Designing a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Infrastructure Vol 1 part 18 doc

MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Planning for Performance and Capacity 3-37 Performance Testing in SharePoint 2010 Key Points You can use several tools to help you to perform performance testing against your SharePoint servers. One of the most comprehensive load-testing tools for SharePoint environments is Microsoft Visual Studio® 2010. The following table describes load-testing configuration options for Visual Studio 2010. Configuration Description Local load generation In this configuration, the client computer running Visual Studio generates all of the Web requests for the load test. The load test is limited to 250 virtual users, and the test only uses one core of the client CPU. Distributed test controller and test agents, optionally stacked with client computer. In this configuration, you distribute the test controller and test agents across different computers to scale out the load agents and increase the test load. You must install virtual user packs on the test controller computer to enable testing. This configuration enables the use of all MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 3-38 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure Configuration Description CPU cores on the load agent computers. This configuration is suitable where a team will be performing testing. Optionally, you can use the client computer running Visual Studio as the test controller computer. This configuration enables all cores and more than 250 virtual users on the client computer, but is only recommended for scenarios where an individual will perform testing. After you have chosen your configuration for Visual Studio, you should create a new project in Visual Studio. The project requires configuration of two elements: • Web tests. Web tests are an instruction for the Visual Studio load test engine to retrieve a specific Web page or URL. • Load tests. Load tests are a collection of tests to perform as a batch. Load tests typically include a number of Web tests and enable you to configure ratios between the individual Web tests included in the load test. Note: Visual Studio load-test projects can include a “think time” variable, which is intended to mirror the behavior of users browsing a Web site, such as pausing between pages. For the test to return a “raw” RPS value, it is recommended that you ignore this feature. In addition, you can configure Visual Studio to capture performance counters from the servers that you are testing during the test. You must add any counters that you want to capture to the load-test project. You can also specify the duration for the load test. You should run the load test over a period that will ensure that all operational factors are included, such as timer jobs or index crawls. Note: You can use the Load Testing Toolkit (LTK) to test whether an existing Office SharePoint 2007 topology can sustain an upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010 with the same load. The LTK is available as part of the SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Planning for Performance and Capacity 3-39 Caching in SharePoint 2010 Key Points SharePoint 2010 has several methods of caching data and objects to help improve performance for the end user. When a client requests a page, a copy of the page is stored temporarily in the output cache. Although the duration of the cache is typically small (the default is 60 seconds), this can greatly assist the performance of WFE servers and reduce latency. Cache profiles are available so that site administrators can control the output cache behavior. Administrators can also determine whether different users, such as content editors, receive cached pages. You can adjust the output cache at the site, site collection, or Web application level. SharePoint 2010 uses the object cache to temporarily store objects such as lists, libraries, or page layouts on the WFE server. This enables the WFE server to render pages more quickly, reducing the amount of data that is required from the SQL Server databases. You can adjust the size of the object cache at the site collection and Web application levels. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 3-40 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure The page output and object caches are memory-based and will require testing to determine the optimum setting for a site or site collection. Note: The page output cache and the object cache only take effect on sites that have the Publishing feature enabled. SharePoint 2010 has a BLOB cache that temporarily stores digital assets, such as image or media files, but you can use it with any file type. Using the BLOB cache in conjunction with the Bit Rate Throttling feature in IIS 7.0 also enables the progressive download feature for digital assets. Progressive download enables the download of media files in chunks of data, and playback can start after the client downloads the first chunk rather than the whole file. You can enable and control the size of the BLOB cache at the Web application level. The default size is 10 GB and the default setting is disabled. For deployments where you want to make use of digital assets, you should enable the BLOB cache for the relevant Web applications. You should perform the change on all of the Web servers that host the specific Web application. If there are large quantities of digital assets or they are heavily used, consider increasing the size of the BLOB cache. Alternatively, you can dedicate a specific Web application to media files, such as digital assets, and configure a much larger BLOB cache for that Web application. Note: The page out cache and the object cache are memory-based caches on the WFE servers. The BLOB cache is a disk-based cache on the WFE servers. Question: Where do you configure the settings for the BLOB cache? Additional Reading For more information about cache settings operations in SharePoint Server 2010, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=200859&clcid=0x409. For more information about planning for caching in SharePoint Server 2010, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=201228&clcid=0x409. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Planning for Performance and Capacity 3-41 Lesson 3 Principles of Capacity Planning Your initial planning for a SharePoint Server 2010 deployment must include sufficient storage capacity to accommodate the content that users will store in SharePoint storage repositories, and the additional needs of the SharePoint farm, including administrative and service application requirements. Objectives After completing this lesson, you will be able to: • Identify capacity requirements. • Identify architecture and storage elements in SharePoint 2010 that affect capacity planning. • Identify supporting environmental factors that affect capacity planning in SharePoint 2010. • Identify storage and database options for a SharePoint farm. • Identify content considerations that affect capacity planning. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 3-42 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure Capacity in a Business Context Key Points When IT professionals discuss capacity, storage is typically at the forefront of that discussion. However, it is important that you consider other aspects of capacity, such as network capacity or performance capacity. SharePoint 2010 stores most content in SQL Server databases; therefore, capacity planning for storage involves a large amount of database planning. It is important that you understand content characteristics to plan for the corpus (the total amount of data to store in SharePoint 2010). You should also understand how logical architecture fits together with database storage. This will enable you to plan for the right number of databases, split content among databases correctly, and plan for database growth. You must also consider network capacity, particularly in terms of client access connections to WFE servers—and application servers in some cases. New features in SharePoint 2010 such as Office Web Apps and digital asset storage and playback introduce additional network traffic requirements over previous versions of Office SharePoint. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Planning for Performance and Capacity 3-43 Finally, consider the business requirements for the solution. What are the performance requirements? Will the solution have performance headroom to enable growth in users with the same performance requirements? MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 3-44 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure Principles of Capacity Planning for SharePoint 2010 Key Points When you size capacity requirements for storage, it is important to identify how different storage requirements and different data types will affect database and site collection design. SharePoint 2010 has certain boundaries and limits that affect storage choices, which include: • An individual SharePoint content database should not grow beyond the supported limit of 200 GB. • An individual file that you store in SharePoint 2010 cannot be larger than the boundary limit of 2 GB. • A single list row cannot exceed the boundary limit of 8,000 bytes per row. If you have large quantities of data (greater than 100 GB) to store in SharePoint content databases, you must consider how to arrange that data in multiple site collections. This is because site collections cannot span separate content databases. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED Planning for Performance and Capacity 3-45 If you want to make quantities of files available to SharePoint 2010 users, you can store some content—for example, archive or static files—in other content sources, such as a network file share. You can make this content available to users through search or links in SharePoint 2010. If you plan to store and manage digital assets, you may require extra storage. Digital assets such as media files are traditionally much larger than documents. Consider that metadata also requires storage in the content database and adds to the size of the search database. You must also plan your search capacity requirements, because there are additional limits that are associated with search indexes. These limits include the number of crawl databases and the maximum index item limit. Additional Reading For more information about the software boundaries and limits of SharePoint 2010, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=200860&clcid=0x409. For more information about storage and SQL Server space and I/O requirements, http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=201229&clcid=0x409. MCT USE ONLY. STUDENT USE PROHIBITED 3-46 Designing a Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Infrastructure Principles of Capacity Planning for Supporting Elements Key Points In addition to planning capacity requirements for the elements of the solution that are specific to SharePoint 2010, you must also plan the capacity of supporting elements in the network environment. You should place domain controllers on the same high-speed network segment as the SharePoint farm, to support logon requests at the SharePoint farm or to support a connection for importing user profile data from the Active Directory® directory service. If users will be connecting over wide area network (WAN) or Internet links, you should consider the quantity of data that clients transmit and receive over the link and the number of concurrent users on the link. SharePoint 2010 introduces new features that affect network traffic. The following table lists the new features, with an overview of the traffic and payload quantities. . factors that affect capacity planning in SharePoint 2 010 . • Identify storage and database options for a SharePoint farm. • Identify content considerations that affect capacity planning. MCT. storage involves a large amount of database planning. It is important that you understand content characteristics to plan for the corpus (the total amount of data to store in SharePoint 2 010 ) SharePoint 2 010 . If you plan to store and manage digital assets, you may require extra storage. Digital assets such as media files are traditionally much larger than documents. Consider that