Virtualizing Your SharePoint Farm Architecture

1. OSP310 Virtualizing Your SharePoint Farm Architecture Damir Bersinic Senior Platform Advisor Microsoft Canada Inc. damirb@microsoft.com Twitter: @DamirB

2. Agenda • Virtualization Considerations • Which SharePoint Role Should I Virtualize? • SharePoint Virtualization Examples • Virtualization Performance Best Practices • High Availability Considerations • Key Takeaways

3. Why virtualize? • Understand why organizations are moving to virtual server infrastructure • Credit crunch –reduce hardware, power consumption and cooling costs • Reduce environmental impact • Increase server utilization • Improved development and testing life cycle

4. Why virtualize? • Consolidate / Dedicate servers • Reduce number of physical servers • Make it easier to provision more dedicated specialty servers (i.e. Separate SharePoint roles onto multiple dedicated virtual servers instead of one ‘all-in-one’ server • Dedicated servers tend to have less issues as they run ‘without surprises’ that can be caused by bundling services

5. Virtualization Software • Use hypervisor-based virtualization software • Understand the difference between physical versus virtual resources • CPU • Memory • Network • Disk

6. Virtualization Software • Understand the physical and virtual hardware boundaries of your virtualization vendor technology

7. Hyper-V Virtualization Advantages • Better Flexibility • Live Migration. Moves running VMs between compatible physical hosts for performance, hardware maintenance, operating system maintenance, and power optimization without any disruption or perceived loss of service using a memory-to-memory operation using processors from the same manufacturer and family. • Hot add and removal of storage. Supports the addition or removal of VHDs or pass-through disks connected to the VMs virtual SCSI controllers while a VM is running. • Processor compatibility mode for Live Migration. Enables Live Migration across different CPU versions within the same manufacturer and processor family.

8. Greater Scalability Scalability to 64 logical processors. Hyper-V scales up to 64 logical processors on the physical system and up to four virtual processors for each VM. Server core parking. Places processor cores into a park/sleep mode when not in use. This enables the processor to consume less power without affecting system performance. Increased Performance Second Level Address Translation (SLAT). The Hyper-V SLAT feature takes advantage of this advanced processor technology to further improve VM performance and to reduce the non productive processing overhead on the hypervisor. Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) support. Enables physical computer network interface cards (NICs) to use direct memory access (DMA) for VM memory, increasing I/O performance. Hyper-V Virtualization Advantages

9. Dynamic Memory • Hot add and remove of memory As a virtual machine needs memory – its needs are evaluated against the needs of other virtual machines in the system, and it is given memory accordingly. • DM does not overcommit resource • DM treats memory like how we treat processor • Dynamically schedulable resource

10. Best Practices • Use x64 host for greater CPU and memory availability • Use latest operating system for guest OS • Management tools make the difference • Understand support and ensure software is certified via Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) • Understand licensing (Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter)… Applies to all virtualization software!

11. Which SharePoint Role Should I Virtualize?

12. What is a SharePoint Farm? What is a SharePoint® Farm? A collection of one or more SharePoint Servers and SQL Servers® providing a set of basic SharePoint services bound together by a single configuration database in SQL Server • Key Components: • Web Front End (WFE) Servers: • WSS / SharePoint Foundation • Web Application Service • Application Servers: • Search Server • Excel Services • PerformancePoint Services • Access Services • Visio Services • SQL Server

13. Role Virtualization Considerations

14. SharePoint Farm – Web Role • Responsible for rendering of content • Low amount of disk activity • Multiple web role servers are common for redundancy and scalability • Best Practices • Be sure to keep all components, applications, and patch levels the same • Network Load Balancing (NLB) • Hardware -> Offload NLB to dedicated resources • Software -> CPU and Network usage on WFE • For minimum availability split your load balanced virtual web servers over two physical hosts RAM CPU DISK NETWORK

15. SharePoint Farm – Query Role • Process search queries • Requires propagated copy of the index • 10%- 30% of total size of documents indexed • Best Practice • Large Indexes – Prefer dedicated physical LUN on SAN over dynamic expanding virtual hard disk • Don’t put your query and index servers on the same underlying physical disk • Combine or split Web/Query role? • It depends on your environment. • Web and Query performance requirements RAM CPU DISK NETWORK

16. SharePoint Farm – Index Role • Memory, CPU, Disk I/O and network intensive • Best Practices • Give most amount of RAM out of front ends • Potentially keep as physical machine in larger environments • Use Index server to be dedicated crawl server. Avoids hop. • Use fixed-size VHDs or physical LUN on iSCSI SAN for best performance RAM CPU DISK NETWORK

17. SharePoint Farm – Other roles • Excel Services, PerformancePoint Services, Access Services, Visio Services, etc. are good candidates for virtualization • Additional servers can simply be added into the farm • No additional hardware investment required RAM CPU DISK NETWORK

18. SharePoint Farm – Database role • SQL Server 2005/ 2008 virtualization fully supported • Memory, CPU, Disk I/O and network intensive • Assess first using Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (www.microsoft.com/map). • SQL Alias flexibility • Argument for Physical: • SQL Server is already a consolidation layer • Disk I/O activity • Performance, performance, performance! • Longer response times impacts ALL downstream roles in a SharePoint farm RAM CPU DISK NETWORK

19. SharePoint Farm – Database role • If you decide to virtualize database layer: • Assign as much RAM and CPU as possible • Offload the Disk I/O from the virtual machines • Use fixed-size VHDs or physical LUN on an iSCSI SAN • SQL Clustering: When virtualizing, consider making use of Guest Clustering in Hyper-V • SQL Database Mirroring: Fully supported in SharePoint 2010 in physical or virtual database role environments RAM CPU DISK NETWORK

20. Performance Best Practices

21. CPU Best Practices PHYSICAL • Performance is governed by processor efficiency, power draw and heat output • Faster versus efficient processor – hidden power consumption cost • Beware of built in processor software such as performance throttle for thermal thresholds • Prefer higher number of processors and multi core • Prefer PCI Express to limit bus contention & CPU utilization VIRTUAL • Configure a 1-to-1 mapping of virtual CPU to physical CPU for best performance • Be aware of the virtual processor limit for different guest operating systems and plan accordingly • Beware of “CPU bound” issues, the ability of processors to process information for virtual devices will determine the maximum throughput of such a virtual device. Example:  Virtual NICS

22. Memory Best Practices PHYSICAL • Ensure there is sufficient memory installed on the physical computer that hosts the Hyper-V virtual machines • Factor in Hypervisor memory overhead over and above standard virtual machine memory requirements. • Use SLAT-based hardware for lowest memory management overhead VIRTUAL • Configure the correct amount of memory for guests. (memory configuration is hardware specific). • NUMA Memory Considerations (see next slide) • Watch out for page file / swap file. Disk is always slower than RAM. Ensure enough memory is allocated to each virtual machine. • If using VMware, avoid over committing memory as it may cause virtual machine to swap to disk which is slower than RAM. • In Hyper-V consider whether or not to use Dynamic Memory

23. NUMA Memory Limitations • Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) Boundaries exist at the hardware level. • Virtual guests that are allocated more memory than exist within a single NUMA memory boundary have significantly impacted performance • Example: • NUMA boundaries vary by processor and motherboard vendor, but good rule of thumb to calculate boundaries is to divide the amount of memory in the system by the total number of cores. • i.e. Dual Quad-core host (2x4 cores = 8 cores) with 64GB of RAM on the host would mean NUMA boundary is 64/8 or 8GB. • In this example, allocating more than 8GB for a single guest session would result in performance drops.

24. What NUMA Means to SharePoint • Keeping NUMA boundaries in mind, this means that you will get significantly better performance provisioning two SharePoint front-ends with half the amount of RAM as a single front-end with twice as much RAM. • This applies to any virtualization platform, as the limitation is hardware specific!

25. Disk Best Practices PHYSICAL • Ensure you are using the fastest SAN infrastructure: Attempt to provide each virtual machine with its own IO channel to shared storage using dual or quad ported HBAs and Gigabit Ethernet adapters. • Use iSCSI SANs for if considering guest clustering • Ensure your disk infrastructure is as fast as it can be. (RAID 10; 15000 RPM) – Slow disk causes CPU contention as Disk I/O takes longer to return data. • Put virtual hard disks on different physical disks than the hard disk that the host operating system uses VIRTUAL • Prefer SCSI controller to IDE controller. • Prefer fixed size to dynamically expanding  (more info here) • Prefer direct iSCSI SAN access for disk-bound roles • Beware of underlying disk read write contention between different virtual machines to their virtual hard disks • Ensure SAN is configured and optimized for virtual disk storage. Understand that a number of LUNs can be provisioned on the same underlying physical disks

26. Network Best Practices PHYSICAL • Use Gigabit Ethernet adaptors and Gigabit switches • Increasing network capacity – Add a number of NICs to host. VIRTUAL • Ensure that integration components (“enlightenments”) are installed on the virtual machine • Use the Network Adapter instead of the Legacy Network Adapter when configuring networking for a virtual machine • Prefer synthetic to emulated drivers as they are more efficient, use a dedicated VMBus to communicate to the Virtual NIC and result in lower CPU and network latency. • Use virtual switches and VLAN tagging for security and performance improvement and create and internal network between virtual machines in your SharePoint farm. Associate SharePoint VMs to the same virtual switch.

27. High-Availability Considerations

28. Failover Clustering + Hyper-V • To increase the availability of VM’s and the applications they host: • Hardware health detection • Host operating system health detection • Virtual machine health detection • Application/service health detection • Automatic recovery • VM mobility Clustering keeps you from putting all your VM eggs in 1 basket

29. High Availability & Clustering • Consolidation Increases the importance of High Availability Features • Consolidation serves to increase cost for a single system failure • Increasing focus on planned outages vs. unplanned outages Guest Cluster Guest Cluster 2 1 Live Migration 1 2 1 2 Shared Storage iSCSI Host cluster Redundant Paths to storage Shared Storage iSCSI, SAS, Fibre Guest Clustering Live Migration & Host Clustering

30. SQL Server HA/DR & SharePoint • SQL Server High Availability • Database Mirroring • Supported in SharePoint 2010 • Not an option if using FILESTREAM • Clustering (Host or Guest) • Disaster Recovery • Easy to setup virtual DR farm! • Data : Log Shipping or SQL Mirroring • Use management tools to setup a disaster recovery farm • System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008R2

31. Server deployment best practices • Use SQL Alias for greater flexibility • Use index as your dedicated crawl server • No query propagation result in fewer disk requirements • Network, network, network • Database maintenance

32. Key Takeaways

33. SharePoint Virtualization Best Practices

34. Really Important Stuff… • Understand the impact of your virtualization vendor feature set! • Don’t let governance slip in your virtualized SharePoint environment • Snapshots are not supported • Beware of over subscribing host servers • Do not exceed physical server RAM by more than 15% if using Hyper-V’s dynamic memory • Host is a single point of failure

35. Even More Important Stuff.. • Don’t fight SharePoint, you’ll lose!  • Virtualization allows you to cut costs, consolidate equipment, and take greatest advantage of hardware resources. • Understand your hardware and use the correct processor architecture and operating system • Plan for availability • Continually measure and optimize configuration to achieve optimal performance of your SharePoint farm • Consider Office365 / SharePoint Online

36. Office 365 / SharePoint Online Features • Based on SharePoint 2010 • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee • Customizable through rich programming model • Office Web Apps integrated with SharePoint Online • Includes a public-facing site

37. Session Resources • TechNet: Virtualization for SharePoint Server 2010 • Download: Planning Guide for Server Farms & Environments for SharePoint Server 2010 • SharePoint 2007 & Virtualization • Video: Running SharePoint Virtually • Microsoft ‘Virtualizing SharePoint Infrastructure’ Whitepaper • Microsoft ‘Virtualizing SQL Server’ Whitepaper • SQL Server 2008 Virtualization Web Page • Books: • SharePoint 2007 Unleashed • SharePoint 2010 Unleashed • Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed • Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V: Insider’s Guide • Licensing Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments • SharePoint 2010 Advanced IT Pro Training

38. Required Slide Speakers, please list the Breakout Sessions, Interactive Discussions, Labs, Demo Stations and Certification Exam that relate to your session. Also indicate when they can find you staffing in the TLC. Related Content • BOF18-ITP Advanced Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 • OSP210 | Microsoft SharePoint Online Overview • OSP305 | Developing Collaboration Solutions in the Cloud with Microsoft SharePoint Online • OSP314 | Architecting Microsoft Office for Physical, Virtual and Cloud Deployments • VIR201 | Virtualization: State of the Union • VIR317 | Understanding How Microsoft Virtualization Compares to VMWare • VIR376-INT | Virtualization and Cloud Scenarios: The Technology Serving the Customer’s Goals • VIR304 | Failover Clustering and Hyper-V: Planning Your Highly-Available Virtualization Environment • VIR321 | Virtualizing Microsoft SharePoint Server with Hyper-V

40. Resources • Connect. Share. Discuss. http://northamerica.msteched.com Learning • Sessions On-Demand & Community • Microsoft Certification & Training Resources www.microsoft.com/teched www.microsoft.com/learning • Resources for IT Professionals • Resources for Developers • http://microsoft.com/technet • http://microsoft.com/msdn

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