Accelerating SharePoint Performance The guys at Application Performance quickly understood our SharePoint problem. They demonstrated that the combination of WebTuna and Riverbed SteelApp Web Accelerator for SharePoint would give us true visibility into user experience and the SharePoint acceleration we needed. They were really proactive at helping us get the installation absolutely right and are certainly part of the team going forward. Frederik Bonde Neilsen, Chief Portal Specialist, COWI Six Steps to Improved SharePoint Performance & Operations
Why Performance Suffers Consisting of multiple components distributed across numerous servers and used by people in diverse countries, continents and offices SharePoint applications are, by their nature, at risk of performance issues. SharePoint servers are situated in data centres that can be hundreds or thousands of miles from their users. Communication is dependent on networks of varying speed and quality and moving parts need to be continually optimised to ensure that users receive a reliable and viable service. Combine these geographical challenges with SharePoint applications that are loaded with rich content and documents, and it s not surprising that performance and reliability are of major concern to many companies. The aim of this document is to outline how Application Performance can help you address your SharePoint performance challenges with a unique blend of technologies and services designed to meet each customer s individual needs. Likely Performance Issues Our Unique Six Step Solution Slow page load times. Complaints from users before you ve noticed there is a performance problem. Congested or slow networks often provided by third parties outside your control. Competition between SharePoint and other applications for resources. Slow performance for mobile users. Slow document downloads. Varying performance for users on different browser types or operating systems. Lack of visibility into custom code which might have been written inefficiently. Poor SQL Server performance fast database performance is vital. Slow user adoption or poor user satisfaction caused by frustratingly slow performance. The good news is that we can help you address all of these challenges and ensure you have the monitoring and acceleration technologies you need to keep ahead of the curve maintaining good performance, easing day-to-day operations and keeping your users happy. The last thing we want is for your investment in SharePoint to be wasted because users do not receive the fast and reliable applications they need. This brochure details the six steps to improved SharePoint performance and operations. We hope that you ll find it useful. Browsers Network Servers Monitor 1 Track REAL user performance 2 Ensure network health 3 Ensure health of SharePoint Farm Accelerate 4 Faster page load times 5 Faster file transfers 6 Provide expert help and advice
Monitor 1 Real User Performance Use our WebTuna software to capture and store a detailed history of the performance experienced by all your users. WebTuna allows you to quickly and easily understand the service experienced by your SharePoint users day-to-day. Performance and usage information is presented in an easy-to-understand visual format, giving you everything you need to spot overall trends as well as drilling down into individual user sessions and page views. Track user performance 24/7. Build a long term picture of performance for ALL users. See how individual users interact with SharePoint. Track improvements that you ve made over time. View performance by country, by office and other metrics. See how performance differs between operating systems and browsers. With WebTuna you gain real time visibility of how your users experience SharePoint, facilitating changes that improve performance that can be monitored over time. 2 Real Network Performance NetTuna gives you the unique ability to observe the actual health, performance and quality of all the network links and devices you rely on to provide SharePoint to your users. It does this by continuously testing your network and proactively highlighting emerging problems. It also gathers a detailed history, including deep diagnostic information when a problem occurs. This approach is different to traditional network infrastructure monitoring tools and provides a useful complementary service. Continually tracks quality and performance of network links and network devices against SLAs. Deep diagnostics triggered as soon as an SLA is threatened, so you have the detail needed to fix an emerging problem. Synthetic transactions continually test key SharePoint pages. Shows breakdown of user experience/performance across web browser, network and server. Prove you are getting what you are paying for from your service provider (against agreed SLAs). Alerts in real time as soon as network quality or performance is threatened. Reports to prove network quality and performance compliance. Very low overhead so that testing can be continuous. History kept for the long term. SCOM integration so that you can add rich network data. NetTuna is the ideal way to maintain the health of your network. This ensures that SharePoint performs at the highest level, providing your users with the quality experience they expect and demand.
Operate 3 Easier Operations Powered by Avoid expensive outages, save valuable time and improve user satisfaction Visibility Isolating operational issues in a multiserver SharePoint environment is a challenging and time consuming task. Operations personnel waste tremendous time and energy collecting, parsing and examining log files to isolate functional errors and maintain service levels. Not any more. SmartTrack is a cloud-based, or on premise, ITIL compatible event management solution specifically designed for Microsoft SharePoint. SmartTrack takes the detective work out of operations management by aggregating event data across multiple servers and farms. It delivers focused, real-time health scoring and advanced analytics in a modern, touch optimised web portal. Insight SmartTrack provides detailed information on the nature and cause of abnormal events within any SharePoint environment. Scale your monitoring from a single local farm to multiple, geographically distributed farms. Live dashboards display critical operational indicators in real time. Detailed reports enable trend identification and root cause analysis with a rich set of charts and graphs. SmartTrack can also integrate with third-party monitoring tools so that everything you need to know about your SharePoint environment can be found in one centralised console. Action Interactive dashboards in SmartTrack provide you with up-to-the-minute information on all aspects of farm operations. Events which exceed established baselines are automatically flagged as alerts and displayed prominently in the console. Operations personnel are able to react in real time to changing conditions within their environment. Advanced health scoring metrics give a clear visual indication when conditions are degrading or trending in a negative direction. SmartTrack takes the guesswork out of administering complex SharePoint environments by providing the right information, at the right time, to enable proactive management.
Accelerate 4 Faster Page Load Time Page load times are fundamental to user satisfaction. We recommend SteelApp Web Accelerator from Riverbed (formerly known as Aptimizer ) to optimise your web pages in real time instantly accelerating performance. SteelApp Web Accelerator typically reduces page load times by 33-75% and speeds up the responsiveness of SharePoint for your users. It works by reducing the round trips the browser makes to the server in order to load a page for a user, as well as maximising the use of caching and other techniques. SharePoint users are often a significant distance from the servers they rely on. Their vital networks do not always provide the speed and quality required. Reducing the impact of latency and other challenges can deliver significant results: Increase the speed of your SharePoint application without code changes. Support any user device, any browser, automatically. Improve productivity tasks are completed faster enabling better, more natural collaboration. Reduce data traffic costs save money as well as time. Decrease page load times and significantly improve user experience with SteelApp Web Accelerator. 5 Faster File Transfers Users working from home, branches, and distant locations are often frustrated with slow application performance that impacts their ability to collaborate. We recommend SteelHead from Riverbed to overcome the distance gap and allow users to download and upload documents as if they were sitting close to the servers. SteelHead helps overcome the distance gap by optimising WAN network connections to make the most of whatever network performance is available. You can expect to see: Reduced bandwidth requirements saving you money as well as improving performance. Acceleration for encrypted traffic, eliminating the security/ performance trade-off. Reduced competition between SharePoint and other applications for network bandwidth. Easily deployed with no changes to user devices or IT infrastructure. So, with SteelHead optimising file transfers and SteelApp optimising page load times, your SharePoint applications are bound to be more responsive for your users. We can also continually monitor the performance impact of the Riverbed products with WebTuna and NetTuna, to spot where they may require fine tuning and prove that your users are receiving the high quality service they require.
Accelerating SharePoint Performance 6 Expert Support, Help & Advice At Application Performance our aim is to suggest just the right blend of products and services needed to solve your SharePoint performance and operations challenges as cost effectively as we can. Having understood your unique situation and business priorities we can recommend the fastest way to ensure SharePoint delivers for your users, both in the short and long term. Our Services Include Performance Review This is where we deploy a mix of software and hardware to monitor your environment, analyse the data, highlight performance and operational challenges, and recommend solutions that are based on your business needs. Performance-as-a-Service We provide an on-going service to help you optimise the performance of all aspects of your SharePoint infrastructure. An example might be where we use WebTuna and NetTuna to continually measure how well your Riverbed SteelHead and SteelApp products are performing and whether you are meeting the performance SLAs promised to your users. Product Sales Having understood your unique situation and business priorities we can recommend software and hardware products to help you solve your performance and operational challenges. SupportPLUS This is where you purchase consultancy at a special rate on a pay-as-you-go basis that allows you to get the help you need when you need it the most. SupportPLUS can be provided remotely or onsite as required and can assist you with specific performance problems, product installations, upgrades and training. Powered by If you find any of these services or anything else we have described in this brochure of interest, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss your needs and how we might help. Tel +44 (0)845 452 4129 info@applicationperformance.com Application Performance Ltd, Centaur House, Ancells Business Park, Ancells Road, Fleet GU51 2UJ I M P R O V I N G S I N Y O U R C E P E R F O R M A N C E 0 2 0 4