Configuring SQL Server for a successful SharePoint Server Deployment Haaron Gonzalez Solution Architect & Consultant Microsoft MVP SharePoint Server

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Agenda  SharePoint  Features  History  Server Architecture  Topologies  Service Applications  Requirements  Recommendations  Configuration  Optimizations  Best Practices Hashtag #SQLSat449

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Server Architecture

< 10K Users More Workloads More Resources < 10M Items <100 Users Evaluation Very Light And Simple Workload < 1,000 Users Simple Workload Small Content Fault Tolerance More & More Users More Workloads More Usage Large Content Multiple Index Partitions Advanced Routing Evolution of Topology Routing & Caching Front-End Batch Processing Database Crawl Query SearchSpecialized Schematic Diagram: Machines could be virtual or physical. Topologies are rough estimates.

A Look at a SharePoint Farm with All Components Distributed Cache Workflow Manager Query Processing Front End Services Distributed Cache Workflow Manager Query Processing Front End Services Distributed Cache Workflow Manager Query Processing Front End Services Analytics Crawl Admin Back End Services Content Processing Analytics Crawl Admin Back End Services Content Processing

Web tier Application tier Database tier Web servers with query component Database server with: Central Administration configuration and content databases Content databases Search administration database Crawl database Property database Application servers with: Central Administration Search administration component Crawl component Load balanced or routed requests Web and Application Servers: Single Server Farms Minimum Hardware Requirements Processor: 64-bit, 4 cores RAM: Single server installation – 24GB WFE or app server in a three-tier farm – 12GB Hard disk: 80 GB free for system drive Maintain 2x free space as available RAM

Database Servers Minimum Hardware Requirements Processor: 64-bit, 4 cores for “small” deployments 64-bit, 8 cores for “medium” deployments RAM: 8 GB for “small” deployments 16 GB for “medium” deployments RAM depends on usage models & data size Hard disk: 80 GB free for system drive SP Data Storage dependent on corpus size, performance requirements, etc. Web tier Application tier Database tier Web servers with query component Database server with: Central Administration configuration and content databases Content databases Search administration database Crawl database Property database Application servers with: Central Administration Search administration component Crawl component Load balanced or routed requests

Recommendations

Dedicated SQL Server named instances  One instance for all the databases  Multiple instances for each type  Services  Content  Search  Collation Latin1_General_CI_AS_K S_WS

Data Directories  Don’t use C:\ to store SQL Server data directories, use other volumes  Data root directory  User database directory  User Database log directory  Temp DB directory  Temp DB log directory

Naming convention  More than 20 databases to begin with:  Farm  Service Applications  Content  [ENV]_[Type]_[Name]

Set Max Degree of Parallelism  Set the max degree of parallelism option to 1 (MAXDOP)  Setting the max degree of parallelism option to 1 may boost performance and this setting suppresses parallel plan generation.

Configure Maximum Memory Settings  Restrict the amount of memory SQL Server can access and to make sure that the operating system has enough memory to prevent from paging  The recommended setting for SQL Server max server memory would be the Total Server Memory – 4 GB (for Operating System).

Set database auto grow and initial sizes settings  Initial Size MB / LOG – 125 MB  Auto growth 250 MB / 50 MB

SQL Alias  Configure SharePoint using a SQL Alias to point to the actual SQL Server

SharePoint Install Account  a.k.a SP_Install or SP_Admin should have the following roles:  dbcreator  securityadmin

SPDocKit  Use SharePoint Documentation Toolkit to generate a Best Practices Analyzer report and evaluate:  Data partitions that holds databases should have an allocation unit size of 64k (in most cases) to get the best performance from SQL server.  You should put TempDB on a separate (faster) drive to boost performance because this database is I/O intensive.  Logs for your databases shouldn’t be on same drive as the database files, again for performance reasons.  MAXDOP must be set to 1 for SharePoint to work normally.  You should restrict the minimum and maximum memory values for your SQL server.  Do not enable auto-create statistics on a SQL instance that hosts SharePoint databases because is not supported.  Use reasonable initial settings for your SharePoint databases, especially the growth value (the default is 5 MB).

Resources  Best practices for SQL Server in a SharePoint Server farm  us/library/hh292622(v=office.15).aspx us/library/hh292622(v=office.15).aspx

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