VBLOCK SOLUTION FOR MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT IN ENTERPRISE DISTRIBUTED LOCATIONS

Transcription

1 VBLOCK SOLUTION FOR MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT IN ENTERPRISE DISTRIBUTED LOCATIONS Version 2.0 February VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

2 Copyright 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. VCE 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." VCE MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2

3 Contents Introduction... 5 Business case... 5 Solution overview... 5 Scope... 6 Audience... 6 Feedback... 6 Technology overview... 7 Vblock Systems... 7 Vblock System Vblock System Vblock System Vblock System VMware virtualization applications VMware vsphere VMware vcenter Server VMware vsphere HA VMware vmotion Microsoft application and database servers Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Server Microsoft SQL Server Architecture overview Topology Physical layout Logical layout Hardware and software components Design considerations Sizing and scaling Planning Future growth Virtual CPUs SharePoint server farm High availability VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 3

4 Deployments Search performance Disk throughput for content databases SQL Server memory Solution validation Test environment Test objectives Test design Response times Performance Test results and analysis Key findings Response time Performance Conclusion Next steps VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 4

5 Introduction Business case Converged information technology (IT) infrastructures are rapidly transforming the way organizations manage IT assets, including how they manage distributed locations. CIOs now have to balance traditional technical roles with strategic business planning to ensure that investments in time, resources, and money show maximum returns in employee productivity. Organizations renew the infrastructure underlying their business-critical applications every three to four years, and separately deploying and managing these resources across the enterprise has been complex, time-consuming, and costly. Furthermore, organizations need to shorten the time it takes to validate and improve the ongoing operation and maintenance of applications that uniquely address the needs of distributed enterprise locations. In particular, SharePoint 2010 is a popular application for sharing information, managing documents, and publishing reports to facilitate management, collaboration, and communication at distributed sites. Distributed SharePoint environments can be hard to manage, difficult to protect, and costly to maintain due to lack of standardization and onsite IT expertise, as well as limited space and IT budget. To provide performance, capacity, and availability for SharePoint, IT departments often struggle with sizing and designs, face user complaints and escalations, and suffer from a lack of resources and expertise. As a result, some SharePoint services are not fully optimized to serve user needs, although they continue to incur the risk and cost of initial installation and ongoing operation. Organizations need a more flexible, standardized solution to maximize business responsiveness and ensure IT efficiency in distributed environments. Solution overview VCE technology and expertise ensure that the Vblock Solution for SharePoint in Distributed Enterprise Locations operates at maximum efficiency while being both manageable and sustainable. Vblock Systems provide the virtualization and simplified management technology necessary to address these challenges and allow organizations to minimize capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX). Vblock Systems are end-to-end IT solutions that provide leading compute, storage, and virtualization technologies, with seamless support at all stages of adoption configuration, installation, management, and maintenance. The Vblock Solution for SharePoint in Distributed Locations describes, validates, and offers best practices for the rapid deployment and sustained high-availability operation of a virtualized SharePoint 2010 deployment on a Vblock System 100 DX. The Vblock System 100 offers a robust architecture highly suited for distributed locations, and which is pre-integrated, pre-tested, and pre-validated for easy deployment and operation. By standardizing converged IT infrastructures for distributed deployments and pre-validating solutions like SharePoint 2010, the Vblock Solution for SharePoint in Distributed Locations allows organizations to gain faster time-to-value and greater operational efficiency by leveraging a standardized architecture and skillset across organization sites VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 5

6 The Vblock Solution for SharePoint in Distributed Locations describes and validates: Virtualization and unified management technologies for easily installing, configuring and managing a distributed SharePoint deployment on a Vblock System 100 High performance at the 5,000-user band, with browse operations 48 percent faster than Microsoft s acceptable user response time, search 28 percent faster, and modify 94 percent faster Sustained operation and high-availability components VCE and Microsoft best practices for cost-effective sizing and scalability Scope This solution architecture describes, validates, and offers best practices for deploying SharePoint 2010 on a Vblock System 100 in distributed environments. This solution architecture does not address low-level configuration, tuning, or maintenance. Audience This solution architecture is intended for application and service architects, IT managers, and engineers considering an integrated, virtualized infrastructure for deploying SharePoint content and collaboration applications and services in distributed enterprise locations. Feedback To suggest documentation changes and provide feedback on this paper, send to docfeedback@vce.com. Include the name of this paper, the name of the topic to which your comment applies, and your feedback VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 6

7 Technology overview This section summarizes technologies used in the solution. Vblock Systems The Vblock System from VCE is the world's most advanced converged infrastructure one that optimizes infrastructure, lowers costs, secures the environment, simplifies management, speeds deployment, and promotes innovation. The Vblock System is designed as one architecture that spans the entire portfolio, includes best-in-class components, offers a single point of contact from initiation through support, and provides the industry's most robust range of configurations. Vblock System 720 The Vblock System 720 is an enterprise, service provider class mission-critical system in the Vblock System 700 family, for the most demanding IT environments supporting enterprise workloads and SLAs that run thousands of virtual machines and virtual desktops. It is architecturally designed to be modular, providing flexibility and choice of configurations based on demanding workloads. These workloads include business-critical enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and database, messaging, and collaboration services. The Vblock System 720 leverages the industry s best director-class fabric switch, the most advanced fabric based blade server, and the most trusted storage platform. The Vblock System 720 delivers greater configuration choices, 2X performance and scale from prior generations, flexible storage options, denser compute, five 9s of availability, and converged network and support for a new virtualization platform that accelerates time to service and reduces operations costs. Vblock System 320 The Vblock System 320 is an enterprise and service provider ready system in the Vblock System 300 family, designed to address a wide spectrum of virtual machines, users, and applications. It is ideally suited to achieve the scale required in both private and public cloud environments. The Vblock System 320 has been engineered for greater scalability and performance to support large enterprise deployments of mission-critical applications, cloud services, VDI, mixed workloads and application development and testing. The Vblock System 320 delivers greater configuration choices, 2X performance and scale from prior generations, flexible storage options, denser compute, five 9s of availability, and converged network and support for a new virtualization platform that accelerates time to service and reduces operations costs. Every Vblock System 320 is available with the marketleading EMC VNX storage arrays VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 7

8 Vblock System 200 The Vblock System 200 is right-sized to meet the capacity, workload, and space requirements of midsized data centers and distributed locations. By leveraging the Vblock System 200, companies experience the repeatability, architecture standardization, implementation flexibility, and business results synonymous with Vblock Systems. With pre-defined, variable configurations, the Vblock System 200 balances real workload requirements with fastest time to value, reducing risk and complexity. The Vblock System 200 is designed to: Bring the power and benefits of the Vblock System family into a value-focused solution Deliver core IT services (file/print and domain) for midsized data centers and distributed locations Provide development/test and co-location data center support Efficiently handle mixed workload requirements for midsized data centers Offer business applications with data segregation requirements (such as ediscovery and earchive) with predictable performance and operational characteristics Vblock System 100 The Vblock System 100 is right-sized to meet the capacity, workload, and space requirements of midsized data centers and distributed locations. By leveraging the Vblock System 100, companies experience the repeatability, architecture standardization, and business results synonymous with Vblock Systems. With pre-defined fixed configurations, the Vblock System 100 is designed to: Bring the power and benefits of the Vblock System family into a value-focused solution Deliver core IT services (file/print and domain) for midsized data centers and distributed locations in industries such as healthcare and advanced manufacturing Offer dedicated local instance business application support including VDI, SharePoint, and Exchange Provide predictable performance and optional characteristics For more information, go to VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 8

9 Scalability One of the unique advantages of deploying SharePoint on Vblock Systems is its flexibility to scale up or down in response to your business needs. Vblock Systems allow you to add or upgrade Cisco Unified Computing System 200 servers or EMC storage components as your SharePoint requirements change, including the number of users, types of contents and files, and additional collaborative features. Efficient distributed enterprise deployments The Vblock System 100 is an ideal converged infrastructure platform for enterprises to drive standardized architectures and related skillsets and achieve faster time-to-value while reducing operational risk and cost to support distributed locations. The Vblock System 100 is an entry-level Vblock System designed to meet enterprise needs for distributed locations. Customers can deploy large numbers of distributed sites near end users to provide computing resources locally, thereby reducing latency and bandwidth costs. The preengineered, modular infrastructure in Vblock Systems has been shown to save companies more than $19,000 in productivity and management costs per 100 users. 1 Providing features and capacity well suited for distributed deployment, the Vblock System 100 is a competitively priced IT solution adaptable to changing application demands. Simplified storage strategies The VNXe storage in Vblock System 100 is optimized for virtual applications like SharePoint. Nextgeneration file deduplication and compression, thin provisioning, and application-consistent snapshots and replicas help you optimize capacity at the planning, design, and maintenance stages and protect valuable data. VNXe features a simplified user interface for IT generalists, crucial for distributed deployments where storage specialist resources are often not available. For more information, go to 1 IDC White Paper, sponsored by VCE. Converging the Datacenter Infrastructure: Why, How, So What? May, VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 9

10 VMware virtualization applications VMware vsphere vsphere, the industry s most widely deployed virtualization platform, delivers the only foundation to transform data centers into dynamic, simplified infrastructures for private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. The most comprehensive set of unique capabilities for availability, security, resource optimization, and business continuity have established vsphere as the platform of choice for organizations of any size. vsphere abstracts applications and information from the complexity of underlying infrastructure, creating internal cloud infrastructure so IT can focus on the support and enablement of business value. Key features of vsphere include: Abstracts server processor, memory, storage, and networking resources into multiple virtual machines (VM) Partitions physical servers into multiple VMs. Each VM represents a complete system with processors, memory, networking, storage, and BIOS Shares single server resources across multiple VMs and clusters ESXi servers for further sharing of resources Reduces costs and maximizes IT efficiency Increases IT control through service-level automation VMware vcenter Server vcenter Server is a central management point for the hypervisors and VMs. vcenter server is installed on a 64-bit Windows Server and runs as a service. vcenter Server is located in the management infrastructure within the Vblock System. Vblock Systems have a dedicated vcenter Server instance as well as an accompanying instance of VMware Update Manager to assist with upgrades and host patch management. Update Manager is installed on a separate Windows Server and also runs as a Windows service. vcenter Server provides the following functionality: Cloning of VMs Creating templates Initial configuration of vsphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and vsphere HA clusters 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 10

11 vcenter Server also provides monitoring and alerting capabilities for hosts and VMs. Vblock Systems administrators can create and apply alarms to all managed objects in vcenter Server. These alarms include: Datacenter, cluster, and host health, inventory, and performance Datastore health and capacity VM usage, performance, and health Virtual network usage and health VMware vsphere HA HA provides uniform, cost-effective failover protection against hardware and operating system failures within the Vblock System to minimize downtime. Key features of HA include: Automates monitoring of VM availability and detects operating system failures within VMs Automatically restarts failed VMs Automates the optimal placement of VMs restarted after server failure (requires vsphere DRS) Supports up to 32 ESXi hosts in a cluster for high application availability and has the same limits for VMs per host, hosts per cluster, and VMs per cluster as vsphere Continuously and intelligently monitors capacity utilization and reserves spare capacity for restarting VMs Identifies abnormal configuration settings detected within HA clusters Reports relevant health status and potential error conditions and suggested remediation steps Reduces downtime due to software error and hardware failure to support SLAs VMware vmotion VMotion allows you to migrate running VMs from one physical server to another without interruption, a key component of the Vblock Systems strategy for a dynamic, automated, self-optimizing data center. VMotion allows users to: Perform scheduled hardware maintenance without downtime. Proactively migrate virtual machines away from failing or underperforming servers. Automatically optimize and allocate entire pools of resources for optimal hardware utilization and alignment with business priorities VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 11

12 Microsoft application and database servers Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Server SharePoint 2010 is an industry-leading solution when it comes to promoting collaboration, managing documents, setting up Web sites to share information with others, and publishing reports to help everyone make better decisions running on the Vblock Solution for SharePoint. The Vblock Solution for SharePoint in Distributed Locations: Provides a single infrastructure for all your business web sites, enabling you to share documents with colleagues, manage projects with partner, and publish information to customers. Brings great collaboration tools and a single platform to manage them making it easier for people to share ideas and work together the way they want. Makes content management easy, by setting up compliance measures behind the scenes with features like document types, retentions policies and automatic content sorting. Offers tools and components for creating do-it-yourself business solutions. Provides access to information in databases, reports and business applications. Helps people find the information and contacts they need to do their job. Previous SharePoint 2007 configurations supported only a single crawl server responsible for crawling and maintaining search content index files, which it then fully replicated to each query server. Content index metadata was stored in the Shared Service Provider (SSP) search database on the SQL Server, and disparities between these two index stores necessitated a full crawl of all content data. This constituted a significant single point of failure. The current SharePoint 2010 configuration comprises a search server with a crawl server that crawls and populates the crawl and property stores on the SQL Server. These crawl servers no longer host the content index store it is split between the query servers. Since the property store solely maintains the index content, the crawl server no longer needs to conduct a full crawl of the content. SharePoint 2010 search architecture is made up of the crawler, indexing engine, query engine and the user interface, and query object model. It now has greater flexibility and expandability with our search design in 2010 and can set up not only multiple query servers but also can now scale out our Index server and add multiple instances VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 12

13 Microsoft SQL Server Many organizations use SQL Server as an underlying database for SharePoint. SQL Server 2008 R2 is an industry-leading database solution with the performance and scalability to meet today s IT challenges with a low total-cost-of ownership. SQL Server 2008 R2 also contains numerous features that make it the ideal solution for SharePoint: PowerPivot allows you import, manipulate, and analyze and export data; and create reports with a familiar Excel interface. SteamInsight allows parallel data processing to facilitate simultaneous queries on live data. The SQL Server Utility provides a single management dashboard across multiple servers and databases VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 13

14 Architecture overview Topology We used a three-tier topology to provide maximum scalability, superior service distribution, high availability with minimal redundancy and optimal performance, and easy management and maintenance: Web front-end layer Redundant web front-end (WFE) servers hosting web pages, web services, and web parts necessary to process user requests and direct them to the application server; also supports search functionality by hosting redundant query servers for optimal performance and availability Application layer Redundant application servers with Central Administration, search administration, and crawl components Database layer Redundant SQL 2008 servers for optimum SQL performance, each with two 100 GB temp databases and one 20 GB temp database log file For more details, refer to Multiple servers for a three-tier farm (SharePoint Server 2010) at VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 14

15 Physical layout We deployed this three-tier topology on a cluster of two ESXi servers on the VNXe3300. Additionally, we used: Cisco Application Control Engine Load Balancer hosted on the Unified Computing System 200 servers to distribute user traffic across WFE servers 2 The three-tier topology described above, deployed on a cluster of two ESXi servers Active Directory and vcenter Server deployed as VMs on a cluster of two ESXi servers to provide a central location for data center administration, authentication and security Illustration 1. Physical architecture 2 We validated this solution on an early Vblock System 100 DX with UCS 200. The Vblock System 100 DX currently ships with UCS 220, which should produce comparable or better results VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 15

16 Logical layout Incoming SharePoint HTTP/HTML requests are directed to the Application Control Engine Load Balancer, which distributes the load across two WFEs. The WFEs then point the request to one of the application servers where SharePoint resources are deployed. The application server writes and retrieves data from the SQL Server databases and sends the data to the WFE, where a response is formulated and sent to the user. We deployed a query server on the WFE layer for optimum search performance. We deployed index crawling on the application layer. Illustration 2. Logical layout 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 16

17 Hardware and software components We used the hardware in Table 1 to validate this solution. Table 1. Hardware resources Layer Equipment Number Configuration Compute Unified Computing System C200 M2 servers 4 Configured as two ESXi clusters: SharePoint cluster: 2 WFEs, two application servers, and 2 SQL Server nodes Management cluster: Active Directory and vcenter server Network Catalyst Configured for IP traffic Application Control Engine Load Balancer 1 While not part of the Vblock System, we used Application Control Engine to distribute network traffic across the WFEs. Storage VNXe SharePoint and SQL databases on RAID 5 (4+1) VMDKs Thin provisioning We used the software in Table 2 to validate this solution. Table 2. Software resources Software Version Instances SharePoint Server 2010 R2 Enterprise Edition 8 SQL Server vsphere vcenter Server VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 17

18 Design considerations Sizing and scaling Planning To plan virtual architectures for SharePoint Server 2010 on Vblock Systems, it is important to consider the following items: Select the size of deployment from small, medium, and large topologies - Determine the allocation of virtual CPUs (vcpu) - Determine the content database sizes Formulate strategies to achieve high availability and performance Plan and optimize search performance Determine disk throughput requirements Determine SQL Server memory requirements We recommend following Microsoft best practices for choosing and configuring one of three server topologies: small, medium, or large (see Plan virtual architectures (SharePoint Server 2010) at for more details). In this validation, we used a medium topology to provide optimum extensibility for distributed deployment while following Microsoft best practices for high availability. Future growth Managing SharePoint growth is an inevitable challenge. For SharePoint deployments for more than 5,000 users, you can easily add compute and storage resources to the Vblock System 100 used in this solution validation. Vblock Systems support upgrading Unified Computing System servers within a rack to help manage CPU and memory performance during growth cycles. VNXe storage platform supports both high-performing Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives and cost-effective nearline (NL) SAS drives that combine the convenience of a SAS interface with the economy of serial ATA (SATA) drives. Many customers combine SAS and NL SAS drives for optimum cost and performance, providing a dynamic storage strategy that suits many business and technology requirements VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 18

19 The VNXe storage platform used in this solution provides consolidated access to stored data from multiple hosts, users, and applications by using existing IP network and connectivity, and industrystandard protocols including CIFS, NFS, and iscsi. Using RAID, the array can automatically rebuild a faulted drive to a spare drive. After the RAID group member is rebuilt, the group is resilient to a single disk failure. This solution, based on the VNXe platform, allows organizations to store and protect files, folders, and application data at a low cost of ownership while meeting enterprise requirements for scalability, protection, and availability. We deployed the VNXe3300 as a performance pool using 56 x 600 GB SAS 10K RPM disks with iscsi and NFS, configured as a RAID 5 (6+1) group, hosting eight virtual machine disks (VMDK) for SharePoint resources. We limited VMDK sizes to the following guidelines to improve SharePoint management and performance: Microsoft strongly recommends that you limit content databases to 200 GB. A site collection should not exceed 100 GB unless it is the only site collection in the database. Content database sizes up to 1 TB are supported only for large, single-site repositories and archives in which data remains reasonably static. Refer to Table 3 and Illustration 3 for more details: Table 3. VMDKs for SharePoint resources VMDK SharePoint internal database Property store database Crawl store database Property and crawl store log files Temp database Temp database log Size 100 GB 100 GB 100 GB 30 GB 100 GB 20 GB SharePoint database log 20 GB 3 Content database 200 GB 4 3 SharePoint database logs can grow quickly due to binary large object (BLOB) modifications and uploads. 4 This provides an additional fill factor for anticipated content database growth from SQL index rebuilds and SharePoint sprawl VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 19

20 Illustration 3. Storage configuration Virtual CPUs We allocated four vcpu s to the application servers (see Table 5). Based on the test findings, WFE and SQL Servers appear to have the appropriate processor and memory allocation. Application servers are underutilized. You can reduce the number of vcpus allocated to the application servers, which will leave more cores unused and allow a higher consolidation ratio. In case of changing workload or usage patterns, you can scale out by deploying more VM instances. On Vblock Systems, you can rapidly scale out your SharePoint environment with minimal to no impact on your applications. SharePoint server farm We designed the SharePoint farm as typical distributed deployment, with a publishing portal containing 1 TB of user content, comprising ten SharePoint site locations (document centers), each populated with 100 GB of random user data: Table 4. SharePoint server farm characteristics Profile Characteristic SharePoint farm user data Enterprise portal collaboration site collections 1 Document library sites 10 Value 1 TB Number of documents in the SharePoint farm 4,600, VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 20

21 High availability High availability is one of the key considerations for organizations virtualizing SharePoint for business continuity, hardware utilization efficiency, saving energy and space, and accelerating provisioning and deployment. In particular, SharePoint downtime can cause significant business disruptions and productivity losses. Protecting SharePoint from such interruptions presents challenges on three levels: Complex implementation architectures Unplanned data center failures and operator errors Planned outages for reconfigurations, upgrades, hot fixes, and service packs This solution ensures SharePoint performance and high availability by deploying redundant clustered resources for each of the solution s three tiers (including WFE servers, application servers, and SQL database servers) in the following configurations. Table 5. SharePoint resource deployment VM role Quantity Configuration WFE 2 6 vcpu, 12 GB RAM Application server 2 4 vcpu, 8 GB RAM MS SQL Server 2 6 vcpu, 8 GB RAM Domain controller 1 2vCPU, 8 GB RAM In cases of an ESXi host failure, vsphere DRS uses vmotion to migrate affected VMs to an operating ESXi host with no interruption in service. Deployments This solution allows you to accelerate deployment by making templates for web, application, and SQL Servers for SharePoint across multiple distributed locations to take advantage of existing skillsets for deploying Vblock Systems. Search performance SharePoint search architecture is made up of the crawler, index engine, query engine, and user interface and query object model. We used central administration to create a new SharePoint search service application. We set up content crawl rules, indexes, and content sources. We used WSS_UsageApplication Service Application to manage web analytics, such as usage, search query usage, and rating usage VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 21

22 In our solution we deployed the query server on the WFE layer and crawl server on the application layer to optimize search performance. When a user sends a search request to the SharePoint search site, the search request is sent by the load balancer to the WFE layer, where the query engine is located. The query server thus processes the search query on the same layer, which reduces latency. The crawl server retrieves information from the content sources and indexes it. The crawl server then sends the index to the WFE server, where the query is processed. Illustration 4. Optimized search performance 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 22

23 Disk throughput for content databases Disk throughput requirements for content databases can vary significantly between implementations. Microsoft recommends that you match your expected workload to one of their tested solutions. For more information, refer to Performance and Capacity Test Results and Recommendations (SharePoint Server 2010) at SQL Server memory The memory required for SQL Server to support SharePoint Server 2010 is affected by the following: The size of the content databases The addition of service applications or features to the environment The use of SQL Server mirroring The frequent use of files larger than 15 MB. Per Microsoft best practices, we reserved 8 GB of memory for the two SQL databases in this solution, which ensured adequate memory for the database during memory-intensive operating system processes. For more information about SQL Server memory and storage requirements, go to VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 23

24 Solution validation Test environment We used a test environment as described in the Architecture overview, with the following exception: We connected HP LoadRunner 11.0 to the Catalyst 3750 LAN segment to generate a transactional user load on the SharePoint 2010 environment: We used one controller and four load generators to simulate 500-, 2,000-, and 5,000-user loads at 10 percent concurrency. 5 LoadRunner sent user web traffic to the appropriate WFE, which sent a request to the application server located on one of the ESXi hosts. The application server then located the requested content on the matching SQL database. Test objectives We validated the Vblock Solution for SharePoint in Distributed Locations to demonstrate that this solution meets Microsoft s acceptable user response time while maintaining CPU and memory utilization for WFEs, application servers (APP) and SQL Servers (SQL) at an acceptable range for typical browse, search, and modify operations. For more details, refer to Plan for software boundaries, at For scalability testing in typical distributed situations, we collected test results for 500, 2,000, and 5,000 users. Once we reached 5,000 users, we gathered detailed performance data to demonstrate this solution provides acceptable user response times. For more details, refer to Plan for software boundaries at 5 For SharePoint deployments for more than 5,000 users, you can easily add compute and storage resources to the Vblock System 100 used in this solution validation VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 24

25 Table 6. Microsoft s acceptable user response time Type of Operation Examples Acceptable user response time Common Operation Browsing to the home Page Browsing to a document library Uncommon Operation Creating a subsite Creating a list Uploading a document to a document library Tested in this Validation < 3 seconds Browse Search < 5 seconds Modify Test design Response times User profile We used a proportion of 70/5/25 ratio of browse/search/modify operations, widely accepted as a typical business workload. Concurrent users Concurrency describes the number of distinct users generating requests at any one time. We used the Microsoft concurrency guideline of 10 percent: 500 of 5,000 possible users making requests at any given time. For more details, refer to Capacity planning for SharePoint Server 2010 at SharePoint operations We used a mix of three user operations: browse, modify and search. Browse measured the time users took to browse a site until reaching the end of a document containing no subpages. Concurrent users browsed different sites and subsites to simulate typical customer use. Search measured the time users took to run a stored procedure in the SQL database to find a unique number/name. The user then performed a web request to search the unique number/name. Every user in this test searches using a different unique number/name each time, and LoadRunner measures the time taken to fetch the results VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 25

26 Modify measured the time users took to retrieve a document. The document ID was extracted from the database prior to each test run. The user then modified the metadata for that document before saving it back to the farm in its modified form. Each user extracted a random document, modified the metadata with unique data, and saved it back to the farm. We conducted testing with variable user input to avoid caching. We used different profiles, search criteria, and modified content for each user. Performance Once we reached the 5,000-user band, we gathered the following performance data: SharePoint operations - Total web server hits - Total requests per second (RPS) - Total requests per minute - Average throughput (bytes/second) Pass/failure rates - Total passed transactions - Total failed transactions - Total errors - Transaction success rate (%) Input/output operations per second (IOPS) - Average content database - Average WFE - Property store - Crawl store - Temporary database 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 26

27 Test results and analysis Key findings Our validation of the Vblock Solution for SharePoint in Distributed Locations demonstrated that the solution: Provided high performance at the 5,000-user band, with browse operations 48 percent faster than Microsoft s acceptable user response time, search 28 percent faster, and modify 94 percent faster Achieved linear scaling from 500 to 2,000 to 5,000 users, with CPU utilization within 85 percent and memory utilization within 10.7 GB Provided 100 percent successful results while running SharePoint under an extremely heavy load at 10 percent concurrency Response time As shown in Illustration 5, response times for browse, search, and modify operations were well within acceptable SLA standards and Microsoft s acceptable user response time for 500, 2,000, and 5,000 users. At the 5,000-user band, increases in SharePoint queue depth increased CPU utilization to 85 percent. Response times increased significantly but were still well within acceptable parameters. Browse We measured the time from the beginning to the end of the navigation. In our testing, the average response time for browse operations was seconds for 5,000 users, 48 percent better than Microsoft s acceptable user response time of 3 seconds. Search We measured the time taken to search for a document. In our testing, the average response time for search operations was 2.18 seconds for 5,000 users, 28 percent faster than Microsoft s acceptable user response time of 3 seconds. Modify We measured the time taken to modify and save a document. In our testing, the average response time for modify operations was 0.28 seconds for 5,000 users, 94 percent faster than Microsoft s acceptable user response time of 5 seconds VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 27

28 2.5 Response time (seconds) ,000 5,000 Users Browse Search Modify Illustration 5. Browse, search, and modify response times for 500, 2,000, and 5,000 users Performance Note: CPU and memory utilization for SQL and WFE servers are higher because the application server running Central Administration requires fewer CPU and memory resources. Average CPU utilization As shown in Illustration 6, CPU utilization increased nearly linearly as we tested performance at 500, 2,000, and 5,000 users, and the WFE server never exceeded 85 percent capacity utilization, critical for SharePoint administration VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 28

29 CPU utilization (%) ,000 5,000 Users WFE APP SQL Illustration 6. CPU utilization for 500, 2,000, and 5,000 users Average memory utilization As shown in Illustration 7, memory utilization increased nearly linearly as we tested performance at 500, 2,000, and 5,000 users, well within acceptable standards VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 29

30 12 10 Memory utilization (GB) ,000 5,000 Users WFE Application SQL Illustration 7. Memory utilization for 500, 2,000, and 5,000 users Performance testing We tested this solution under a heavy load of 5,000 users with 8.47 M web server hits, an average throughput of 13.2 MB/second, 171,593 transactions passed, and no failed transactions. Average IOPS for the content database, WFE, property store, crawl store and temp database were all within an expected range. Table 7. Scalability at 5,000 user range Category Measurement Results SharePoint operation/load Total web server hits 8,469,969 Total requests per second (RPS) 43 Total requests per minute 2610 Average throughput (bytes/second) 13,181,282.2 Pass/failure of transactions Total passed transactions 171,593 Total failed transactions 0 Total errors 0 Transaction success rate (%) VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 30

31 Category Measurement Results Input/output operations (IOPS) Average content database 210 Average WFE 120 Property store 40 Crawl store 46 Temp database 98 Response time Browse time (seconds) 1.51 Search time (seconds) 2.18 Modify time (seconds) 0.28 Average CPU utilization (%) SP-WFE 85 SP-APP 20 SP-SQL 25 Average memory consumed (GB) SP-WFE 4.2 SP-APP 3.4 SP-SQL VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 31

32 Conclusion Organizations are looking for a flexible infrastructure to deploy SharePoint to manage content, collaboration, and information access in distributed environments. For the small to medium size deployment needed in typical distributed enterprise locations, as well as midsize datacenters, it is important for an IT organization to deploy SharePoint on a simple-to-manage converged infrastructure solution that can leverage existing skillsets while lowering the risks and costs of implementation and operation. The Vblock System 100 serves as a virtualized IT infrastructure that supports SharePoint without the traditional challenges of outdated technologies requiring long lead times and large CAPEX and OPEX outlays. The Vblock Solution for SharePoint in Distributed Locations provides the performance, high availability, and adaptability critical for distributed operations at lower costs and risks, with quality and dependability. This solution demonstrates a virtualized SharePoint environment for distributed enterprise locations with linear scalability for 500, 2,000 and 5,000 users. Vblock Systems make it easy to plan, size, deploy and manage SharePoint today and into the future by adding or upgrading hardware components using the existing rack and space to accommodate SharePoint deployments of more than 5,000 users. Vblock Systems offer an end-to-end IT infrastructure solution that clears the way for you to deploy SharePoint in your organization with reduced costs and simpler management. Next steps To learn more about this and other solutions, contact a VCE representative or visit VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 32

33 ABOUT VCE VCE, formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, accelerates the adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models that dramatically reduce the cost of IT while improving time to market for our customers. VCE, through the Vblock Systems, delivers the industry's only fully integrated and fully virtualized cloud infrastructure system. VCE solutions are available through an extensive partner network, and cover horizontal applications, vertical industry offerings, and application development environments, allowing customers to focus on business innovation instead of integrating, validating, and managing IT infrastructure. For more information, go to Copyright 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Vblock and the VCE logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of VCE Company, LLC and/or its affiliates in the United States or other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.