ..........................................77 Key metrics ..........................................................................................................77 Load test configuration ........................................................................................78 Test results ..........................................................................................................79 SharePoint dataset ..............................................................................................81 SharePoint Document Management Portal verification .............................................82 Overview of SharePoint Publishing Portal verification ..........................................82 Key metrics ..........................................................................................................82 Load test configuration ........................................................................................83 Test results ..........................................................................................................84 SharePoint dataset ..............................................................................................86 Backup and recovery verification ..............................................................................87

Chapter 6

Reference Documentation

89

EMC documentation .................................................................................................90 Other documentation ...............................................................................................91 Links ........................................................................................................................91 Microsoft TechNet ................................................................................................91 MSDN Library .......................................................................................................92

Appendix A Configuration Worksheet

93

Configuration worksheet for virtualized SharePoint Server........................................94

Appendix B Tools and Scripts

97

Sample tool to create large number of random documents .......................................98 Sample tool to load documents into SharePoint .......................................................98 Sample code for SharePoint performance testing .....................................................98 Sample code for changing index location .................................................................98


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Contents

Figures

6

Figure 1.

Solution architecture ...........................................................................27

Figure 2.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ................................................................30

Figure 3.

Next-Generation VNX with multicore optimization................................32

Figure 4.

Active/active processors increase performance, resiliency, and efficiency .............................................................................................33

Figure 5.

Unisphere Management Suite .............................................................34

Figure 6.

SharePoint storage elements on vSphere 5.1 platform ........................42

Figure 7.

Create LUN ..........................................................................................45

Figure 8.

Storage layout example: SharePoint farm for the VNXe series ..............47

Figure 9.

Example storage layout for VNX without FAST VP enabled ....................48

Figure 10.

Example storage layout for VNX with FAST VP enabled .........................49

Figure 11.

Sample of Create Storage Pool wizard—FAST VP enabled ....................50

Figure 12.

Storage pool properties: FAST Cache enabled......................................51

Figure 13.

Creating a new virtual disk...................................................................59

Figure 14.

Formatting disk ...................................................................................60

Figure 15.

Installing software prerequisites .........................................................62

Figure 16.

Setting server type in the SharePoint installation wizard .....................63

Figure 17.

Specifying index file location ...............................................................63

Figure 18.

Creating a new server farm ..................................................................64

Figure 19.

Configuring the database settings .......................................................65

Figure 20.

Entering a security passphrase ............................................................66

Figure 21.

Example of small search topology .......................................................67

Figure 22.

Example of medium search topology ...................................................67

Figure 23.

IOPS to content database: Publishing Portal ........................................81

Figure 24.

IOPS to content database: Document Management Portal ...................86


Contents

Tables Table 1.

Terminology.........................................................................................12

Table 2.

Tasks for pre-deployment ....................................................................16

Table 3.

VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint Server 2013: Deployment workflow .. 17

Table 4.

Deployment prerequisites checklist .....................................................18

Table 5.

Usage profiles .....................................................................................20

Table 6.

SharePoint related storage pool name and purpose ............................20

Table 7.

Example customer qualification worksheet: Medium SharePoint 2013 farm ....................................................................................................21

Table 8.

Example of required resources: Medium SharePoint 2013 farm ...........22

Table 9.

Sample storage recommendations: Medium SharePoint 2013 farm.....23

Table 10.

Sample performance key metrics: Medium SharePoint 2013 farm .......23

Table 11.

VNXe software suites ...........................................................................35

Table 12.

VNXe software packs ...........................................................................35

Table 13.

Tasks for physical setup ......................................................................40

Table 14.

Tasks for switch and network configuration .........................................40

Table 15.

Tasks for storage configuration............................................................41

Table 16.

Example of additional storage layout for virtual machine OS on VNX ...43

Table 17.

Example of storage layout for SharePoint data in VNXe3300................ 43

Table 18.

Example of storage layout example on VNX .........................................44

Table 19.

Example of storage layout on VNX with FAST VP enabled .....................46

Table 20.

Steps for ESXi and vCenter installation and configuration ....................52

Table 21.

SharePoint host virtual machine installation and configuration ...........55

Table 22.

Example of SharePoint reference virtual machines ..............................56

Table 23.

User accounts......................................................................................57

Table 24.

VMDK and virtual disk storage layout for VNXe ....................................58

Table 25.

VMDK and virtual disk storage layout for VNX ......................................58

Table 26.

Tasks for implementing a SharePoint 2013 farm..................................60

Table 27.

Example of search components file locations ......................................68

Table 28.

Example of configuring web application ..............................................69

Table 29.

Full crawl results..................................................................................71

Table 30.

Questions related to My Sites in the VSPEX Sizing Tool........................72

Table 31.

Tasks for verifying the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure installation ...........74

Table 32.

Tools to monitor the VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint solution ............75

Table 33.

SharePoint Publishing Portal evaluation example ................................77

Table 34.

Example of key metrics in a medium SharePoint 2013 farm .................78

Table 35.

SharePoint stress test steps and tools .................................................78

Table 36.

Mixed workload combination: Publishing Portal ..................................79

Table 37.

Key metrics for SharePoint Publishing Portal with four web servers......80


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Contents

8

Table 38.

Detailed performance results...............................................................80

Table 39.

Detailed server resources utilization....................................................80

Table 40.

Average database document size: Publishing Portal ............................81

Table 41.

SharePoint Document Management Portal evaluation .........................82

Table 42.

Example of key metrics in a medium SharePoint 2013 farm .................83

Table 43.

SharePoint stress test steps and tools .................................................83

Table 44.

Mixed workload combination: Document Management Portal .............84

Table 45.

Example of test results for SharePoint Document Management Portal . 85

Table 46.

Detailed performance tests results ......................................................85

Table 47.

Detailed server resources utilization....................................................85

Table 48.

Average database document size: Document Management Portal .......86

Table 49.

Common server information ................................................................94

Table 50.

ESXi server information .......................................................................95

Table 51.

Array information.................................................................................95

Table 52.

Network infrastructure information ......................................................96

Table 53.

VLAN information ................................................................................96

Table 54.

Service accounts .................................................................................96

Table 55.

SharePoint URL configuration ..............................................................96


Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1

Introduction

This chapter presents the following topics: Purpose of this guide ...............................................................................................10 Business value .........................................................................................................10 Scope .......................................................................................................................11 Audience ..................................................................................................................11 Terminology .............................................................................................................12


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Purpose of this guide EMC® VSPEX® Proven Infrastructures are optimized for virtualizing critical business applications. VSPEX gives partners the ability to design and implement the virtual resources necessary to satisfy the requirements for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 in a virtualized environment on a VSPEX private cloud. The VSPEX private cloud for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 architecture provides the customer with a validated system capable of hosting a virtualized SharePoint solution at a consistent performance level. This solution runs on a VMware vSphere virtualization layer backed by the highly available EMC VNX® family, which provides the storage. All VSPEX solutions are sized and tested with EMC backup and recovery products. EMC Avamar® and EMC Data Domain® enable complete infrastructure, application, and email backup and recovery, including granular email recovery capabilities. The compute and network components, while vendor-definable, are laid out so they are redundant and powerful enough to handle the processing and data needs of the virtual machine environment. This Implementation Guide describes how to implement the virtual resources necessary to satisfy the requirements for deploying Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 on any VSPEX Proven Infrastructure with VMware vSphere.

Business value The volume and diversity of content and the size of user data continues to grow year after year. Data is exploding, with a forecasted 50 times growth rate over the next 10 years. To realize the value in all of this data, businesses are turning to content management applications to promote collaboration and information sharing. For over 10 years, SharePoint has been helping customers develop portals for collaboration, manage documents and records, search and share documents, and develop business process automation around their most valuable asset—their information. As SharePoint has developed and continued to add new functionality and features, the challenges businesses face in managing their data have also grown. Administrating, auditing, protecting, managing, and delivering an optimal SharePoint infrastructure for a modern, geographically diverse workforce is a major challenge for most IT departments. Virtualization of physical servers and storage assets with VSPEX enables IT departments to be more dynamic, agile, and to keep pace with everchanging demands on the business. VSPEX enables customers to accelerate their IT transformation with faster deployments, simplified management, backup, and storage provisioning. Customers can realize greater efficiency with higher application availability, increased storage utilization, and faster and leaner backups. In addition, VSPEX provides customers with flexibility of choice when selecting a hypervisor, server, and network to address the requirements of their unique SharePoint environments.

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Scope This guide describes the high-level steps required to deploy a small or medium SharePoint 2013 farm on a VSPEX Private Cloud with vSphere and EMC VNXe® or VNX. It provides information on two SharePoint implementations, one based on a Publishing Portal and the other on a Document Management Portal. This guide assumes that a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure already exists in the customer’s environment. This guide applies to VSPEX Proven Infrastructures virtualized with vSphere on VNXe or VNX. This guide provides an example of a SharePoint 2013 farm deployment for up to 100 virtual machines on EMC VNXe3300™ and up to 1,000 virtual machines on EMC VNX5600™. The EMC backup and recovery solutions for SharePoint data protection are described in a separate document: EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide.

Audience This guide is intended for internal EMC personnel and qualified EMC VSPEX Partners. The guide assumes that VSPEX Partners who intend to deploy this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SharePoint solution are: •

Qualified by Microsoft to sell and implement SharePoint solutions

•

Certified in SharePoint 2013, ideally with one or both of the following Microsoft certifications: 

Core Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 (Exam: 331)



Advanced Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 (Exam: 332)

•

Qualified by EMC to sell, install, and configure the VNX family of storage systems

•

Certified to sell VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

•

Qualified to sell, install, and configure the network and server products required for VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

Readers must also have the necessary technical training and background to install and configure: •

VMware vSphere virtualization platforms

•

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 operating systems (OS)

•

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013

•

EMC backup and recovery products, including Avamar and Data Domain

This guide provides external references where applicable. EMC recommends that partners implementing this solution are familiar with these documents. For details, refer to Essential reading and Chapter 6: Reference Documentation.


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Terminology Table 1 lists the terminology used in the guide. Table 1.

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Terminology

Term

Definition

ACL

Access control list

AD

Active Directory

BLOB

Binary large object

CIFS

Common Internet File System

CSV

Cluster-shared volume. A Windows Server clustering feature that enables multiple clustered virtual machines to use the same LUN.

DNS

Domain name system

eMLC

Enterprise multilevel cell

FAST™ Cache

A feature on EMC VNX series storage systems that enables you to use the lower response time and better IOPS of flash drives for specific applications

FAST VP

Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools

FQDN

Fully Qualified Domain Name

IIS

Internet Information Services

IOPS

Input/output operations per second

iSCSI

Internet Small Computer Systems Interface

LACP

Link Aggregation Control Protocol

MCx™

Multicore Code Path Optimization

NFS

Network File System

NIC

Network interface card

NLB

Network Load Balancer

NL-SAS

Near-line serial-attached SCSI

Reference virtual machine

Represents a unit of measure for a single virtual machine to qualify the compute resources in a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

RPS

Requests per second

RTM

Release to manufacturing

SSD

Solid state disks

tempdb

tempdb refers to a system database used by Microsoft SQL Server as a temporary working area during processing.

VDM

Virtual Data Mover


Chapter 1: Introduction Term

Definition

VMDK

VMware Virtual Machine Disk

VMFS

VMware Virtual Machine File System

VSS

Volume Shadow Copy Service

VSTS

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System


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Chapter 2: Before You Start

Chapter 2

Before You Start

This chapter presents the following topics: Overview ..................................................................................................................16 Pre-deployment tasks ..............................................................................................16 Deployment workflow ..............................................................................................17 Deployment prerequisites ........................................................................................17 Planning and sizing SharePoint 2013 ......................................................................20 Essential reading .....................................................................................................23


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Overview This chapter provides important information you need to be aware of, documents you need to be familiar with, and tasks you need to perform before you start implementing your VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint Server 2013 solution. The VSPEX for Virtualized SharePoint Server 2013 Design Guide describes how to size and design your solution and how to select the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure on which to layer SharePoint Server 2013. The deployment examples in this Implementation Guide are based on the recommendations and examples in the Design Guide. Before you implement a virtual SharePoint 2013 farm on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, EMC recommends that you check and complete the pre-deployment tasks, as shown in Table 2.

Pre-deployment tasks Pre-deployment tasks include procedures that do not directly relate to environment installation and configuration, but whose results are needed during installation. Examples of pre-deployment tasks include the collection of hostnames, IP addresses, VLAN IDs, license keys, installation media, and so on. These tasks should be performed before a customer visit to decrease the time required on site. Table 2 lists pre-deployment tasks. Table 2.

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Tasks for pre-deployment

Task

Description

Reference

Gathering documents

Gather the related documents listed in Essential reading. These are used throughout this document to provide details on setup procedures and deployment best practices for the various components of the solution.

Essential reading

Gathering tools

Gather the required and optional tools for the deployment. Use Table 4 to confirm that all equipment, software, and appropriate licenses are available before the deployment process.

Table 4: Deployment prerequisites


Chapter 2: Before You Start Task

Description

Reference

Gathering data

Collect the customer-specific configuration data for networking, naming, and required accounts. Enter this information into the Customer Configuration Data worksheet for reference during the deployment process.

Configuration worksheet for virtualized SharePoint Server

Deployment workflow To design and implement your VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint 2013 solution, refer to the process flow in Table 3 1. Table 3.

VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint Server 2013: Deployment workflow

Step

Action

1

Use the VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint 2013 qualification worksheet to collect user requirements. The qualification worksheet is in Appendix A of the Design Guide.

2

Use the EMC VSPEX Sizing Tool to determine the recommended the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for your solution, based on the user requirements collected in Step 1. For more information about the Sizing Tool, refer to the EMC VSPEX Sizing Tool portal. Note: If the Sizing Tool is not available, you can manually size the application using the guidelines in the Design Guide.

3

Refer to the Design Guide to determine the final design for your VSPEX solution. Note: Ensure that all application requirements are considered, not just the requirements for virtualized SharePoint 2013.

4

Refer to VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides to select and order the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.

5

Follow this Implementation Guide to deploy and test your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SharePoint Server 2013.

Deployment prerequisites This guide applies to VSPEX Proven Infrastructures virtualized with VMware on VNXe or VNX. The example provided and carried through this guide is of a deployment on a VNX5600. The same principles and guidance apply to any other VNXe or VNX model. Table 4 itemizes the hardware and software requirements to configure the solution. For additional information, refer to the hardware and software tables in the relevant document in Essential reading. If your solution includes backup and recovery components, refer to the EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide for backup and recovery sizing and implementation guidelines. 1


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Chapter 2: Before You Start Note: If you already have a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure environment, you can skip this section. Table 4.

Deployment prerequisites checklist

Requirement

Description

Hardware

Physical servers: Sufficient physical server capacity to host the required number of virtual machines as recommended by the Design Guide and VSPEX Sizing Tool vSphere servers: Host virtual infrastructure servers

Version

• EMC VSPEX

Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines

5.1 U1

Note: This requirement may be covered in the existing infrastructure. Networking: Switch port capacity and capabilities as required by the virtual server infrastructure

Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide

Gen 4 in a single node configuration

VNX Operating Environment (OE) for file

Release 7.0.53-2

VNX OE for file

Release 7.0.53-2

• EMC Online Support

VNX OE for block

Release 32

• EMC Backup and

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Unified Storage Management

5.1 U1

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Storage Viewer

5.1 U1

EMC backup and recovery solutions

6.1 SP1

VMware ESXi installation media

5.1 U1

VMware vCenter server installation media

5.1 U1

Microsoft Windows Server installation media (for SharePoint 2013)

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard or Datacenter

Microsoft SQL Server installation media

2012 Enterprise Edition RTM with latest update


Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines

Backup: EMC backup and recovery solutions

EMC vStorage API for Array Integration plug-in

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• EMC VSPEX

• EMC Backup and

VNXe or VNX: Multiprotocol storage array with the required disk layout

Software

Reference notes

Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide

VMware.com

Chapter 2: Before You Start Requirement

Licenses

Description

Version

Microsoft SharePoint Server installation media

SharePoint Server 2013 (Standard or Enterprise edition)

Microsoft Visual Studio installation media

2010 Ultimate RTM

Microsoft Visual Studio Agent installation media (optional)

2010 RTM

Microsoft SQL Server installation media (optional)

2008 R2 RTM


6.1 SP1 in server and client versions

Microsoft Windows Server license keys

2008 R2 Standard (or higher)

Note: This requirement may be covered by an existing Microsoft Key Management Server (KMS). Microsoft SQL Server license key Note: This requirement may be covered by existing infrastructure.

Reference notes

For validation tests only. This SQL Server is to be used as the VSTS back-end database.

EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide

2012 Standard (or higher)

Microsoft SharePoint Server license keys

2010 (Standard or Enterprise)

VMware vSphere license keys

5.1 U1

VMware.com

Microsoft Visual Studio license key (optional)

2010 Ultimate

For validation tests only

Microsoft Visual Studio Agent license key (optional)

2010

Note: This may be covered in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

FAST Cache enabler FAST enabler Thin provisioning enabler


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Planning and sizing SharePoint 2013 To plan and size your SharePoint 2013 farm on the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, you must follow the recommendations and VSPEX Sizing Tool introduced in the Design Guide. In this VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint solution, we 2 used two of the most common types of usage profiles, as shown in Table 5. SharePoint provides an extensible unified content infrastructure and customization for various business requirements. Table 5.

Usage profiles

Usage profile

Description

Publishing Portal

A starter site hierarchy that can be used for an Internet site or a large intranet portal. The site includes a home page, a sample press releases site, a Search Center, and a log-in page. Typically, this site has many more readers than contributors, and it uses approval workflows to publish the web pages.

Document Management Portal

A site on which you can centrally manage and collaborate on documents in your enterprise.

In the Design Guide, we also introduced general storage pools that are used to store SharePoint data, as shown in Table 6. For detailed information, refer to the Design Guide. Table 6.

SharePoint related storage pool name and purpose

Pool name

Purpose

VSPEX private cloud pool

This is the pool where all the virtual machines’ operating system volumes reside. For details, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure in Essential reading.

SharePoint content databases pool

This is the pool where all SharePoint content database data and their logs reside.

SharePoint services pool

This is the pool where all the other SharePoint databases or components are located.

SharePoint MySites content databases pool

This pool is for SharePoint MySites content database data and log files.

The following example is described in the Design Guide. A customer wants to create a medium SharePoint 2013 farm for their Document Management Portal on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. You should complete the evaluation, as shown in Table 7.

2

20

In this guide, "we" refers to the EMC Solutions engineering team that validated the solution.


Chapter 2: Before You Start Table 7.

Example customer qualification worksheet: Medium SharePoint 2013 farm

Question

Example answer

How many SharePoint 2013 farms do you plan to host in your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure?

1

Included number of years’ growth?

3

SharePoint 2013 Farm 1 Annual growth rate (%)?

20

Is the SharePoint web application going to be accessed globally?

No

Initial farm size (GB)?

4,000

Number of users?

5,000

User concurrency at peak (%)?

60

What is the main purpose of the SharePoint web application?


Do you use or intend to use the My Sites function?

No

What is the percentage of total users who will create My Sites?

N/A

What is the quota for a single MySites (MB)?

N/A

Do you heavily rely on SharePoint Search function?

Yes

Do you intend to use EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) for SharePoint?

No

After you have received a completed qualification worksheet from the customer, and have entered those answers into the VSPEX Sizing Tool, you will see results similar to those shown below: •

Required resources table listing the number of virtual machines and their characteristics.

•

Storage recommendations table listing the additional storage layouts that are required to run the SharePoint 2013 farm. This is in addition to VSPEX private cloud pools.

•

Performance metrics table listing the key performance metrics that you should achieve in the validation tests for each farm.


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Table 8, Table 9, and Table 10 are examples based on the customer information provided in Table 7. In this guide, we used the resources shown in Table 8 and Table 9 for the SharePoint 2013 farm and storage layout design based on the VSPEX Sizing Tool. Table 8.

Example of required resources: Medium SharePoint 2013 farm OS volume IOPS

Number of virtual machines

Total reference virtual machines

5

30

1

16

2

12

2

24

SharePoint server role

vCPU

Memory

OS volume capacity

Web server

Resource requirements

4

12 GB

100 GB

Less than 25

Equivalent reference virtual machines

4

6

1

1


16

16 GB

100 GB

Less than 25


16

8

1

1


4

12 GB

100 GB

Less than 25


4

6

1

1


12

12 GB

100 GB

Less than 25


12

6

1

1

SQL Server

Application server (Querytype)

Application server (Crawlertype)

Total equivalent reference virtual machines

82

For example, each web server requires four vCPUs, 12 GB of memory, 100 GB of storage, and less than 25 IOPS. This translates to:

22

•

Four reference virtual machines for CPU

•

Six reference virtual machines for memory

•

One reference virtual machine for capacity

•

One reference virtual machine for IOPS


Chapter 2: Before You Start Table 9.

Sample storage recommendations: Medium SharePoint 2013 farm Recommended additional storage layout

Pool name

RAID type

Disk type

Disk capacity

Number of disks

SharePoint content databases pool

4+1 RAID 5

SAS disks 15,000 rpm

300 GB

30


4+4 RAID 10


600 GB

16

Table 10.

Sample performance key metrics: Medium SharePoint 2013 farm

Key metrics

Thresholds

User profile usage

Passed tests per second

More than 50

Browse operation

Less than 3 seconds

50%

Search operation

Less than 3 seconds

20%

Modify operation

Less than 3 seconds

20%

Upload operation

Less than 3 seconds

10%

Operation states

• SQL Server CPU usage less than 50% • Web server CPU usage less than 70% • Failure rate less than 0.01%

Essential reading EMC recommends that you read the following documents, which are available from the VSPEX space in the EMC Community Network or from EMC.com or the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure partner portal. Design Guide

Refer to the following VSPEX Design Guide: •

VSPEX Solution Overviews

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Refer to the following VSPEX Solution Overview documents: •

EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization for Midmarket Businesses

•

EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization for Small and Medium Businesses


23


24

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides

Refer to the following VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides:

VSPEX with EMC backup and recovery guide

Refer to the following VSPEX with EMC backup and recovery guide:

•

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines

•

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines



Chapter 3: Solution Overview

Chapter 3

Solution Overview

This chapter presents the following topics: Overview ..................................................................................................................26 Solution architecture ...............................................................................................26 Key components ......................................................................................................27


25


Overview This chapter provides an overview of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and the key technologies used in this solution. This guide supports all VSPEX solutions virtualized with VMware. This solution was validated using VNXe or VNX and VMware virtualized Windows server platforms to provide storage and server hardware consolidation. The solution described in this guide includes servers, storage, network, backup, and SharePoint components that are focused on midrange environments. The solution enables customers to quickly and consistently deploy and protect a small or medium virtualized SharePoint 2013 farm in a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. The VNXe or VNX storage arrays are multiprotocol platforms that can support the Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI), Network File System (NFS), and Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocols depending on the customer’s specific needs. The solution was validated using iSCSI for data storage. This solution requires the presence of Active Directory (AD) and Domain Name System (DNS). The implementation of these services is beyond the scope of this guide, but these are considered prerequisites for a successful deployment. EMC backup and recovery solutions provide essential SharePoint data protection and are described in the EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide.

Solution architecture Figure 1 shows an example of the architecture that characterizes the infrastructure that was validated for the support of a SharePoint 2013 platform on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. In this solution, all SharePoint servers are deployed as virtual machines on vSphere clusters across six back-end servers. vCenter Server requires a database service to store configuration and monitoring details. VNXe or VNX is used to provide the backend storage functionality, but you can use any model that has been validated as part of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructures. The backup and recovery components of the solution provide SharePoint data protection, ranging from the entire SharePoint 2013 farm to various object levels. Note: This solution applies to all VSPEX offerings on VMware.

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Figure 1.

Solution architecture

For more details, refer to the appropriate document in Essential reading.

Key components This section provides an overview of the technologies used in this solution: •

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013

•

Microsoft SQL Server 2012

•

EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

•

EMC Next-Generation VNX

•

EMC VNXe

•


•

VMware vSphere 5.1

•

EMC XtremSW™ Cache

•

EMC PowerPath®/VE


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Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Microsoft SharePoint 2013 provides a business-collaboration platform for enterprise and commercial organizations. SharePoint enables organizations to share content and information through websites, blogs, wikis, and document libraries—some of the many features of a SharePoint environment. Content within these features can be managed collectively from start to finish. Thoughts and ideas can be exchanged and discussed using the same set of capabilities and tools. The SharePoint 2013 platform comprises a set of integrated capabilities that can be used either as is or customized to address specific business needs and integrated with other products and solutions. The platform can be deployed both within the organization (through intranets) and outside the firewall (through extranets and the Internet) to enable interaction with employees, customers, and business partners. A SharePoint environment consists of multiple server roles combined into units called farms. The SharePoint 2013 farm in this solution includes the following server roles: •

Web server role: This server is responsible for the actual SharePoint pages that a user views. The role of the web server is to host web pages, web services, and the web parts that are required to process requests from users. The web server directs these requests to the application server, which returns the results to the web server.

•

Application server role: This server runs all the SharePoint application services, including index crawling and search query services, and also hosts the SharePoint Central Administration website. You can add application servers to host services that can be deployed to a single server and used by all the servers in a farm. Services with similar usage and performance characteristics can be logically grouped on a server and, if necessary, hosted on multiple servers if a scale out is required to respond to performance or capacity requirements. EMC recommends that you use three types of search application roles as distributed on the application servers: 





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All-in-one —The server contains all of the search application roles: −

Query processing

−

Index partition

−

Crawler

−

Content processing

−

Analytics processing

−

Administration

Crawler-type—The server has four roles: −

Crawler

−

Content processing

−

Analytics

−

Administration

Query-type—The machine has two roles:



•

−

Query processing

−

Index partitioning

Database server role: These are servers that run the SharePoint databases, including the content databases, configuration database, search databases, and so on. For this solution, we installed SQL Server 2012 with a back-end database role for SharePoint Server 2013.

For SharePoint 2013 key concepts, refer to the Design Guide. Microsoft SQL Server 2012

SQL Server 2012 is Microsoft’s database management and analysis system for ecommerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions. SQL Server is widely used to store, retrieve, and manage application data. Because it is used with a range of applications and each application has different requirements for performance, sizing, availability, recoverability, manageability, and so on, it is important to fully understand these factors and plan accordingly when deploying SQL Server. SharePoint Server 2013 is built on SQL Server database engine, and most of the content and SharePoint configurations are stored in the SQL Server databases. In this solution, we used SQL Server 2012 as the back-end database application. SharePoint Server 2013 uses the following kinds of SQL Server databases: •

Configuration databases: The Configuration database and Central Administration content database are called configuration databases. They contain data about farm settings such as the databases used, Internet Information Services (IIS) web sites or web applications, solutions, web part packages, site templates, default quota, and blocked file types. A SharePoint 2013 farm can only have one set of configuration databases.

•

Content databases: Content databases store all site content: site documents, such as files in document libraries, list data, web part properties, and user names and rights. All the data for a specific site resides in one content database. Each web application can contain many content databases. Each site collection can be associated with only one content database, although a content database can be associated with many site collections.

•

Service application related databases: Service application databases store data for use by a service application. The databases for service applications vary significantly in what they are used for.

EMC VSPEX Proven EMC has joined forces with providers of IT infrastructure to create a complete virtualization solution that accelerates deployment of private cloud. VSPEX enables Infrastructure faster deployment, more simplicity, greater choice, higher efficiency, and lower risk. Validation by EMC ensures predictable performance and enables customers to select technology that uses their existing IT infrastructure while eliminating planning, sizing, and, configuration burdens. VSPEX provides a virtual infrastructure for customers looking to gain simplicity that is characteristic of truly converged infrastructures while at the same time gaining more choice in individual stack components. VSPEX solutions are proven by EMC and packaged and sold exclusively by EMC channel partners. VSPEX provides channel partners more opportunity, faster sales cycle, and end-to-end enablement. By working closely together, EMC and its channel EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 with VMware vSphere Enabled by EMC Next-Generation VNX and EMC Backup Implementation Guide

29


partners can now deliver an infrastructure that accelerates the journey to the cloud for even more customers. VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, as shown in Figure 2, is a modular virtualized infrastructure validated by EMC and delivered by EMC Partners. VSPEX includes a virtualization layer, server and network layers, and EMC storage and backup, designed by EMC to deliver reliable and predictable performance. VSPEX provides the flexibility to choose network, server, and virtualization technologies that fit a customer’s environment to create a complete virtualization solution. VSPEX delivers faster deployment for EMC partner customers, with greater simplicity and efficiency, more choice, and lower risk to a customer’s business.

Figure 2.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

Application-based solutions such as SharePoint can be deployed on VSPEX Proven Infrastructures. The VSPEX Proven Infrastructure solution was validated using VNXe or VNX and vSphere 5.1 virtualized server platforms to provide storage and server hardware consolidation. The virtualized infrastructure is centrally managed, and enables efficient deployment and management of a scalable number of virtual machines and associated shared storage. EMC NextGeneration VNX

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Features and enhancements The EMC VNX flash-optimized unified storage platform delivers innovation and enterprise capabilities for file, block, and object storage in a single, scalable, and easy-to-use solution. Ideal for mixed workloads in physical or virtual environments, VNX combines powerful and flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management, and protection software to meet the demanding needs of today’s virtualized application environments.



VNX includes many features and enhancements designed and built upon the first generation’s success. These features and enhancements include: •

More capacity of optimized multicore with Multicore Cache, Multicore RAID, and Multicore FAST Cache (MCx)

•

Greater efficiency with a flash-optimized hybrid array

•

Better protection by increasing application availability with an active/active

•

Easier administration and deployment by increasing productivity with the new Unisphere Management Suite

VSPEX is built with the next generation of VNX to deliver even greater efficiency, performance, and scale than ever before. Flash-optimized hybrid array VNX is a flash-optimized hybrid array that provides automated tiering to deliver the best performance to your critical data, while intelligently moving less frequently accessed data to lower cost disks. In this hybrid approach, a small percentage of flash drives in the overall system can provide a high percentage of the overall IOPS. The flash-optimized VNX takes full advantage of the low latency of flash to deliver cost-saving optimization and high performance scalability. The FAST Cache and FAST VP tiers both block and file data across heterogeneous drives and boosts the most active data to the flash drives, ensuring that customers never have to make concessions for cost or performance. Data generally is accessed most frequently at the time it is created, therefore new data is first stored on flash drives to provide the best performance. As that data ages and becomes less active over time, FAST VP tiers the data from high-performance to high-capacity drives automatically, based on customer-defined policies. This functionality has been enhanced with four times better granularity and with new FAST VP solid state disks (SSDs) based on enterprise multilevel cell (eMLC) technology to lower the cost per gigabyte. FAST Cache dynamically absorbs unpredicted spikes in system workloads. All VSPEX solutions benefit from the increased efficiency. VSPEX Proven Infrastructures deliver private cloud, end-user computing, and virtualized application solutions. With VNX, customers can achieve an even greater return on their investment. VNX provides out-of-band, block-based deduplication that can dramatically lower the costs of the flash tier. VNX Intel MCx code path optimization The advent of flash technology has been a catalyst in totally changing the requirements of midrange storage systems. EMC redesigned the midrange storage platform to efficiently optimize multicore CPUs to provide the highest performing storage system at the lowest cost in the market. MCx distributes all VNX data services across all cores—up to 32, as shown in Figure 3. The VNX series with MCx has dramatically improved the file performance for transactional applications like databases or virtual machines over network-attached storage (NAS).


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Figure 3.

Next-Generation VNX with multicore optimization

Multicore cache The cache is the most valuable asset in the storage subsystem; its efficient use is key to the overall efficiency of the platform in handling variable and changing workloads. The cache engine has been modularized to take advantage of all the cores available in the system.

Multicore RAID Another important part of the MCx redesign is the handling of I/O to the permanent back-end storage—hard disk drives (HDDs) and SSDs. Greatly increased performance improvements in VNX come from the modularization of the back-end data management processing, which enables MCx to seamlessly scale across all processors. VNX performance

Performance enhancements VNX storage, enabled with the MCx architecture, is optimized for FLASH 1st and provides unprecedented overall performance, optimizing for transaction performance (cost per IOPS), bandwidth performance (cost per GB/s) with low latency, and providing optimal capacity efficiency (cost per GB). VNX provides the following performance improvements:

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•

Up to four times more file transactions when compared with dual controller arrays

•

Increased file performance for transactional applications (for example, Microsoft Exchange on VMware over NFS) by up to three times with a 60 percent better response time

•

Up to four times more Oracle and SQL Server OLTP transactions

•

Up to six times more virtual machines



Active/active array service processors The new VNX architecture provides active/active array service processors, as shown in Figure 4. This eliminates application timeouts during path failover, since both paths are actively serving I/O.

Figure 4.

Active/active processors increase performance, resiliency, and efficiency

Load balancing has also been improved and applications can achieve up to two times improvement in performance. Active/active for block is ideal for applications that require the highest levels of availability and performance, but do not require tiering or efficiency services like compression, deduplication, or snapshot. With this VNX release, VSPEX customers can use Virtual Data Movers (VDMs) and EMC VNX Replicator to perform automated and high-speed file system migrations between systems. This process migrates all snaps and settings automatically, and enables the clients to continue operations during the migration. Note: The active/active processors are only available for classic logical unit numbers (LUNs), not for pool LUNs.

Unisphere Management Suite The Unisphere Management Suite extends Unisphere’s easy-to-use, interface to include VNX Monitoring and Reporting for validating performance and anticipating capacity requirements. As shown in Figure 5, the suite also includes Unisphere Remote for centrally managing up to thousands of VNXe and VNX systems with support for EMC XtremSW Cache.


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Figure 5.

Unisphere Management Suite

Virtualization management

VMware Virtual Storage Integrator VMware Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) is a no-charge vCenter plug-in available to all VMware users with EMC storage. VSPEX customers can use VSI to simplify management of virtualized storage. VMware administrators can gain visibility into their VNX storage using the same familiar vCenter interface to which they are accustomed. With VSI, IT administrators can do more work in less time. VSI offers unmatched access control that enables you to efficiently manage and delegate storage tasks with confidence. Perform daily management tasks with up 90 percent fewer clicks and up to 10 times higher productivity.

VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) offloads VMware storage-related functions from the server to the storage system, enabling more efficient use of server and network resources for increased performance and consolidation.

VMware vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness VMware vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) is a VMware-defined API that displays storage information through vCenter. Integration between VASA technology and VNX makes storage management in a virtualized environment a seamless experience.

EMC Storage Integrator EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) is targeted towards the Windows and Application administrator. ESI is easy to use, delivers end-to end monitoring, and is hypervisor agnostic. Administrators can provision in both virtual and physical environments for a Windows platform, and troubleshoot by viewing the topology of an application from the underlying hypervisor to the storage.

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EMC VNXe

The VNXe series is optimized for virtual applications delivering enterprise capabilities for file, block, and object storage in a scalable, easy-to-use solution. The VNXe series is purpose-built for the IT manager in smaller environments. VNXe features VNXe supports the following features: •

Next-generation unified storage, optimized for virtualized applications

•

Capacity optimization features including compression, deduplication, thin provisioning, and application-centric copies

•

High availability, designed to deliver five 9s availability

•

Multiprotocol support for file and block

•

Simplified management with EMC Unisphere for a single management interface for all NAS, SAN, and replication needs

VNXe software suites Table 11 lists the software suites that are available with VNXe. Table 11.

VNXe software suites

Suite

Features

Local Protection Suite

Increases productivity with snapshots of production data

Remote Protection Suite

Protects data against localized failures, outages, and disasters

Application Protection Suite

Automates application copies and proves compliance

Security and Compliance Suite

Keeps data safe from changes, deletions, and malicious activity

VNXe software packs available Table 12 lists the software packs that are available with VNXe. Table 12.

VNXe software packs

Pack

Features

VNXe3300 Total Protection Pack

Includes the Local, Remote, and Application Protection Suites

VNXe3150 Total Value Pack

Includes the Remote and Application Protection Suites, and the Security and Compliance Suite


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EMC backup and recovery solution

EMC backup and recovery solutions, Avamar and Data Domain, deliver the protection confidence needed to accelerate deployment of virtualized SharePoint. Optimized for virtualized application environments, EMC backup and recovery reduces backup times by 90 percent and increases recovery speeds by 30 times— even offers instant virtual machine access—for worry-free protection. EMC backup appliances add another layer of assurance with end-to-end verification and selfhealing for ensured recovery. For SharePoint, EMC backup delivers advanced capabilities like VSS-based farm-level backups and fast, granular recovery of individual files without having to restore the whole farm. In addition, features such as auto-discovery and auto-configuration reduce complexity and save time while ensuring that critical data is always protected. EMC backup and recovery solutions also deliver big savings. The integrated solutions with deduplication reduce backup storage by 10 to 30 times, backup management time by 81 percent, and bandwidth by 99 percent for efficient offsite replication, delivering a seven-month payback on average. For full technical guidance, refer to the EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX

for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide.

VMware vSphere 5.1

VMware vSphere 5.1 transforms a computer’s physical resources, by virtualizing the CPU, RAM, hard disk, and network controller. This transformation creates fully functional virtual machines that run isolated and encapsulated operating systems and applications just like physical computers. VMware vSphere High Availability The high-availability features of vSphere 5.1 such as vMotion and Storage vMotion enable seamless migration of virtual machines and stored files from one vSphere server to another with minimal or no performance impact. Coupled with vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Storage DRS, virtual machines have access to the appropriate resources at any point in time through load balancing of compute and storage resources. VMware Native Multipathing plug-in VMware Native Multipathing plug-in (NMP) is the default module in vSphere used for multipathing. It provides a default path selection algorithm based on the array type. NMP associates a set of physical paths with a specific storage device or LUN. The specific details for handling path failover for a given storage array are delegated to a Storage Array Type plug-In (SATP). The specific details for determining which physical path is used to issue an I/O request to a storage device are handled by a Path Selection plug-In (PSP). SATPs and PSPs are subsidiary plug-ins within the NMP module.

EMC XtremSW Cache

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If your customer has special performance requirements on SharePoint Server, consider using EMC XtremSW Cache (formerly known as EMC VFCache) as a solution. XtremSW Cache is intelligent caching software that uses server-based flash technology to reduce latency and accelerate throughput for dramatic application performance improvement. XtremSW Cache accelerates reads and protects data by



using a write-through cache to the networked storage to deliver persistent high availability, integrity, and disaster recovery. XtremSW Cache, coupled with arraybased EMC FAST software, creates the most efficient and intelligent I/O path from the application to the data store. The result is a networked infrastructure that is dynamically optimized for performance, intelligence, and protection for both physical and virtual environments. EMC PowerPath/VE EMC PowerPath/VE provides intelligent, high-performance path management with path failover and load balancing optimized for EMC and selected third-party storage systems. PowerPath/VE supports multiple paths between a vSphere host and an external storage device. Having multiple paths enables the vSphere host to access a storage device, even if a specific path is unavailable. Multiple paths can also share the I/O traffic to a storage device. PowerPath/VE is particularly beneficial in highly available environments because it can prevent operational interruptions and downtime. The PowerPath/VE path failover capability avoids host failure by maintaining uninterrupted application support on the host in the event of a path failure (if another path is available). PowerPath/VE works with VMware ESXi as a Multipath plug-in (MPP) that provides path management to hosts. It is installed as a kernel module on the vSphere host. It plugs in to the vSphere I/O stack framework to bring the advanced multipathing capabilities of PowerPath/VE including dynamic load balancing and automatic failover, to the vSphere hosts.


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Chapter 4: Solution Implementation

Chapter 4

Solution Implementation

This chapter presents the following topics: Overview ..................................................................................................................40 Physical setup..........................................................................................................40 Network implementation ..........................................................................................40 Storage implementation ..........................................................................................41 ESXi and vCenter implementation ............................................................................52 Multipathing implementation ..................................................................................54 SharePoint Server virtualization implementation.....................................................55 Application implementation .....................................................................................60 Backup and recovery implementation ......................................................................72


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Overview This chapter describes the steps required to deploy Microsoft SharePoint 2013 on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure enabled by VSphere and VNXe or VNX. Note: If you already have a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure environment, you can skip this chapter.

Physical setup Overview of physical setup

This section includes information about the preparation of the solution physical components. After you complete the steps listed in Table 13, the new hardware components will be racked, cabled, powered, and ready for network connection. Table 13.

Tasks for physical setup

Task

Description

Reference

Preparing network switches

Install switches in the rack and connect them to power.

Vendor installation guide

Preparing servers

Install the servers in the rack and connect them to power.

Vendor installation guide

Preparing VNXe or VNX

Install the VNXe or VNX in the rack and connect it to power.

• EMC VNX Unified

Installation Guide

• EMC VNXe Installation

Guide

For details of the physical setup, refer to the appropriate document in Essential reading.

Network implementation This section provides the requirements for network infrastructure needed to support this architecture. Table 14 provides a summary of the tasks for switch and network configuration and references for further information. Table 14.

Tasks for switch and network configuration

Task

Description

Reference

Configuring infrastructure network

Configure storage array and Windows host infrastructure networking as specified in the solution reference architecture.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides

Completing network cabling

Connect: • Switch interconnect ports • VNXe or VNX ports • ESXi server ports

40


Chapter 4: Solution Implementation Task

Description

Reference

Configuring VLAN

Configure private and public VLANs as required.

Vendor switch configuration guide

For details of network implementation, refer to the appropriate document in VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides.

Storage implementation Overview of storage implementation

This section describes how to configure the VNXe or VNX storage array. In this solution, the VNX provides iSCSI or Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) data storage for the VMware host. Table 15 provides a summary of the tasks for storage configuration, and references for further information. Table 15.

Tasks for storage configuration

Task

Description

Reference

Setting up initial VNXe or VNX configuration

Configure the IP address information and other key parameters on the VNXe or VNX.

• EMC VNXe System

Provisioning storage for NFS datastores

Create NFS file systems that will be presented to the ESXi servers as NFS datastores that host the virtual servers.

Provisioning storage for databases and search index files from iSCSI storage

Create and provision iSCSI LUNs for database and log from VNXe or VNX.

Installation Guide

• EMC VNX System

Installation Guide

• EMC VNX Series

Configuration Worksheet


41


Example architecture

Figure 6 shows the high-level architecture with SharePoint components and storage elements validated in a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for SharePoint 2013 on a vSphere virtualization platform.

Figure 6.

42

SharePoint storage elements on vSphere 5.1 platform

Setting up initial VNXe or VNX configuration

Ensure that network interfaces, IP address information, and other key parameters such as DNS and NTP are configured on the VNXe or VNX before storage provisioning.

Provisioning storage for iSCSI datastore

Before you provision the storage for the iSCSI datastore, follow the recommendations and VSPEX Sizing Tool proposals introduced in the Design Guide.

For more information on how to configure the VNXe or VNX platform, refer to the appropriate document in Essential reading.

Before you start, refer to VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides to configure iSCSI file system and provision storage for virtual machine operating system on VNXe or VNX.



Table 16 shows an example of additional storage layout for SharePoint data in VNX, additional to the VSPEX private cloud pool. For more information about the storage layout recommendations and design, refer to the Design Guide. Table 16.

Example of additional storage layout for virtual machine OS on VNX

Storage pool name

RAID type

Disk type

Disk capacity

Number of disks

SharePoint Content database pool

RAID 5 (4+1)


900 GB

10


RAID 10 (4+4)


900 GB

8

For more information about how to configure and provision VSPEX private cloud pool, refer to the following VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides:

Provisioning storage for application pool disks

•

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines

•

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines

Before you provision the storage for the iSCSI datastore, follow the recommendations and VSPEX Sizing Tool proposals introduced in the Design Guide. Before you start, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides to configure the NFS file system and provision storage for the virtual machine OS on VNXe or VNX. Provisioning iSCSI storage on VNXe Table 17 shows an example of a storage layout according to the user profile on VNX in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool. See the layout for this example in Example storage layouts. For more information about the storage layout recommendations and design, refer to the Design Guide. Table 17.

Example of storage layout for SharePoint data in VNXe3300

Storage pool name

RAID type

Disk type

Disk capacity

Number of disks

SharePoint Content databases pool

RAID 5 (4+1)


300 GB

15


RAID 10 (3+3)


600 GB

6

Configuring iSCSI servers on VNXe To configure iSCSI servers that are used to store the SharePoint databases, use these steps in Unisphere: 1.

Create a pool with the appropriate number of disks.

2.

Create an iSCSI server.


43


3.

Create a VMware storage resource.

4.

Create storage groups to unmask LUNs to the ESXi hosts.

For more detailed steps on iSCSI storage provisioning, refer to EMC VNXe3150 System Installation Guide or EMC VNXe3300 System Installation Guide. For detailed configuration information and steps to configure iSCSI servers on VNXe, refer to EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with VMware NFS or VMware VMFS. Provisioning iSCSI storage on VNX Table 18 shows an example of storage pools for SharePoint 2013 on VNX. See the layout for this example in Example storage layouts. For more information about the storage layout recommendations and design, refer to the Design Guide. Table 18.

Example of storage layout example on VNX

Storage pool name

RAID type

Disk type

Disk capacity

Number of disks


RAID 5 (4+1)


900 GB

10


RAID 10 (4+4)


900 GB

8

To configure iSCSI network settings, storage pools, iSCSI LUNs, and storage groups on the VNX array, use these steps in Unisphere:

44

1.

Select the VNX array that is to be used in this solution.

2.

Select Settings Network > Settings for Block.

3.

Configure the IP address for network ports used for iSCSI.

4.

Select Storage > Storage Configuration > Storage Pools.

5.

Click Pools, and then create the storage pools for SharePoint 2013.

6.

Right-click on a storage pool and click Create LUN to provision the LUNs in this pool.

7.

Select Thin in the LUN Properties area, then click Apply to create a pooled LUN. Thin LUN is created for storage groups by default.



Figure 7.

Create LUN

8.

Select Host > Storage Groups.

9.

Create storage groups to unmask LUNs to the ESXi hosts: a.

Click Create and type a name for the storage group.

b.

Click Yes to finish the creation.

c.

In the prompt dialog box, click Yes to select LUNs or connect hosts.

d.

Click LUNs. In Available LUNs, select all the LUNs created in the previous steps, and click Add.

e.

Click Hosts. In Available Hosts, select the ESXi servers to be used and add them into The Hosts to be Connected.


45


Provisioning storage for application pool disks with FAST VP In VNX, FAST VP enables the SharePoint content database data to move automatically between FAST VP SSDs and Near-line serial attached SCSI (NL-SAS) tiers with a slice granularity of 256 MB, which helps to reduce the response time and improve SharePoint request per second (RPS) with a lower cost. Table 19 shows an example of a storage layout with FAST VP. For more information about the storage layout recommendations and design, refer to the Design Guide. Table 19.

Example of storage layout on VNX with FAST VP enabled

Storage pool name

RAID type

Disk type

Disk capacity

Number of disks


RAID 6 (6+2)

NL-SAS 7,200 rpm

2 TB

8

RAID 10 (1+1)

Flash drives

100 GB

2

RAID 10 (4+4)


900 GB

8


To configure iSCSI network settings, storage pools, iSCSI LUNs, and storage groups on the VNX array, use these steps in Unisphere: 1.

In the Unisphere Service Manager, install FAST VP Enabler.

2.

Select the VNX array that is to be used in this solution.

3.

Select Settings > Network > Settings for Block.

4.

Configure the IP address for the network ports used for iSCSI.

5.

Select Storage > Storage Configuration > Storage Pools.

6.

Click Pools and create the additional storage pools in the VNX for SharePoint Content database and service applications. Refer to Table 21 for detailed information.

7.

Right-click a storage pool and select Create LUN to provision the LUNs in each of these pools.

8.

Right click the pool, select Properties. In Tiering, you can manually start auto tiering or run the scheduled timer job.

9.

Select Host > Storage Groups.

10. To create storage groups to unmask LUNs to the ESXi hosts:

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a.

Click Create and input a name for the storage group.

b.

Click Yes to finish the creation.

c.

In the prompt dialog box, click Yes to select LUNs or connect hosts.

d.

Click LUNs. Under Available LUNs, select all the LUNs created in the previous steps, and click Add.

e.

Click Hosts. Under Available Hosts, select the ESXi servers to be used and add them into The Hosts to be Connected.


Chapter 4: Solution Implementation Note: You can also use the ESI tool to provision the LUNs.

Example storage layouts

Example 1: Storage layout on VNXe Figure 8 shows the example storage layout for VNXe. This is an example only; the number of disks used in the VSPEX private cloud pool, SharePoint Content database pool, and SharePoint services pool may vary according to your customer’s requirements. For more information about the storage layout recommendations and design, refer to the Design Guide and VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides.

Figure 8.

Storage layout example: SharePoint farm for the VNXe series

At this stage in the deployment process, the storage configuration required for the solution is complete. For details about storage implementation, refer to the appropriate documents in VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides.


47


Example 2: Storage layout on VNX Figure 9 shows an example storage layout for VNX without FAST VP. This is an example only; the number of disks used in the VSPEX private cloud pool, SharePoint Content database pool and Services pool may vary according to your customer’s requirements.

Figure 9.

Example storage layout for VNX without FAST VP enabled

Example 3: Storage layout on VNX with FAST VP Figure 10 shows an example storage layout for VNX with FAST VP enabled. In this example, SSDs on FAST VP are in a RAID 10 group. This is an example only. SSDs can be in a different RAID configuration for FAST VP. This is an example only. The number of disks used in the VSPEX private cloud pool, SharePoint Content database pool and Services pool may vary according to the customer’s requirements. For more information about the storage layout recommendations and design, refer to the Design Guide and VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides.

48



Figure 10.

FAST VP configuration on Next-Generation VNX

Example storage layout for VNX with FAST VP enabled

FAST VP can increase efficiency of all disk drive resources and get better performance for a lower cost. By adding additional FAST VP SSDs as extreme performance tier into the SharePoint content database pool, FAST VP can automatically adapt to changes with business cycles. Enabling FAST VP is a transparent operation to SharePoint. No reconfiguration or downtime is necessary. To make the best use of either of the FAST technologies, EMC recommends that you first enable FAST VP on the SharePoint content database pool. For more details, refer to the Design Guide. To create and configure FAST VP: 1.

For detailed steps about how to create FAST VP, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document listed in VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides. Figure 11 shows an example of Create Storage Pool wizard.

2.

In the Create Storage Pool Wizard, select the number of disks for each tier you want to add to the storage pool.


49


Figure 11. Sample of Create Storage Pool wizard—FAST VP enabled

3.

Click OK to complete the configuration.

EMC recommends that all the LUNs in the pool have the same tiering policy and use the Start High and then Auto-Tier tiering policy for the SharePoint content database pool. For detailed steps about how to configure FAST VP at the LUN level, refer to VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides. FAST Cache configuration on Next-Generation VNX

Enabling FAST Cache is a transparent operation to SharePoint and no reconfiguration or downtime is necessary. To make the best use of either of the FAST technologies, EMC recommends that you first enable FAST Cache on the SharePoint Services storage pool. For more details, refer to the Design Guide. Note: Refer to VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides for detailed steps about how to create FAST Cache.

50



To create and configure FAST Cache, use these steps in Unisphere: 1.

After FAST Cache is installed, click Storage and select Storage Pool. Select SharePoint Services Pool, and then click Properties.

2.

Select Advanced in Storage Pool Properties and click Enabled to enable FAST Cache, as shown in Figure 12.

3.

Click OK to complete the configuration.

Note: The FAST Cache feature on the VNX series array does not cause an instant performance improvement. The system must collect data about access patterns and promote frequently used information into the cache. This process can take a few hours during which the performance of the array steadily improves.

Figure 12.

Storage pool properties: FAST Cache enabled


51


ESXi and vCenter implementation This section provides the requirements for the installation and configuration of the ESXi hosts, vCenter, and infrastructure servers required to support the architecture. Table 20 describes the tasks that must be completed. Table 20.

52

Steps for ESXi and vCenter installation and configuration

Task

Description

Reference

Installing ESXi

Install the ESXi 5.1 hypervisor on the physical servers that are being deployed for the solution.

vSphere Installation and Setup

Configuring ESXi networking

Configure ESXi networking including network interface card (NIC) trunking, vmkernel port, virtual machine port groups, and jumbo frames.

vSphere Networking

Installing PowerPath/VE

Installing multipathing software PowerPath/VE on ESXi hosts

Multipathing implementation

Configuring ESXi iSCSI adapters

Configure ESXi iSCSI adapters to connect iSCSI disks to ESXi hosts

vSphere Storage

Connecting VMware datastores

Connect the VMware datastore to the ESXi hosts deployed for the solution.

vSphere Storage

Creating a virtual machine for SQL Server

Create a virtual machine to host SQL Server that will be used for the vCenter Server database. Verify that the virtual server meets the hardware and software requirements.

Microsoft TechNet

Installing Windows on the virtual machine

Install Windows Server 2008 on the virtual machine that is created to host SQL Server.

Microsoft TechNet

Installing SQL Server

Install SQL Server on the virtual machine designated for that purpose.

Microsoft TechNet

Creating the vCenter host virtual machine

Create a virtual machine to be used for the vCenter Server.

vSphere Virtual Machine Administration

Installing vCenter guest OS

Install Windows Server 2008 on the vCenter host virtual machine.

Updating the virtual machine

Install VMware Tools, enable hardware acceleration, and enable remote console access.


vSphere Virtual Machine Administration


Description

Reference

Creating vCenter ODBC connections

Create the 64-bit vCenter and 32-bit vCenter Update Manager ODBC connections.

• vSphere Installation and

Setup

• Installing and Administering

VMware vSphere Update Manager

Installing vCenter Server

Install vCenter Server software.


Installing vCenter Update Manager

Install vCenter Update Manager software.

Installing and Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager

Creating a virtual data center

Create a virtual data center.

vCenter Server and Host Management

Applying vSphere license keys

Type the vSphere license keys in the vCenter licensing menu.


Adding ESXi hosts

Connect vCenter to ESXi hosts.

vCenter Server and Host Management

Configuring vSphere clustering

Create a vSphere cluster and move the ESXi hosts into it.

vSphere Resource Management

Performing array ESXi host discovery

Perform ESXi host discovery within the Unisphere console.

Using EMC VNX Storage with VMware vSphere TechBook

Enabling VMware High Availability, DRS, and vMotion functionality

Once you enable DRS, EMC recommends you use VMware vSphere DRS Affinity and Anti-Affinity rules for specific groups of virtual machines, for example, groups of web servers, which should never reside on the same host.

vSphere Availability

Installing the vCenter Update Manager plug-in

Install the vCenter Update Manager plugin on the administration console.

Installing and Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager

Deploying the VNX VAAI for NFS plug-in

Using VMware Update Manager, deploy the VNX VAAI for NFS plug-in to all ESXi hosts.

• EMC VNX VAAI NFS • vSphere Storage APIs for

Array Integration (VAAI) plug-in

• Installing and Administering

VMware vSphere Update Manager

Installing the EMC VNX UEM CLI

Install the VNX UEM command line interface (CLI) on the administration console.

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Unified Storage Management Product Guide

Installing the EMC VSI plug-in

Install the EMC VSI plug-in on the administration console.



53


For details of ESXi and vCenter installation and configuration for your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, refer to the appropriate documents in VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides.

Multipathing implementation Overview

PowerPath/VE software optimizes multipathing through load-balancing algorithms. Port load balancing equalizes the I/O workload across all available channels. EMC recommends installing PowerPath/VE on VMware ESXi hosts for load balancing, path management, and I/O path failure detection.

PowerPath configuration for iSCSI storage

To configure multiple paths in a VMware environment for iSCSI storage on VNXe or VNX, use these steps: 1.

Configure the vmkernel port for iSCSI. You can configure iSCSI multipathing for storage by enabling multiple NICs.

2.

Enable multiple storage processor ports on VNXe or VNX and configure the IP address to communicate with the ESXi hosts. Ensure vmkernel is enabled for iSCSI.

3.

Install PowerPath/VE on the ESXi servers and configure the license.

PowerPath/VE installation You can install PowerPath/VE by using remote vCLI, VMware Update Manager or Auto Deploy. Complete the following steps to install PowerPath/VE by using remote vCLI: 1.

Download the PowerPath/VE software distribution from EMC Online Support.

2.

Make the offline package available for use on the local vSphere host.

3.

Use the scp (secure copy) command to copy the PowerPath/VE ZIP offline package to the vSphere host. Alternatively, copy the PowerPath/VE ZIP offline package to the local vCenter datastore using vSphere client.

4.

On the remote host running vCLI, type the following commands to install the PowerPath/VE package: # esxcli -s software vib install -d

5.

Bring the vSphere host into Maintenance mode.

6.

Reboot the vSphere host onto which you are installing.

7.

Take the vSphere host out of Maintenance mode.

For PowerPath/VE installation and configuration for vSphere, refer to EMC

PowerPath/VE installation and Administration Guide.

For iSCSI multipathing configuration, refer to vSphere Storage ESXi 5.0, vCenter

Server 5.0.

54



SharePoint Server virtualization implementation This section provides the requirements for the installation and configuration of the SharePoint host virtual machine required to support the SharePoint 2013 Server farm. Table 21 describes the tasks that must be completed.

Overview

Table 21.

SharePoint host virtual machine installation and configuration

Task

Description

Reference

Creating SharePoint virtual machines

Create virtual machines to be used for the SharePoint 2013 server farm.

Creating a New Virtual Machine

Install or upgrade integration services. Installing a SharePoint guest OS

Install Windows Server 2012 on the SharePoint host virtual machine.

Assigning an IP address

• Assign the IP for all the networks in the virtual machine.

Install the guest operating system

• Make all the SharePoint servers join the domain. Creating a user account

Create a SharePoint administrative account in the domain.

Initial deployment administrative and service accounts in SharePoint 2013

Creating a Network Load Balancing (NLB) cluster

Create a software NLB cluster to balance the load between web servers. Hardware NLB is also supported. For the detailed configurations, contact your vendor.

Network Load Balancing Deployment Guide

Creating a virtual disk for SharePoint servers

Create a virtual disk to hold SharePoint databases and components on web servers, application servers (APPs), and SQL Server.

Creating SharePoint virtual machines

You must create a virtual machine on the ESXi host with the customer’s guest OS configuration by using storage space on the VSPEX private cloud pool for the infrastructure cluster-shared volume (CSV) that resides in the storage array. You can calculate the memory and processor requirements for the SharePoint virtual machine by using the VSPEX Sizing Tool and following the recommendations in the Design Guide. Table 22 shows an example of the memory and processor equivalent reference virtual machine requirements for different SharePoint roles used in this solution. The virtual machine OS volumes should be created on one of the Windows servers designated for infrastructure virtual machines, and should use the datastore designated for the shared infrastructure.


55

Chapter 4: Solution Implementation Table 22.

Example of SharePoint reference virtual machines

SharePoint Server role

Required resources Web server

Equivalent reference virtual machines Required resources

SQL Server

Application server (Query-type)

Application server (Crawlertype)

Equivalent reference virtual machines Required resources Equivalent reference virtual machines Required resources Equivalent reference virtual machines

vCPU

4

Memory

OS volume capacity

12 GB

100 GB

OS volume IOPS Less than 25

4

6

1

1

4

8 GB

100 GB

Less than 25

4

4

1

1

4

12 GB

100 GB

Less than 25

4

6

1

1

12

12 GB

100 GB

Less than 25

12

6

1

Number of virtual machines

Total reference virtual machines

2

12

1

4

1

6

1

12

1

Total equivalent reference virtual machines

34

Installing the SharePoint guest OS

You must install Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 Standard or Datacenter Edition on the SharePoint virtual machine by selecting the appropriate network and time and the latest update.

Assigning an IP address

You must assign an IP address for each of the network adapters in all the SharePoint virtual machines, according to what you have planned for the IP reservation for each server. You must join every server to the existing domain. For more information, refer to the Configuration Worksheet in Appendix A.

Creating a user account

56

To deploy SharePoint 2013 on a server farm, EMC recommends that you provide credentials for several different accounts. You can create these accounts in your domain. Table 23 describes the purpose of each account.


Chapter 4: Solution Implementation Table 23.

User accounts

Account

Purpose

SQL Server service account

The SQL Server service account is used to run SQL Server.

Setup user account

The setup user account is used for set up and the SharePoint configuration wizard.

Server farm account or database access account

The server farm account is used for the administration of the entire SharePoint 2013 farm.

Search service application account

The Windows user account that is used for the SharePoint Server Search service, Search Admin Web service application pool, Search Query, and Site Settings Web service application pool.

Default content access account

The identity that is used by the Search service application to access content when crawling.

For details about account permissions, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic

Initial deployment administrative and service accounts (SharePoint Server 2013). Creating an NLB cluster

NLB is useful for ensuring that stateless applications, such as a web server that is running IIS, are scalable by adding additional servers as the load increases. If you have more than two web servers in SharePoint, you can add two servers to the NLB cluster and assign a virtual IP address for the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) that is used as the URL for the SharePoint web application. Note: In this guide, the NLB described is the native Windows software NLB. While hardware load balancers are not described in this guide, they are supported once they are implemented using the vendors’ and SharePoint 2013's best practices.

For detailed configuration and implementation, contact your vendor. For more information, refer to Microsoft TechNet Library topic Network Load Balancing

Deployment Guide.

After you configure the NLB clusters, the DNS record must be configured with an address record (A record) for each SharePoint FQDN. Note: Address or A records (also known as host records) are the central records of DNS. These records link a domain to an IP address.

You can calculate the virtual disk layouts along with back-end VMDX topologies by Creating virtual using the VSPEX Sizing Tool and following the recommendations in the Design Guide. disks for SharePoint servers In this VSPEX solution, Table 24 details an example of the storage layout for VMDK and virtual disks for VNXe.


57

Chapter 4: Solution Implementation Table 24. SharePoint server role

VMDK and virtual disk storage layout for VNXe

Volume name

Volume size

VMDK file path

In virtual machine mount point

ContentDB

1.5 TB

C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1

C:\sps\ContentDB

Services

450 GB


C:\sps\Services

Application server

Crawler

60 GB


E:\

Application server

Query

120 GB


F:\

Web server

Query

120 GB


E:\

SQL Server

Storage pool SharePoint Content databases pool


Table 25 details an example of the storage layout for VMDK and virtual disks for VNX. Table 25.

58

VMDK and virtual disk storage layout for VNX

SharePoint server role

Volume name

Volume size

VMDK location

In virtual machine mount point

iSCSI datastore

SQL Server

ContentDB2000

2.5 TB

\ContentDB\SQL\SQL.vmdk

E:\CDB2000\

ContentDB DS

ContentDB1000

1.2 TB

\ContentDB\SQL\SQL_1.vmdk

E:\CDB1000\

ContentDB500

600 GB


E:\CDB500\

ContentDB300

360 GB


E:\CDB300\

ContentDB200

240 GB


E:\CDB200\

ContentDBLog

800 GB

\ContentDBLog\SQL\SQL.vmdk

E:\CDBLog\

ContentDB log DS

Log of Services databases

100 GB

\ServicesLog\SQL\SQL.vmdk

E:\ServLog\

ServiceLog DS

Data for Search databases

300 GB

\ServicesData\SQL\SQL_1.vmdk

E:\SrchDB\

ServiceData DS

Data of Config, Admin and Misc Components

200 GB

\ServicesData\SQL\SQL.vmdk

E:\Conf\

Application server

Index partition 0

400 GB

\ServicesData\APP3\IndexPart.vmd k

E:\

Application server

Index partition 0 Mirror

400 GB

\ServicesData\APP4\IndexPart.vmd k

E:\


ServicesData DS


Adding a virtual disk To add a virtual disk, use the following steps: 1.

In vSphere vCenter, right-click the SharePoint virtual machine and select Edit Settings.

2.

Click Add, select Add Hardware, and then select Hard Disk.

3.

Select Create a new virtual disk and specify Disk Size and Location. as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13.

4.

Creating a new virtual disk

In the virtual machine, these disks appear as normal block SCSI devices. Format it with 64 KB allocation unit size, as shown in Figure 14.


59


Figure 14. Formatting disk

5.

Click OK.

Application implementation This section includes information about how to implement the SharePoint application into a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. After you complete the tasks in Table 26, the new SharePoint 2013 farm is ready to for validation and testing.

Overview

Before you implement SharePoint 2013, to plan your SharePoint farm based on your business needs, you must read the Design Guide. Table 26.

Tasks for implementing a SharePoint 2013 farm

Task

Description

Installing Microsoft SharePoint 2013 farm

Install Microsoft SharePoint 2013 farm.

Reference • Books Online for SQL

Server 2012

• Move System Databases

60

Configuring Microsoft SharePoint 2013 farm

Create a new SharePoint 2013 farm and add other servers into this farm.

Install SharePoint 2013 across multiple servers for a three-tier farm

Creating and configuring Search Service Application

Create a SharePoint search application.

Create and configure a Search service application in SharePoint Server 2013

Creating web application

Create a web application.

Create a web application in SharePoint 2013

Implementing a SharePoint Publishing Portal

Create a portal for publishing usage in SharePoint 2013 farm.

Create a site collection in SharePoint 2013

Implementing a SharePoint Document Management Portal

Create a portal for document management use.




Description

Reference

Provisioning SharePoint services

Provision enterprise services in the SharePoint 2013 farm.

Manage service applications in SharePoint 2013

Deploying customizations

Deploy the customer’s customizations, including webparts, workflow, forms, and solutions for the SharePoint 2013 farm.

Vendor deployment guide

Starting full crawl

Edit the content sources and run a full crawl for SharePoint.

Manage crawling in SharePoint Server 2013

Creating search center and configure incremental crawl

Create a search center under the root site collection and configure an incremental crawl schedule.

Create a Search Center site in SharePoint Server 2013

Configuring user profile synchronization service and My Sites

Create and configure the user profile synchronization service and My Sites to manage user information.

Synchronize user and group profiles in SharePoint Server 2013

Installing Microsoft SharePoint 2013 farm

Before you install SharePoint 2013, ensure that you have created the required accounts by using appropriate permissions. For more information, refer to Creating a user account. EMC recommends that you install SQL Server on the SQL Server virtual machine first before installing any SharePoint hosts. Installing SQL Server 2012 on the virtual machine Use the SQL Server installation media to install SQL Server on the virtual machine. The Microsoft TechNet website provides information about how to install SQL Server. After the installation, consider the following suggested configuration for SQL Server 2012: •

Change the default location to SharePoint services volume for the database and log. Select the properties of the SQL Server instance and change the default location for both database and log.

•

Follow best practices to configure tempdb. In this solution, we separated the tempdb data and log files in the SharePoint miscellaneous volume to improve performance. For detailed steps about how to change the SQL Server tempdb location, refer to the MSDN Library topic Move System Databases. For more information about the design considerations of SQL Server tempdb, refer to the Design Guide and the MSDN Library topic Optimizing tempdb Performance.

•

Set the max degree of parallelism server configuration option to 1. For detailed steps about how to configure the maximum degree of parallelism, refer to Microsoft TechNet topic Configure the max degree of parallelism Server Configuration Option.

•

Install the latest update for SQL Server 2012. EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 with VMware vSphere Enabled by EMC Next-Generation VNX and EMC Backup Implementation Guide

61


•

Ensure that the TCP/IP protocol is enabled for the network configuration of SQL Server.

•

Change the Content databases to Full Recovery Mode and other SharePoint related content databases to Simple Recovery Mode. For detailed steps, refer to the Design Guide and the MSDN Library topic View or Change the Recovery Model of a Database (SQL Server).

•

Set the SharePoint database autogrowth values as a percentage instead of a fixed number of megabytes. In this solution, we set the autogrowth of the SharePoint databases to 10 percent. You can change the autogrowth setting by using SQL Server Management Studio. For more information, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Database Properties (Files Page).

Installing Microsoft SharePoint 2013, service pack, and cumulative update Before you install SharePoint 2013, you need to install the software prerequisites. EMC recommends that you first install the SharePoint application servers, then the web servers. 1.

To install and configure all the required components or features for SharePoint, double click prerequisiteinstaller.exe, as shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15. Installing software prerequisites

62

2.

After the prerequisites are installed, click setup.exe to continue the SharePoint installation. The installation wizard installs binaries, configures security permissions, and edits registry settings for SharePoint 2013.

3.

When you are prompted to select the Server Type, select Complete to install all SharePoint components as shown in Figure 16.



Figure 16. Setting server type in the SharePoint installation wizard

4.

If the server is going to be the search server, EMC recommends that you specify another location to store the search index files. For more information, refer to the Design Guide.

Figure 17. Specifying index file location

5.

After the binary has been installed, you will be asked to run the configuration wizard to finalize the installation. Do not run this for now.


63


Instead, you first need to apply the update for any available service pack or the latest cumulative update. Repeat the same steps on the other servers. After you have installed the software on these components, you can move on to the next step to create a new farm. On the application server that hosts the Central Administration website, follow these Creating a new steps to create a new SharePoint 2013 farm: SharePoint 2013 farm and add 1. Start the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard to create a new server servers to the farm farm as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18. Creating a new server farm

2.

Provide all the necessary information such as database server, database name, and the database access account and its credentials, as shown in the example in Figure 19. These user names and passwords are unique to each customer deployment. For security reasons, do not use a standardized set of user names and passwords.

64



Figure 19. Configuring the database settings

3.

Create a passphrase to secure the farm configuration data as shown in Figure 20. This passphrase is required for each server that joins the farm.


65


Figure 20. Entering a security passphrase

After all settings are confirmed, SharePoint provisions a new farm and Central Administration website on the application server. After you create the farm on the application server, you can add the servers for the web tier by following the same process described earlier for installing SharePoint Server on the server that hosts Central Administration. 1.

For each of the remaining SharePoint servers, run the wizard.

2.

Select Connect to a new server farm to connect the newly created SharePoint farm.

For more detailed information, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Add web or

application servers to farms in SharePoint 2013. Creating a Search Service Application

The search Service Application enables the end user to manage the Search Service. Some general steps include: •

Create accounts for Search Service Application.

•

Create a Search Service Application.

For the full step-by-step guide, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Create and

configure a Search service application in SharePoint Server 2013. 66



Configuring search In this section, we mainly focus on search topology implementation. Before implementing search topology, EMC recommends that you follow the topology recommendations and best practices in the Design Guide and the VSPEX Sizing Tool. Figure 21 shows an example of a small search topology on this solution.

Figure 21. Example of small search topology

In this small farm solution, EMC recommends that you put the Query Processing and Index Partition roles in one application server, and put the other four search component roles (Admin, Crawler, Content Processing, and Analytics Processing) in the other application server. In this solution, there is only one crawler component. If customers want to optimize performance for crawl, they need to add more crawlers to the farm. Figure 22 shows an example of a medium search topology on this solution. In this medium search topology example, all the search components have been mirrored for high availability and performance considerations.

Figure 22. Example of medium search topology

In this solution, we applied the following best practices to configure the search topology for better performance and fault tolerance: •

For a medium to large SharePoint farm with intensive search function, we duplicated all the search components for fault tolerance and better EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 with VMware vSphere Enabled by EMC Next-Generation VNX and EMC Backup Implementation Guide

67


performance. To optimize your crawl performance, consider adding more application servers to host the crawler component. For more information on how to scale topology for performance, refer to the Scaling Considerations section of the technical diagrams in Enterprise search architectures for SharePoint Server 2013. •

Put all crawl and query components to the VNXe or VNX SharePoint services volume, which is a RAID 10 storage pool. The details are shown in Table 27.

Table 27.

Example of search components file locations

Component name Query Processing Index Partition 0

Server role

Volume

Application server 1

e:/index

Application server 2

e:/index

Crawler Content Processing Analytics Processing Admin

•

Put all the search-related databases to the VNXe or VNX SharePoint services volume, which is in a RAID 10 storage pool, because the search databases can be write-intensive.

For more information about how to configure search topology, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Manage search components in SharePoint Server 2013. Changing the search databases file location and index file location EMC recommends that you change the following two search-related locations for better performance. For more information, refer to the Design Guide:

68

•

Index temp location resides in the SharePoint application servers, which host the crawler component. This is where all the crawl items are temporarily downloaded and stored during crawl. The default location is in the C drive and EMC recommends changing the index temp location to a volume in SharePoint service pool, which is RAID 10, by specifying the path during the binary installation of the SharePoint. For more information, refer to Installing Microsoft SharePoint 2013, service pack, and cumulative update.

•

To change the search index file location, use PowerShell. For more information, refer to Sample code for changing index location in Appendix B.



Configuring a web application

A web application is composed of an IIS site with a unique application pool. You can create one or more web applications to meet your business requirements. In this solution, we had only one web application, configured as in the example detailed in Table 28. Table 28.

Example of configuring web application

Description

Configuration

Authentication

Classic Mode

IIS website name

SharePoint—Portal

Port

80

Public URL

http://portal

Application pool name

SharePoint—80

EMC recommends that you use a dedicated web application with similar data characteristics. If the content databases host sites have similar data characteristics, SQL Server database software operates more efficiently. Implementing a SharePoint publishing Portal

A SharePoint Publishing Portal is a large intranet portal. The site includes a home page, a sample press releases site, a search center, and a login page. For details, refer to Planning and sizing SharePoint 2013. If you already have the production content databases from a previous production farm, you can directly attach the content databases to the web application created previously as detailed in Configuring a web application. At the same time, it also enables you to create more content databases for the same web applications. For details about how to attach a content database, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Attach or detach content databases in SharePoint 2013. Creating a site collection for a SharePoint Publishing Portal To create a site collection for the SharePoint Publishing Portal, use these steps: 1.

In the Central Administration website, select Application Management and then select Create site collections.

2.

Select the host web application, enter the name and URL.

3.

In Template, select Publishing, and then select Publishing Portal.

4.

Enter the end user account for the site collection administrator.

Once the root site collection has been created, you can create more subsites for different business functions.


69


Implementing a SharePoint Document Management Portal

The SharePoint Document Management Portal is mainly designed for document management activities. For details, refer to Planning and sizing SharePoint 2013. If you already have the production content databases from a previous production farm, you can directly attach the content databases to the web application created in Configuring a web application. You can also create more content databases for the same web applications. For details about how to attach a content database, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Attach or detach content databases in SharePoint 2013. Creating a site collection for a SharePoint Document Management Portal To create a site collection for the document management pool: 1.

In the Central Administration website, select Application Management and then select Create site collection.

2.

Select the host web application and enter the name and URL.

3.

In Template, select Enterprise, and then select Document Center.

4.

Provide the end-user account for the site collection administrator.

Once the root site collection has been created, you can create more subsites for different business functions. Provisioning SharePoint services

SharePoint 2013 provides enterprise-scale services to meet business-critical needs such as Excel services, user profiles services, and so on. To provision and configure additional SharePoint services based on business requirements, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library.

Customization

Since SharePoint is a platform that can be highly customized, customers can apply workflow, webparts, or any other third-party customizations to meet their business needs for a portal. You can work with vendors to deploy customer’s solutions on a SharePoint 2013 farm.

Running a full crawl

To enable the search functionality in SharePoint, you must start at least one full crawl in the SharePoint 2013 farm. You must create at least one content source before a crawl can occur. SharePoint 2013 enables you to crawl and search different types of content sources, such as file shares, websites, Exchange public folders, and so on. For instructions about how to configure the content sources, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Manage crawling in SharePoint Server 2013. Starting a full crawl To start a full crawl:

70

1.

In the Central Administration website, select Manage service applications, then select the search service application that you just created.

2.

At Search Administration, in Quick Launch under Crawling, select Content Sources.



3.

At Manage Content Sources, in the list of content sources, point to the name of the content source that you want, select the arrow that appears, then click Start Full Crawl.

4.

The value in the Status column changes to Crawling Full for the selected content source. The value in the Status column does not automatically change when the crawl is complete.

To update the Status column, click Refresh. Table 29 shows the completion of the full crawl. Table 29.

Creating a search center site and scheduling an incremental crawl

Full crawl results

Successes

Warnings

Errors

Duration

10,895,541

1,139

11

32:50:54

After the full crawl is complete, you must create a search center site in SharePoint. A search center provides an interface for users to submit search queries. It is a richer interface than the search box that appears by default on each SharePoint site. For more information about how to create a search center in SharePoint, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Create a Search Center site in SharePoint Server 2013. An incremental crawl will crawl the specified content in the content source that was recently changed, updated, or deleted in the SharePoint content. EMC recommends that you run an incremental crawl regularly to ensure up-to-date search functionality. Scheduling an incremental crawl EMC recommends that you run an incremental crawl at least every two hours daily. To schedule your incremental crawl:

Configuring MySites

1.

In the Central Administration website, select Manage service applications, then select the search service application that you just created.

2.

At Search Administration, in Quick Launch under Crawling, select Content Sources.

3.

At Manage Content Sources, in the list of content sources, point to the name of the content source that you want, select the arrow that appears, then click Edit.

4.

Under Crawl Schedule, click Create Schedule, and manage the schedule for the incremental crawl.

Features such as MySites provide a rich, personalized experience for users in an organization, based on the user profile synchronization service. This means that if you want to use MySites in your SharePoint 2013 farm, you must deploy a user profile synchronization service. For the detailed steps to create MySites and user profile synchronization service, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Synchronize user and group profiles in SharePoint Server 2013. EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 with VMware vSphere Enabled by EMC Next-Generation VNX and EMC Backup Implementation Guide

71


In the VSPEX Sizing Tool, we designed a number of questions to collect MySites requirements from customers, as shown in Table 30. Table 30.

Questions related to My Sites in the VSPEX Sizing Tool

Question

Answer

Do you use or intend to use the MySites function?

Yes or No


By default, the MySites quota is set to 100 MB. EMC recommends that you configure the storage limit for this quota based on your business requirements, which are collected in the qualification worksheet for the VSPEX Sizing Tool in the Design Guide. For details about how to update site collection quotas, refer to the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Create, edit, and delete quota templates in SharePoint 2013.

Backup and recovery implementation All VSPEX solutions are sized and tested with EMC backup and recovery products, including Avamar and Data Domain. If your solution includes backup and recovery components, refer to EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide for detailed information on implementing your backup and recovery solution.

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Chapter 5: Solution Verification

Chapter 5

Solution Verification

This chapter presents the following topics: Baseline infrastructure verification ..........................................................................74 SharePoint Publishing Portal verification ................................................................77 SharePoint Document Management Portal verification ............................................82 Backup and recovery verification .............................................................................87


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Baseline infrastructure verification Overview

This section provides a list of items that you need to review after configuring the solution. The goal of this section is to verify the configuration and functionality of specific aspects of the solution, and to ensure that the configuration supports core availability requirements. Table 31 describes the tasks that you should complete when verifying the VSPEX installation. Table 31.

Tasks for verifying the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure installation

Task

Description

Verifying ESXi functionality

Verify the basic ESXi functionality of the solution with a postinstallation checklist.

Verifying redundancy of the solution components

Reference

• Using EMC VNX storage

with VMware vSphere

Verify the redundancy of the solution components:

• VMware.com

• Storage

• Vendor documentation

• ESXi host • Network switch Verifying the SharePoint 2013 farm configuration in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

Verify the SharePoint 2013 farm configuration.

Monitoring the health of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SharePoint

Use the tools as detailed in Table 36 to monitor the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure’s health

Microsoft TechNet

• Using EMC VNX storage

with VMware vSphere

• View diagnostic logs in

SharePoint 2013

• View timer job status in

SharePoint 2013

• EMC Unisphere Unified

Storage Management Solution

• VNX Monitoring and

Reporting 1.0 User Guide

Verifying ESXi functionality

EMC recommends that you verify the ESXi configurations before deploying to production on each ESXi server. For more detailed information, refer to appropriate documents in VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides.

Verifying solution components redundancy

74

To ensure that the various components of the solution maintain availability requirements, it is important to test specific scenarios related to maintenance or hardware failure. EMC recommends that you verify redundancy of the solution components including storage, ESXi hosts, and network switches.



For detailed steps, refer to the appropriate documents in VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides. Verifying SharePoint farm configuration

Monitoring the solution’s health

To ensure the SharePoint 2013 farm is running smoothly in the VSPEX infrastructure, use these steps to verify and monitor the SharePoint configuration: 1.

Shut down the web servers one at a time, then browse the SharePoint site with the FQDN URL, and ensure these websites can be accessed.

2.

Monitor the crawl log regularly to ensure the crawl is completed.

3.

Verify that you can get the search results by submitting search queries to the search center.

Health monitoring is a simple measurement that reflects the reliability, stability, and performance of the entire VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SharePoint. Table 32 lists some tools for monitoring and troubleshooting your VSPEX solution. Table 32.

Tools to monitor the VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint solution

Tools

Description

esxtop

The esxtop tool provides a realtime view (updated every five seconds, by default) of ESXi hypervisor performance metrics, such as CPU. It is important that you understand the performance for hypervisor in order to measure or troubleshoot the SharePoint performance-related issues.

Unisphere Analyzer

Unisphere Analyzer software is preloaded on all VNX storage systems with the FLARE/block bundles (or later). It is easy to monitor, collect, and analyze all aspects of storage related data from it.

SharePoint Health Analyzer

You can use this built-in feature to analyze and resolve problems in these areas: security, performance, configuration, and availability. Health Analyzer rules are predefined and run at scheduled intervals, such as hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly. If an error is detected, the corresponding rule is triggered. Each rule has a brief explanation about why the error occurs and provides you with a link to a detailed article that contains step-by-step guidance to resolve the problem. When you take actions by following the advice, you can re-run the rule to verify the resolution. If the error does not appear in the list, the problem is resolved.

Event Viewer

Event Viewer is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in. It lets you browse and manage event logs, which is handy for troubleshooting problems. You can filter for specific events across multiple logs, and reuse useful event filters as custom views.


75

Chapter 5: Solution Verification Tools

Description

Unified Logging System (ULS) logs

If there are any error messages in the event log, you can use ULS logging in SharePoint to troubleshoot and identify the error. The ULS log collects data at varying levels depending on the log settings. You can use Windows PowerShell to filter the data, display it in various ways, and output the data to a data grid with which you can filter, sort, group, and export data to Microsoft Excel 2010. For detailed steps, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic View

diagnostic logs in SharePoint 2013. Timer job status

A timer job runs a specific Windows service for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013. The timer job contains a definition of the service to run and specifies how frequently the service is started. The Windows SharePoint Services Timer v4 service (SPTimerV4) runs timer jobs. Many features in SharePoint Server 2013 rely on timer jobs to run services according to a schedule. You can view the status of running timer jobs through the Central Administration website.

Microsoft Windows performance counters

By using Windows performance counters, you can analyze bottlenecks in areas such as CPU utilization, memory, disk I/O, and network I/O. For more information on performance counters and thresholds in the SharePoint 2013 farm, refer to the TechNet Library topic View

diagnostic logs in SharePoint 2013 VNXe or VNX Unisphere management interface

You can use the VNXe or VNX Unisphere management interface dashboard to monitor and determine VNXe or VNX system health, including: capacity utilization statistics, CPU usage statistics, storage resource health, health of hardware component, system alerts, and log files. For detailed instructions, refer to EMC Unisphere: Unified Storage

Management Solution.

VNX Monitoring and Reporting is a software solution that extends Unisphere element manager capabilities by providing unified performance and capacity trending information for VNX storage systems. This solution automatically collects block and file storage statistics along with configuration data and stores them in a database that can be viewed through dashboards and reports. For more information, refer to VNX Monitoring and Reporting 1.0 User Guide.

EMC recommends that you use the test tools to verify the performance for the entire SharePoint environment. For details about performance verification and test methodology, refer to the Design Guide.

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SharePoint Publishing Portal verification Overview of SharePoint Publishing Portal verification

This section provides a verification example of a SharePoint Publishing Portal in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SharePoint solution. The purpose is to measure the performance of SharePoint Document Management Portal to ensure that the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure meets your business requirements. Before you start to verify your own VSPEX Proven Solution, EMC recommends that you read the Design Guide to understand the test methodology better. In this example, we verified that our SharePoint Publishing Portal could support the user profile by using the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, as shown in Table 33. Table 33.

SharePoint Publishing Portal evaluation example

Question

Example answer

How many SharePoint 2013 farms do you plan to host in your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure?

1


1

Farm 1

Key metrics

Annual growth rate (%)?

20


No


4,000

Number of users?

10,000


42


Publishing Portal


No

What is the percentage of total users who will create MySites?

N/A


N/A

Do you heavily rely on SharePoint search function?

Yes

Do you intend to use FAST VP?

No

After you identify the business requirements, you need to know which SharePoint testing key metrics to capture and what thresholds must be met for each metric when running the SharePoint verification tests.


77


To identify the key metrics, as shown in Table 34, refer to the VSPEX Sizing Tool in the Design Guide. Table 34.

Example of key metrics in a medium SharePoint 2013 farm

Metrics

Thresholds

Requests per second/Passes tests per second

More than 70

Browse operation

Less than 3 seconds

Modify operation

Less than 3 seconds

Search operation

Less than 3 seconds

Operational states

• SQL Server vCPU utilization: Less than 50% • Web server vCPU utilization: Less than 70% • Failure rate: less than 0.01%

Load test configuration

In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure solution, we used Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) in conjunction with code to simulate real-world SharePoint user activity. For sample code for SharePoint performance testing, refer to Sample code for SharePoint performance testing in Appendix B. Performing SharePoint 2013 farm verification with the associated tool (VSTS, Bulk Loader) is a complex activity and is not absolutely necessary for every deployment. EMC recommends a verification test when you have the custom code for the SharePoint 2013 farm. Contact Microsoft support if you need assistance to run any of these tasks. Table 35 lists the major steps for testing SharePoint with the associated tools. Table 35.

SharePoint stress test steps and tools

Steps

Description

Reference

1

Create dedicated virtual machines for VSTS, controllers, and agents. EMC recommends that you create at least one agent per web server.

ESXi and vCenter implementation

2

Install VSTS 2010, test controller, and test agents to run tests remotely or distribute automated tests to multiple machines.

Installing and Configuring Visual Studio Agents and Test and Build Controllers

3

Configure the test controller and test agent.

Managing Test Controllers and Test Agents

4

Set up the test controller in conjunction with SharePoint performance testing code.

Setting Up Test Machines to Run Tests or Collect Data For sample code for SharePoint performance testing, refer to Appendix B.

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Chapter 5: Solution Verification Steps

Description

Reference

5

Populate or copy the data from the old production environment to demonstrate a real-world environment.

For a sample tool to populate the SharePoint data, refer to Appendix B.

6

Specify counter sets in the load test wizard. You can add different performance counters to help you identify potential bottlenecks of the SharePoint environment.

Monitoring and maintaining SharePoint Server 2013

7

Edit the test mix in the test wizard to meet the mixed workload for the Document Management Portal.

Creating Load Tests Using the New Load Test Wizard

8

Run tests with a goal-based load pattern to determine the passed tests per second that SharePoint can support in the Green Zone. In this test, you want to see how many pass tests per second can be supported when the vCPU on the web server is approximately 65 percent busy.

Running Load and Web Performance Tests

9

Used the load test analyzer to measure the performance after the load test. Use the Passed Tests Per Second value as the key metric to verify if the current SharePoint meets your business requirement.

Load Test Analyzer Overview

For detailed information, see the MSDN Library topic Running Load and Web Performance Tests. In this Publishing Portal verification test, we used the following combination in conjunction with custom code to meet the mixed workload demands, as shown in Table 36. For detailed information about the sample code for SharePoint performance test, refer to Appendix B. Table 36.

Test results

Mixed workload combination: Publishing Portal

Mixed workload

Scenario

Percentage in the mix

Publishing Portal for collaboration

Browse

80%

(The operation mainly focuses on page browse)

Modify

10%

Search

10%

After you get the test results, you need to interpret your results based on the key metrics. Since the metrics can vary with different kinds of SharePoint 2013 farm topology and VSPEX offerings for VMware, refer to the VSPEX Sizing Tool in the Design Guide for the detailed metrics. In the example, shown in Table 37, you can see that all the key metrics have been achieved, which means that the current SharePoint environment can meet the business requirements.


79

Chapter 5: Solution Verification Table 37.

Key metrics for SharePoint Publishing Portal with four web servers

Metrics

Thresholds

Requests per second/Passed tests per second

More than 70

Browse operation

Less than 3 seconds

Modify operation

Less than 3 seconds

Search operation

Less than 3 seconds

Operational states

SQL Server vCPU Utilization: Less than 50% Web server vCPU Utilization: Less than 70% Failure rate: Less than 0.01%

The performance test verified the maximum passed tests per second on the production SharePoint 2013 farm. This test was run for eight hours. The test shows that the maximum passed tests per second was 75, which was higher than 70 requests per second. Refer to Table 38 for details of the test results. Table 38.

Detailed performance results

Test scenario


Average user response time (in each second) Browse

Search

Modify

Publishing Portal

82.6

0.20

1.11

0.92

(Green Zone)

Table 39 shows the server resources utilization in the Green Zone state. Table 39.

Detailed server resources utilization

Server name

80

Average vCPU process time (%)

Web server 1

67.9

28.8

Web server 2

66.4

20.8

Web server 3

63.9

23.4

Web server 4

68.5

35.5

Web server 5

45.0

31.5

Application server 1 (Crawl)

0.99

52.5


0.22

39.9

Application server 3 (Query)

53.9

84.4


53.7

82.9

SQL Server

44.6

63.0


Average memory usage (%)


Figure 23 shows the IOPS to the content database iSCSI datastore during the VSTS load test. The average IOPS was 1,161. The peak IOPS reached 3,481, which was caused by the incremental crawl.

IOPS - Publishing Portal (Green Zone) 4000 3500 3000

IOPS

2500 2000 IOPS

1500 1000 500

Figure 23.

3:42:22

3:38:23

3:34:23

3:30:23

3:26:22

3:22:23

3:18:23

3:14:22

3:10:23

3:05:23

3:01:22

2:57:23

2:53:23

2:49:22

2:45:23

2:41:23

2:37:23

2:33:23

0

IOPS to content database: Publishing Portal

SharePoint dataset In this VSPEX verification test, the average file size was 435 KB. These files are unique and spread evenly across the site collections. Table 40 lists the average file size of different types in the content database. Table 40.

Average database document size: Publishing Portal

File type

Size (KB)

DOC

21.5

DOCX

400.4

XLSX

435.4

XLS

11.78

PPTX

478.8

JPG

12.3

GIF

1.87

Note: This is an example dataset only. EMC recommends that you use data from an existing production farm and restore it to the VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint environment. If you run tests against invented or sample data that is different from your real content, you run the risk of skewed test results.


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SharePoint Document Management Portal verification Overview of SharePoint Publishing Portal verification

This section provides a verification example of a SharePoint Document Management Portal in this solution. The purpose is to measure the performance of the SharePoint Document Management Portal to ensure that the solution meets your business requirements. Before you start to verify your own solution, read the Design Guide to better understand the test methodology. In this example, we verified that our SharePoint Document Management Portal could support the user profiles shown in Table 41. Table 41.

SharePoint Document Management Portal evaluation

Question

Example answer

How many SharePoint 2013 farms do you plan to have in your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure?

1


1

Farm 1

Key metrics

Annual growth rate (%)?

10


No


4,000

Number of users?

5,000


60




No

What is the percentage of total users who will create MySites?

N/A


N/A

Do you heavily rely on SharePoint search function?

Yes

Do you intend to use FAST VP?

Yes

After you identify the business requirements, you need to know the SharePoint testing key metrics to capture and what thresholds must be met for each metric when you run the SharePoint verification tests. To identify the key metrics, as shown in Table 42, refer to the Design Guide and the VSPEX Sizing Tool.

82



Example of key metrics in a medium SharePoint 2013 farm

Metrics

Thresholds

Requests per second/Passed tests per second

Greater than 50

Browse operation

Less than 3 seconds

Modify operation

Less than 3 seconds

Search operation

Less than 3 seconds

Upload operation

Less than 3 seconds

Operational states

• SQL Server vCPU utilization: Less than 50% • Web server vCPU utilization: Less than 70% • Failure rate: Less than 0.01%

Load test configuration

In this VSPEX solution, we used Microsoft VSTS in conjunction with the custom code to simulate realworld SharePoint user activity. For sample code of SharePoint performance testing, refer to Sample code for SharePoint performance testing in Appendix B. Performing SharePoint 2013 farm verification with the associated tool (VSTS, Bulk Loader) is a complex activity and is not absolutely necessary for every deployment. EMC recommends that you perform a verification test when you have the custom code for a SharePoint 2013 farm. Contact Microsoft support if you need help to do any of these tasks. Table 43.

SharePoint stress test steps and tools

Steps

Description

Reference

1

Create dedicated virtual machines for VSTS, controllers, and agents. EMC recommends that you create at least one agent per web server.

ESXi and vCenter implementation

2

Install VSTS 2010, test controller, and test agents to run tests remotely or distribute automated tests to multiple machines.


3

Configure the test controller and test agent.


4

Set up the test controller in conjunction with SharePoint performance testing code.

Setting Up Test Machines to Run Tests or Collect Data For sample code of SharePoint performance testing, refer to Appendix B.

5

Populate or copy the data from an old production environment to demonstrate a realworld environment

For a sample tool to populate SharePoint data, refer to Appendix B.


83

Chapter 5: Solution Verification Steps

Description

Reference

6

Specify counter sets in the load test wizard. You can add different performance counters to help identify potential bottlenecks of the SharePoint environment.


7

Edit the test mix in the test wizard to meet the mixed workload for the Document Management Portal.


8

Run tests with a goal-based load pattern to determine the passed tests per second that SharePoint can support in the Green Zone. In this test, you want to see how many passed tests per second can be supported when the vCPU on the web server is approximately 65 percent busy.


9

Used the load test analyzer to measure the performance after the load test. Use the Passed Tests Per Second value as the key metric to verify if the current SharePoint meets your business requirements.


For detailed information, see the Microsoft TechNet Library topic Running Load and Web Performance Tests. In this Document Management Portal verification test, we used the following combination in conjunction with the custom code to meet the mixed workload, as shown in Table 44. Table 44.

Test results

Mixed workload combination: Document Management Portal

Mixed workload

Scenario

Percentage in the mix

Document management repository (Document activities are 30%)

Browse

50

Upload

10

Modify

20

Search

20

After you get the test results, you need to interpret your results based on the key metrics. Since the metrics can vary with different kinds of SharePoint 2013 farm topologies and VSPEX offerings for VMware, refer to the VSPEX Sizing Tool in the Design Guide for the detailed metrics. In this example, you can see that all the key metrics has been achieved, which means that the current SharePoint environment can meet the business requirements. Table 45 shows the sample test results for the SharePoint Document Management Portal with four web servers.

84



Example of test results for SharePoint Document Management Portal

Metrics

Thresholds


Greater than 50

Browse operation

Less than 3 seconds

Modify operation

Less than 3 seconds

Search operation

Less than 3 seconds

Upload operation

Less than 3 seconds

Operational states

• SQL Server vCPU utilization: Less than 50% • Web server vCPU utilization: Less than 70% • Failure rate: Less than 0.01%

The performance test verified the maximum passed tests per second on the production SharePoint 2013 farm. This test was run for eight hours. The test shows that the maximum number of tests passed per second was 53.8, which was higher than 50. The test validated that the SharePoint 2013 farm could support 5,000 users with 60 percent peak user capacity successfully. Refer to Table 46 for details of the test results. Table 46.

Detailed performance tests results

Test scenario Document Management Portal

Average user response time (in each second)


Browse

Upload

Search

Modify

53.8

0.24

1.55

2.12

1.24

(Green Zone)

Table 47 shows the server resources utilization in the Green Zone state. Table 47.

Detailed server resources utilization

Server name



Web server 1

66.7

31.2

Web server 2

68.5

22.8

Web server 3

62.2

25.3

Web server 4

60.8

31.9

Web server 5

54.9

22.5


4.6

71.4


4.06

69


73

79.1


76.4

82.7


85

Chapter 5: Solution Verification Server name



31.4

98

SQL Server

Figure 24 shows the total IOPS to the content database iSCSI datastore during the VSTS load test. The average number of IOPS was 1,345. The peak IOPS reached 3,303, which was generated by the incremental crawl.

IOPS - Document Management Portal (Green Zone) 3500 3000

IOPS

2500 2000 1500

IOPS

1000 500 2:44:23 2:53:23 3:02:23 3:12:23 3:21:22 3:30:23 3:39:22 3:48:23 3:57:22 4:06:23 4:15:22 4:24:23 4:33:22 4:43:22 4:52:23 5:01:22 5:10:23 5:19:22 5:28:23 5:37:22

0

Figure 24. IOPS to content database: Document Management Portal

SharePoint dataset In this VSPEX test validation, the average file size is 435 KB, as shown in Table 48. These files are unique and spread evenly across the site collections. When uploading the document to the SharePoint site, the average file size is 10 KB. Table 48.

Average database document size: Document Management Portal

File type

Size (KB)

DOC

21.5

DOCX

400.4

XLSX

435.4

XLS

11.78

PPTX

478.8

JPG

12.3

GIF

1.87

Note: Table 48 contains a sample dataset. EMC recommends that you use data from an existing production farm and restore it to the VSPEX for virtualized SharePoint environment. If you run tests against invented or sample data that is different from your real content, you run the risk of skewed test results.

86



Backup and recovery verification All VSPEX solutions are sized and tested with EMC backup and recovery products, including Avamar and Data Domain. If your solution includes backup and recovery components, refer to EMC Backup and Recovery Options for VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Design and Implementation Guide for detailed information on implementing your backup and recovery solution.


87


88


Chapter 6: Reference Documentation

Chapter 6

Reference Documentation

This chapter presents the following topics: EMC documentation .................................................................................................90 Other documentation ...............................................................................................91 Links ........................................................................................................................91


89


EMC documentation The following documents, available on EMC Online Support or EMC.com websites, provide additional and relevant information. If you do not have access to a document, contact your EMC representative:

90

•

EMC VNX Installation Guide

•

EMC VNX3150 System Installation Guide

•

EMC VNXe Series Installation Worksheet

•

EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with NFS Shared Folders

•

EMC VNX File and Unified Worksheet

•

EMC Unisphere System Getting Started Guide

•


•

EMC FAST VP for Unified Storage Systems

•

EMC PowerPath/VE installation and Administration Guide

•

EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with VMware NFS or VMware VMFS

•


•

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Storage Viewer Product Guide

•


•

EMC VNX Host Connectivity Guide for VMware ESX Server

•

EMC VNX Operating Environment for File Release Notes Version

•

EMC Unisphere: Unified Storage Management Solution

•

EMC VNX Monitoring and Reporting 1.0 User Guide

•


•

VSPEX with EMC Backup and Recovery for Private Cloud and End User Computing solutions Design and Implementation Guide



Other documentation For documentation on VMware and Microsoft SharePoint, refer to the VMware website and the Microsoft website.

Links Microsoft TechNet

Refer to the following topics on the Microsoft TechNet website: •

Add web or application servers to farms in SharePoint 2013

•

Manage search components in SharePoint Server 2013

•

Manage the index component in SharePoint Server 2013

•

Change the default search topology in SharePoint Server 2013

•

Attach or detach content databases in SharePoint 2013

•

Capacity management and sizing for SharePoint Server 2013

•

Configure the max degree of parallelism Server Configuration Option

•


•

Create a Search Center site in SharePoint Server 2013

•


•

Create a web application in SharePoint 2013

•


•

Create, edit, and delete quota templates in SharePoint 2013

•

Manage databases in SharePoint 2013

•

Database Properties (Files Page)

•

Administer search in SharePoint Server 2013

•

Initial deployment administrative and service accounts in SharePoint 2013

•

Install the guest operating system

•

Manage crawling in SharePoint 2013

•


•

Install SharePoint 2013 across multiple servers for a three-tier farm

•

Network Load Balancing Deployment Guide

•

View diagnostic logs in SharePoint 2013

•

View timer job status in SharePoint 2013


91


MSDN Library

Refer to the following topics in the MSDN Library: •

Books Online for SQL Server 2012

•

Bulk Loader-Create Unique Documents based on Wikipedia Dump File

•


•

Database Properties (Files Page)

•


•

Load Bulk Content to SharePoint 2010

•


•


•

Move System Databases

•

Optimizing tempdb Performance

•


•

Setting Up Test Machines to Run Tests or Collect Data

•

SharePoint Performance Testing

•


Note: The links provided were working correctly at the time of publication.

92


Appendix A: Configuration Worksheet

Appendix A

Configuration Worksheet

This appendix presents the following topic: Configuration worksheet for virtualized SharePoint Server ......................................94


93

Appendix A: Configuration Worksheet

Configuration worksheet for virtualized SharePoint Server Before you start the configuration, gather some customer-specific network and host configuration information for SharePoint. The following tables provide information on assembling the required network and host address, numbering, and naming information. This worksheet can also be used as a “leave behind” document for future reference. To confirm customer information, cross-reference with the EMC VNX Installation

Assistant for File/Unified Worksheet or EMC VNXe Series Installation Worksheet.

Table 49.

Common server information

Server name

Purpose Domain Controller DNS Primary DNS Secondary DHCP NTP SMTP SNMP vCenter Server Web server 01 Web server 02 Web server 03 Web server 04 Web server 05 Application server 01 Application server 02 Application server 03 Application server 04 SQL Server

94


Primary IP

Appendix A: Configuration Worksheet Table 50.

ESXi server information

Server name

Purpose

Primary IP

Private net (storage) addresses

ESXi Host 1 ESXi Host 2 … Table 51.

Array information

Array name Root password NAS admin password CS0 Primary hostname CS1 Secondary hostname (if applicable) CS0 Primary IP address CS1 Secondary IP address (if applicable) SPA IP address SPB IP address Virtual machine infrastructure pool name Virtual machine infrastructure NFS datastore name Content databases storage pool name Content databases datastore name SharePoint services pool name SharePoint services datastore name SharePoint My Site pool name SharePoint My Site datastore name


95

Appendix A: Configuration Worksheet Table 52. Name

Network infrastructure information Purpose

Subnet mask

IP

Default gateway

Ethernet Switch 1 Ethernet Switch 2 … Table 53. Name

VLAN information Network purpose

VLAN ID

Allowed subnets

Virtual Machine Networking Management NFS networking vMotion Table 54. Account

Service accounts Purpose

Password (optional, secure appropriately)

Windows Server administrator Array administrator SharePoint Server farm account SQL Server administrator Table 55. URL

SharePoint URL configuration Purpose SharePoint web application URL1 SharePoint web application URL2 …

96


Cluster IP address

Appendix B: Tools and Scripts

Appendix B

Tools and Scripts

This appendix presents the following topic: Sample tool to create large number of random documents ......................................98 Sample tool to load documents into SharePoint ......................................................98 Sample code for SharePoint performance testing ....................................................98 Sample code for changing index location.................................................................98


97

Appendix B: Tools and Scripts

Sample tool to create large number of random documents In this VSPEX solution, we used the Bulk Loader tool to create unique documents. This command-line tool, written using the Microsoft .NET 4.0 Framework, creates documents based on a Wikipedia dump file. The utility enables you to create up to 10 million unique Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and HTML files of various sizes so you can load different content types of different sizes directly into the SharePoint 2013 document libraries. Bulk Loader uses a dump file of Wikipedia content as input to allow the creation of up to 10 million unique documents to a disk location. For more information about the Bulk Loader tool, refer to the MSDN Library topic Bulk Loader - Create Unique Documents based on Wikipedia Dump File.

Sample tool to load documents into SharePoint In this solution, we used a LoadBulk2SP tool to load documents into the SharePoint Server. The tool was written using C# and the Microsoft .NET 3.5 Framework to be compatible with SharePoint Server. This tool takes the Bulk Loader tool disk output files as input for loading directly into the SharePoint Server, mimicking the same folder and file structure, and using targeted web applications and document libraries specified in the application configuration. For more information on the LoadBulk2SP tool, see the MSDN Library topic Load Bulk Content to SharePoint 2010. This tool also works for SharePoint 2013.

Sample code for SharePoint performance testing In this solution, we used Visual Studio 2010, which provides load and stress testing for search, document download, and view pages scenarios. Refer to the sample code and customize it in your VSPEX solution to verify the SharePoint 2013 performance. For more information, refer to the MSDN Library topic SharePoint Performance Testing.

Sample code for changing index location #Get Service Application and Service Instance, to prepare parameters for below. $ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication $IndexHost = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -Identity "APP1-SPS2013" #Get active topology. You might have more than one topologies, filter might be a good idea. $currentActiveTopo = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology SearchApplication $ssa | Where-Object {$_.State -eq "Active"} #Clone the topology. $clone = New-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -Clone -SearchApplication $ssa -SearchTopology $currentActiveTopo

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Appendix B: Tools and Scripts #Remove the old index component from the topology. $components = $clone.GetComponents() $components_OriginalIndex = $components | Where-Object {$_.Name eq "IndexComponent1"} Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchComponent -SearchTopology $clone Identity $components_OriginalIndex.ComponentId.ToString() #Create a new index component to replace the old one. New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent -SearchTopology $clone IndexPartition 0 -SearchServiceInstance $IndexHost -RootDirectory C:\Index\IndexFolder #Activate the new search topology Set-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -Identity $clone #Verify that the new search topology is active Get-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -SearchApplication $ssa #Verify that all components of the new search topology are running correctly Get-SPEnterpriseSearchStatus -SearchApplication $ssa -Text


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