Practical management of development & QA environments for SharePoint 2013

Radi Atanassov & Ognyan Guglev
OneBit Software
Practical management of development & QA
environments for SharePoint 2013

About Us
• SharePoint
2010 MCM
• SharePoint
Server MVP
• OneBit
Software
• Web
Platform
User Group
Radi Atanassow Ognyan Guglev
• SharePoint
2010 Administrator
• 2008 Server
Enterprise
Administrator
• 2010 Enterprise
Exchange
Administrator
• OneBit
Software

Agenda
 The needs of Dev and QA teams
 Challenges from the perspective of IT
 Deployment options
 Cloning vs Provisioning
 Licensing
 PowerShell automation
 SCVMM
 Performance& Hardware
 Tips, Tricks & Recommendations

DEFINE THE BUSINESS NEEDS
AND IT CHALLENGES

SP Developers and QA Teams
 They need servers:
 SharePoint Server
 Office Web Apps Server
 Workflow Manager Server
 Server management requires knowledge
 and time…
 QA needs a little bit more:
 Different environments
 Automated deployment & tests

Defining the strategy
 1 per project vs 1 for
many projects
 1 for each version of
SharePoint
 Developers?
 Team Leaders?
 QA Team?
 IT?
How many servers? Who creates servers?
Single VM
Multiple VM’s

Retention & IT Governance
 Too many VM’s could become a key concern
 When should you delete/archive the virtual
machines?
 Who should delete/archive virtual machines?

Responsibilities of IT
 Be responsible for the “high-availability” of the
development & QA teams
 Provide overall management of these needs
 Creation, retention, networking, storage,
performance, automation
 Manage the hardware

Environment Goals
 Save developer time!
 Provision development environments in under 3
hours
 Automating repetitive tasks (installation,
configuration, tools, code repositories,
shortcuts)
 Make the developer experience the same
 Avoid data loss (thin VM’s)
 Avoid restoring broken environments
 The best developer performance
 Remote work

Managing Environments
INFRASTRUCTURE
CONSIDERATIONS

Infrastructure Considerations
 Windows Server
 Active Directory Domain Services
 Microsoft SQL Server
 SharePoint
 Visual Studio & Source Control
 Workflow Manager?
 Office Web Apps Server?
 Client test machine (Office, browsers)

Deployment Options - Centralised

Deployment Options - Shared
Workflow
Manager 2013
Office Web Apps
Server 2013
Active Directory

Deployment Options - Shared
Workflow
Manager 2013
Office Web Apps
Server 2013
Active Directory
SQL Server?

Comparisons
 IT manages the
server infrastructure
 Saves developer/QA
time
 Group Policy
 1 IT can service
many teams
 Server performance
 Workstations for
more power
 Dev can manage
their VM’s
(performance,
retention, network)
 Better for snapshot
if services are not
shared
Centralised Decentralised

Comparisons
 Requires lots of
resources
 Easier to use, self-
contained
 Easier to move
 Can snapshot
 No central
management
 Better performing
dev machines
 Harder to move &
has dependencies
 Must snapshot the
entire team
 Centralised
management
Complete VM (AD, SQL…) Shared Services

In detail – Shared AD
 No need to create domain
every time you install a new
SharePoint machine
 No need to create accounts
and policies for every
machine
 Can access servers by FQDN
 Centralized management of
servers
 Ease of setting policies, file
shares, software installation,
software updates
 Cannot move the server outside the
domain
 Not recommended to "play around"
with the domain setting and make
changes
 Not recommended to change
passwords to user accounts - it can
impact many machines
 Cannot create/revert snapshots as
this will impact the time
synchronization between machines
 Developers need to request or add
entries in the DNS server
 Cannot clone VMs (required sysprep
& rejoin then fix SP)
PROs CONs

 Can move the machine
anywhere as it holds all the roles
 Can make development against
the domain and make some
changes without impacting the
other machines
 Unique control on accounts and
passwords
 Can snapshot and revert
 No need to create hosts file
entries to develop against a
demo website with fixed host
header (use DNS!)
 Hard to implement FQDN
resolution
 Hard to implement and
deploy policies on all
machines
 No centralised
management of all servers
(out-of-the-box)
 Hard to automate software,
file shares and other
updates
 Always have to consider
the netbios name when
provisioning new
domain/forest
PROs CONs
In detail – AD in a complete VM

Workflow Manager
 Must be part of the
same Forest
 Better VM
performance
 IT manages
certificates
 Extremely difficult to
install correctly
(dev’s usually don’t
know)
 Needs its own VM

Office Web Apps
 Must be part of the
same Forest
 Better VM
performance
 Requires it’s own VM!
Cannot be installed on
SharePoint
 Cannot be installed on
a Domain Controller
 Difficult to install
correctly (dev’s usually
don’t know)
 Slows down
environment

Single Workstation
Option 1
VM 1 – AD, SQL, SP
VM 2 – OWA, WFM
Option 2
VM 1 – AD, SP
VM 2 – SQL, OWA, WFM

Key Decisions
 DNS, DHCP and other network considerations
 Cross-service Integration
 Performance
 Managing VMs& Policies
 Remote access
 File shares for Dev Tools
 Script & Component Library
 Windows & SharePoint Updates
 Visual Studio Updates

Do you clone your VM’s or
create many copies from
scratch?
Question

VM – Cloning
 Easily copy a VM to
another location with all
the software installed
 Fast solution when
another person need to
join the project
 Hard to manage &
identify copied VMs
 which one is the right one
 Same hostnames
 (SP doesn’t like
renaming)
 IP conflicts
 Does not work with a
centralised domain
PROs CONs

VM – Recreating
 You have a clean
machine built from
scratch
 No IP conflicts
 New domain
 New farm
 Fresh SQL
 Takes more time to
create
 You have to install/copy all
the tools and updates
needed
 You have to configure all
the services
 You have to assign
permissions if needed
PROs CONs

Our approach
 Automate provisioning & installation
 Automate settings
 Use templates

Our Recommended Practices
 “Thin” workstations – no desktop/my documents
 Prevents data loss
 Improves security
 Loopback check
 Stop Windows Updates
 Add Shortcuts (14, 15 hive)
 Windows priority– programs or background services
 Limit logs
 Minimize components & services
 Avoid development& test with the administrator account
 Environment PATH variables
 Preinstall everything necessary
 Stop IntelliTrace & tweak ReSharper
 Stop unnecessary services like Antivirus & Defender

Our Recommended Practices
 “Design/discuss” the environment together
with the Project Leader
 Script Library
 Component Library
 Common Code
 Base Solution Templates

Environment usability
 Local administrator access
 Ease-out domain policies
 Development with the “Administrator” account
should be avoided
 PowerShell execution policy
 Background Info
 Educate about shortcuts, network share, files

Remove unnecessary VMs
 “data” inside the VM (desktop files)
 Files not committed/checked in
 Test/POC/Sample projects

Licensing
 Windows Server– 180 days
 SharePoint– Unlimited 
 SQL– Express or 180 days
 Visual Studio– 60 days
 Others…

Client demo/qa/stg environments
 We sometimes host environments for money

 Access from the internet
 *.contoso.com //if needed
 TFS Lab Manager: Automated deployment for
ALM requirements

Hardware recommendations for
VM’s
 CPU - Configure a 1-to-1 mapping of virtual processor
to logical processors for best performance - Be aware
of over commitment
 Memory - Ensure enough memory is allocated to
each virtual machine - Be aware of NUMA
 Disk - Be aware of underlying disk read/write
contention between different virtual machines to their
virtual hard disks. Use fixed disks, not dynamically
expanding. Separate on different disks.
 Integration - Ensure that integration components
(HV/VM) are installed on the virtual machine
 Time Synchronization – Be sure time is
synchronized always with Domain Controller

Hardware Costs
 CPU– Intel Core I7
4-core 3.4GHz HT
 RAM– 16GB DDR3
 HDD– 1TB
 SSD – 128GB
 Monitors
 ~1500 USD
 CPU - E5-2620 6-
core 2.1 GHz HT
 RAM – 64GB ECC
 HDD – 4x1TB WD
BE RAID10
 ~2300 USD
Workstation Server

Environment Automation
 Define what templates you need based on the projects
 Sysprep VM templates
 Group Policy Objects – Firewalls, RDP, Local Admins,
File Shares, WSUS, Certificates, Homepages etc.
 AD Accounts creation
 DNS Forwarders
 Install and configure SQL
 Install and configure SharePoint
 Install and configure Visual Studio
 Other software and automation tasks
 ULS, Fiddler, ILSpy, SP Designer etc.

Automating QA – TFS + Lab Manager

Testing Architecture
VM Template Library SCVMM Environment Standard Environment
VM Template 2VM Template 1
Test Agent Test Agent Test AgentTest AgentVMMAgent
Web Server
VM
Database
Server
VM
VM Host Web Server Database
Server
Test AgentTest Agent
Team Foundation Server
System Center Virtual Machine
Manager (SCVMM)
Team Build
Test Controller

Our choices & solutions
 Environment mix:
 1 environment per project per person
 Team environment with dev VMs for each
developer & shared services
 Scripted deployment& installation
 File share for dev tools, scripts, etc.
 Distributed source control
 Client demo environments
 Separate SCVMM clouds for Dev/Staging and
Production Environments
 Dev/Staging in an isolated network

NON-DOMAIN MEMBERS
DNS Server
Domain:
onebitsoftware.net
2 way transitive trust with conditional forwarders
Other Production
Servers
Domain:onebitsoftware.net Domain:onebitdev.test
Domain A - SharePoint
Environment - 1 Tier
Domain B – SharePoint
Environment - 3 Tier
DevTools
SP – Single Server
AD + SQL + SP + VS
SP-APP SP-WFE
AD+SQL
Workstation 1 Workstation 2 Workstation 3
Reverse Proxy
Http://sp.onebitsoftware.net
RDP or VMPortal
SP – Single Server
AD + SQL + SP + VS
Domain C - SharePoint Environment
- 1 Tier
Hyper-V
hosts
Other Dev
Servers
Forwarders to the ISP DNS Servers
Google DNS Servers
Root hints
Forwarders to the
onebitdev.test DNS
Forwarders to the
onebitdev.test DNS
Non-secure and secure
dynamic updates
Forwarders to the
onebitdev.test DNS
DNS Server
Domain: onebitdev.test
Howwedoit

• SCVMM – How we use it
• Web Administration– Create ShrarePoint
Dev Environment 1Tier
• VM Templates – Syspreped OSs
• Service Templates
• Review of PowerShell scripts– Variables
(User input), Scripts (Functions and
help), Email Notifications (show emails)
DEMO: What We Do – SCVMM +
PowerShell

Thank you! Any questions?
 radi@sharepoint.bg
 o.guglev@onebitsoftware.net
Radi Atanassov
Ognyan Guglev

Practical management of development & QA environments for SharePoint 2013

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