Lessons from the Field: Setting up SharePoint on Azure

Setting up SharePoint 2013 on Azure:
Lessons from the Field
Zach Millis, Senior Consultant
imason inc, www.imason.com

The Azure Group: Infrastructure Focus
November 12, 2014

“A train, a database, bad
internet, and a small
farming town in Quebec.”

Agenda
 Quick overview of…
 Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks
 Microsoft Azure Storage
 Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
 Running SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure
 How to set up your environment
 Azure Traffic Manager
 Preview Portal: New SharePoint Server Farms option

Microsoft Azure Technical Overview

Overview of Microsoft Azure Virtual
Networks

Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks
Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks:
 Provides a logical boundary around a
group of VMs
 Allows Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines to
communicate with each other
Building Blocks:
 IP Addressing scheme (subnets)
 DNS server(s)
 VPN (optional)

Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks

Overview of Microsoft Azure
Storage

Microsoft Azure Storage
Types of storage:
 Blob *
 Table
 Queue
Replication Options:
 Locally redundant (3x)
 Geo-Redundant (6x) *

Microsoft Azure Storage – By the numbers…
 Each Storage account is limited to 5,000 IOPs
 Each Virtual Disk on a Standard VM is limited to 500 IOPs (300 for
basic)
Putting it together..
 ~10 VHDs max out a storage account

Microsoft Azure Storage – More numbers…
 SharePoint Servers would max out around 1,500 IOPs
 OS Disk
 Data Disk (Logs)
 Data Disk (Index)
 SQL Servers could use more (depending on configuration)
 OS Disk
 Data X # of disks
 Backups

Overview of Microsoft Azure Virtual
Machines

Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
Compute Instance
Name
Virtual Cores RAM Max Data Disks IOPS
Extra Small (A0) Shared 768 MB 1 1x500
Small (A1) 1 1.75 GB 2 2x500
Medium (A2) 2 3.5 GB 4 4x500
Large (A3) 4 7 GB 8 8x500
Extra Large (A4) 8 14 GB 16 16x500
A6 4 28 GB 8 8x500
A7 8 56 GB 16 16x500
Note: Standard Tier sizes above

Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines

“That cloud be changin’ like
wicked fast!”

Running SharePoint 2013 on
Microsoft Azure

Active Directory, Security
Active Directory
 Required for a SharePoint Farm (1+ SharePoint Servers)
 Standalone Domain (no VPN)
 Corporate Domain or One-way Trust (Azure VPN)
 Least-privilege accounts
Security
 Server Hardening
 Non-default ports, named SQL instances
 Always use SSL, with SHA-2 Certificates

SQL on Microsoft Azure
 High-Availability Support
 SQL Server Failover Cluster  Not Supported!
 AlwaysOn Availability Groups
 Note: Limited to a single Availability Group; High IO needs
 Multiple Standalone SQL Servers
 Use Aliases so you can scale out later
 Disk Layout
 What is supported?

SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure
Design:
 Plan your Azure Virtual Network topology
 Plan for your HA requirements
 Plan your SQL topology – how will you scale out?
 Plan your Azure Storage Accounts – how many IOPs do you need?
 Software Versions (Windows, SQL, SP, etc)
“Measure twice, cut once”

 What do you put on all those disks?
 Disk 1: SharePoint Logs, IIS Logs
 Disk 2: Program Files, SharePoint Index
 SQL
 Disk 1: Content DB 1 (mdf and ldf)
 Disk 2: Content DB 2 (mdf and ldf)
 Disk 3: System & Service Applications (non-Search)
 Disk 4: Search DBs
 Disk 5: TempDBs
 Disk 6: Backup files

App
SQL
AD/DNS
WFE
OS Data Data
OS Data Data
OS Data Data Data
OS Data

Other considerations
 Monitoring
 Detailed server monitoring (i.e. SCOM)
 Application monitoring (i.e. is www.yoursite.com up?)
 Patching
 WSUS
 SCCM
 Manually (Do *NOT* have Windows Update automatically install updates!)
 Backups
 SQL backups? Local disk backups?
 Standalone backup system?

“A 3am phone call… the
woes of Windows Update”

How to Set Up Your Environment

Setting Up Your Environment
Azure Provisioning
1. Create a new Azure subscription
2. Plan your network topology (subnets, IPs, etc)
3. Create virtual network
4. Create storage accounts
5. Create VMs
6. Add Data disks

AD & SQL Provisioning
1. Initialize & format data disks
2. Install AD/DNS on your DC
3. Promote it to a domain controller
4. Join servers to the domain
5. Download SQL binaries
6. Create Service Accounts
7. Install & configure SQL

SharePoint Setup
1. Install SharePoint
2. Patch SharePoint
3. Configure Farm
4. Create Web Application(s)
5. Configure Service Application(s)
6. Publish Externally
Note: You can use scripts to do this (http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com)

“A bad host, a LOT of
downtime, and one heck of
a Citrix Netscaler!”

What is Traffic Manager?
 Allows for routing of traffic to your site (WaaS or IaaS) based on
three options:
 Failover *
 Performance
 Weighted round-robin
 Leverages DNS CNAME records

Using Azure Traffic Manager for Automatic
Failover

Why should you use this?
 Allow for planned maintenance while still providing a static page
 Provide a semi-automated Failover to a maintenance page / “site is
down” page
 Note: You still need to know that something went wrong! Suggest using an
external / 3rd party monitoring system

Key Considerations for Traffic Manager
 Failover Scenarios:
 IIS Response code that is NOT 200
 This does not include:
 SQL is down (IIS still returns a 200)
 Any redirects (301/302 redirects)
 AD is down
 Etc
 Usually need to set this to a specific URL (i.e.
http://yoursite.com/Probe.aspx)

Provisioning a Full SharePoint
Server Farm in the new Azure Portal

New “SharePoint Server Farm”

SharePoint Server Farm Options
 High-Availability (9 servers)
 Two Web Front End Servers
 Two App Servers
 SQL AlwaysOn Cluster with file share witness
 Two Domain Controllers
 Non-HA (4 servers)
 Single WFE; Single App
 Single SQL; Single DC

SharePoint Server Farm Options
 All servers, accounts, DBs have a prefix
 i.e. “MySP”
 Can use different passwords for some of the
accounts
 A few clicks… some forms… and then it runs
 ~2hrs for non-HA Farm
 ~4hrs for HA Farm

SharePoint Server Farm Issues
 General:
 Single Storage Account for all VHDs
 OS Version is 2012 for SP, 2012R2 for everything else
 Azure Agent isn’t fully configurable
 WinRM enabled publicly by default
 SQL Setup
 SQL Version compatibility with SharePoint Version
 No SQL Alias
 SQL Data / Log files are on different disks

SharePoint Server Farm Issues
 SharePoint:
 Install & Farm Accounts are the only two used
 Secondary disk not used (although it is provisioned)
 Central Admin port not configurable; Published externally
 No Service Applications are provisioned

“I know I wrote a blog post
on that, but where is it?”

More reading!
 How to Fully Patch SharePoint 2013 with SP1: http://tinyurl.com/imas-patch
 Creating a SharePoint Server Farm in Azure: http://tinyurl.com/imas-spfarm
 Traffic Manager on Microsoft Azure: http://tinyurl.com/imas-trafficman
 Architecture of SharePoint 2013 Farms: Search Components and Tier
Performance: http://tinyurl.com/imas-spsearch

I just want the content!
 Available on Slide Share at 9pm EST tonight!
 http://www.slideshare.net/ZacharyMillis/lessons-from-the-field-setting-up-sharepoint-
on-azure
 http://tinyurl.com/tagif-Nov12
46 11/12/2014

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Lessons from the Field: Setting up SharePoint on Azure

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