Showing posts with label AutoSPInstaller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AutoSPInstaller. Show all posts

Saturday 30 November 2013

Planning Suggestion for SharePoint 2013

Overview:  It is always a good idea to have an exact breakdown of your SharePoint achitecture. I do this using a diagram and a corresponding spreadsheet.  This post has an example of the spreadsheet, I have a tab for each DTAP environment before I build it out. 

Server Name Server Role Logical Group CPU C D RAM Location IP Environment
SVR-PR-WFE1 SharePoint Web Front End SP WFE 4 90 80 16 London 10.189.10.50 Production
SVR-PR-WFE2 SharePoint Web Front End SP WFE 4 90 80 16 London 10.189.10.51 Production
SVR-PR-WFE3 SharePoint Web Front End SP WFE 4 90 80 16 M 10.189.10.52 Production
SVR-PR-WFE4 SharePoint Web Front End SP WFE 4 90 80 16 M 10.189.10.53 Production
SVR-PR-APP1 SharePoint Application Server SP APP 4 90 80 16 London 10.189.10.54 Production
SVR-PR-APP2 SharePoint Application Server SP APP 4 90 80 16 London 10.189.10.55 Production
SVR-PR-APP3 SharePoint Application Server SP APP 4 90 80 16 M 10.189.10.56 Production
SVR-PR-APP4 SharePoint Application Server SP APP 4 90 80 16 M 10.189.10.57 Production
SVR-PR-OWA1 Office Web Applications OWA 8 90 80 16 London 10.189.10.58 Production
SVR-PR-OWA2 Office Web Applications OWA 8 90 80 16 London 10.189.10.59 Production
SVR-PR-OWA3 Office Web Applications OWA 8 90 80 16 M 10.189.10.60 Production
SVR-PR-OWA4 Office Web Applications OWA 8 90 80 16 M 10.189.10.61 Production
SVR-PR-WF1 Workflow Services SP WF 4 90 120 8 London 10.189.10.62 Production
SVR-PR-WF2 Workflow Services SP WF 4 90 120 8 M 10.189.10.63 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH1 SharePoint Search Type A Search 8 134 80 32 London 10.189.10.70 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH2 SharePoint Search Type A Search 8 134 80 32 M 10.189.10.71 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH3 SharePoint Search Type B Search 8 134 300 24 London 10.189.10.72 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH4 SharePoint Search Type B Search 8 134 300 24 M 10.189.10.73 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH5 SharePoint Search Type C Search 8 134 500 24 London 10.189.10.74 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH6 SharePoint Search Type C Search 8 134 500 24 M 10.189.10.75 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH7 SharePoint Search Type D Search 8 134 500 24 London 10.189.10.76 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH8 SharePoint Search Type D Search 8 134 500 24 M 10.189.10.77 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH9 SharePoint Search Type D Search 8 134 500 24 London 10.189.10.78 Production
SVR-PR-SRCH10 SharePoint Search Type D Search 8 134 500 24 M 10.189.10.79 Production
SVR-PR-DBS1 SharePoint Databases SQL 16 134 500 32 London 10.189.10.85 Production
SVR-PR-DBS2 SharePoint Databases SQL 16 134 500 32 M 10.189.10.86 Production
CL-PR-DBS Cluster 10.189.10.87
LS-PR-DBS Listener 10.189.10.88
SVR-PR-DBR1 SSRS & SSAS Databases SQL 8 134 500 32 London 10.189.10.89 Production
SVR-PR-DBR2 SSRS & SSAS Databases SQL 8 134 500 32 M 10.189.10.90 Production
CL-PR-DBR Cluster 10.189.10.91
LS-PF-SP-DBR Listener 10.189.10.92
SVR-PR-DBA1 TDS & K2 Databases SQL 16 134 500 32 London 10.189.10.93 Production
SVR-PR-DBA2 TDS & K2 Databases SQL 16 134 500 32 M 10.189.10.94 Production
CL-PR-DBA Cluster 10.189.10.95
LS-PR-DBA Listener 10.189.10.96

Note: Window "Page File" or "Paging File" is a contentious issue, depending on the recovery.  So the dump logs go to 1 of the drives and I normally make sure they go to the c drive that is over provisioned for the is size.  I don't really know how important this is but I always estimate on the c drive for at least 2 times the maximum ram for my calculations.

Saturday 9 November 2013

IaC Presentation for SharePoint Saturday UK

Overview: I am presenting at SharePoint Saturday UK (9 November 2013).  This post contains my slide deck and will answer any questions that arise from the session.

SharePoint Saturday UK 2013 Web Site

 Infrastructure as Code for SharePoint 2013 PowerPoint Presentation

Outline of the session:
Creating automated farm builds is key to having a stable SharePoint on-prem. service. This session looks at how and why automating infrastructure, SharePoint 2013 builds and assets is a good idea. The session is heavily focused on Infrastructure as Code (IaC). I look at building a large on premise SP2013 stretched farm on stable repeatable infrastructure that includes SSRS, WCA/OWA and Blob storage.

This is a technical overview for IT pro’s & architects, throwing in best practices for looking at large SharePoint 2013 deployments. Concepts such as devops and Continuous Delivery (CD) are examined. PowerShell is extensively used with several takeaways provided to jumpstart SharePoint 2013 service creation via IaC.

Tuesday 13 August 2013

AutoSPInstaller configuration for SharePoint 2013 Search

Overview:  AutoSPInstaller is a great tool for building SharePoint 2010 ans 2013 farms.  One section of AutoSPInstaller relates to installing SharePoint 2013 search.  This post examines how to configure the xml that drives AutoSPInstaller and supplemental Ps to build the Search farm you require.
 
Below is an example of a search xml config that will setup Search with full redunancy on 2 servers in the SP farm.  This design provides High Availaibility (HA).  MS recommend keeping each index partition under 10 million items.  So in this scenario if you follow MS recommendations you are limited to having 10 million items in your index (hardware, moving outher roles to more servers, usage of search to query all affect how quickly results will be returned so with tuning you can get your indexes to be larger and provide a good end user experience).

 

Tip: Create a seperate SQL aliase fo your 4 Search databases, this will alow you to move the dbs to a new instance or at 40mill documents MS recommend you consider a dedicate search farm.  The SQL Alaise gives you room to adapt.

Tip: Group your search roles onto servers such as:
  • Index & Query Processing
  • Analytics & Content Processing
  • Crawl, Content processing & Search Admin 
Summary:  As of version 3.87 of AutoSPInstaller for an SP2013 installation, you only have 1 index partition.  To create additional partition indexes use PowerShell.  The example below is use the PS code given to me by Joseph Saad.

$WFE2="WFE2"
$WFE4="WFE4"

$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication #Assuming you have a single Service application
$active = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -SearchApplication $ssa -Active
$clone = New-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -SearchApplication $ssa -Clone –SearchTopology $active

New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent -SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $WFE2 -IndexPartition 1
New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent -SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $WFE4 -IndexPartition 1

Set-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -Identity $clone


More Info:
https://autospinstaller.codeplex.com/discussions/453501

Example:

 4 Server Search farm created using AutoSPInstaller.  AutoSPInstaller version 3.87 only supports creating a farm using one partion index as shown below.
To add "Partion Index 1" to the farm using WFE1 and WFE2 to hold the index components use the following PowerShell:
$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication #Assuming you have a single Service application
$active = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -SearchApplication $ssa -Active
$clone = New-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -SearchApplication $ssa -Clone –SearchTopology $active
New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent -SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance "WFE1" -IndexPartition 1
New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent -SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance "WFE3" -IndexPartition 1
Set-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -Identity $clone
 
Results in a farm that can handle up to 20 million documents due to the partioned index.

 Another Example: