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SharePoint 2013 PLA
Prepared for
Microsoft Services
Version 22 Final
Prepared by
Microsoft Services
Operations Guide
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Microsoft Services iv Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final
Microsoft Services v Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final
Microsoft Services vii Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final
Microsoft Services viii Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final
Page 10 Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final Prepared by Microsoft Services Introduction 1.1 Product Line Architecture (PLA)
The SharePoint 2013 Product Line Architecture (PLA) is a predefined prescriptive architecture to
better enable customers to deploy SharePoint 2013 in a highly reliable, available, and supported
manner. The information is compiled based on recommended practices and experience from
Microsoft Services and SharePoint Product Group. The PLA guidance is aligned with the SharePoint
Online service description and service levels to better enable cloud migrations in the future.
1.2 Audience
The SharePoint PLA Operations Guide document has been prepared for a technical audience and is
intended for the IT personnel responsible for the SharePoint Server 2013 PLA deployment.
Page 11 Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final Prepared by Microsoft Services Microsoft Operations Framework
The Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) 4.0 is a collection of integrated leading practices,
principles, and activities that provide comprehensive guidelines for achieving reliability in IT
solutions and services.
MOF provides question-based guidance that enables you to determine what is needed for your
organization now, as well as activities that will keep the IT organization running efficiently and
effectively in the future.
MOF 4.0 supports the integration of any policies, tasks, or activities based on other frameworks
(such as ITIL, COBIT, and ISO 20000) with the Microsoft platform.
The guidance in MOF encompasses all of the activities and processes involved in managing an IT
service: its conception, development, operation, maintenance, and—ultimately—its retirement.
MOF organizes these activities and processes into service management functions (SMFs), which are
grouped together in phases that mirror the IT service lifecycle. Each SMF is anchored within a
lifecycle phase and contains a unique set of goals and outcomes that support the objectives of that
phase. An IT service’s readiness to move from one phase to the next is confirmed by management
reviews (MRs), which ensure goals are achieved in an appropriate fashion and IT’s goals are aligned
with the goals of the organization.
2.1 MOF & SharePoint 2013
It’s important to understand the connection between sound operational practices, sound
procedures, and a healthy SharePoint Server 2013 infrastructure. Well-documented, thorough
operational processes and procedures ensure all the components in an organization's environment,
on which SharePoint Server relies, are managed efficiently and effectively through all the design,
deployment, and supporting phases.
Changes to the components of an organization's infrastructure, such as firmware updates to
routers and firewall rules changes, on which SharePoint Server relies can result in an unexpected
outage. Modification in these areas can happen without the involvement of the organization's
SharePoint team. By using MOF-based processes to help make sure there is documentation of
these service interdependencies, an organization can help minimize the chances of preventable
outages and reduce the impact of scheduled changes.
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- Capacity and Availability Management
Define how and what to measure to predict future capacity requirements and to report
about the capacity, reliability, and availability of your systems. You must ensure that servers
that are running SharePoint Server are sized to handle the load on the system, and that
unplanned downtime is kept under the levels defined in the SLA. Additionally, you will have
to upgrade hardware to continue to meet the defined requirements.
- Change Management and Configuration Management
Control how changes are made to your IT systems. This should include testing, application
feedback and contingency plans, documentation of all changes, and approval from
management if problems occur. Keep a record of your software and hardware assets and
their configurations.
Outline standard methods for doing administrative tasks, such as database administration
and site administration.
Have a detailed policy and plan, which protects data confidentiality, data integrity, and data
availability of your IT infrastructure. This includes day-to-day activities and tasks that are
related to maintaining and adjusting the IT security infrastructure.
Outline methods for dealing with unexpected issues, including steps to prevent similar
issues in the future.
Maintain a set of goals for the performance of your IT systems and regularly measure
performance against these goals.
Document standard procedures, such as configuration information and lessons learned, and
make them available to the staffs that need them. As changes to the configuration are
made, update the documentation accordingly.
3.1 Capacity and Availability Management
The purpose of capacity management and availability management is to measure and control
system performance. We recommend that you implement capacity management and availability
management procedures so that you can measure and control system performance. You need to
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know whether the system is available and whether it can handle the current and the projected
demands by setting baselines and monitoring the system to look for trends.
Capacity Management
Capacity management involves planning, sizing, and controlling service capacity to ensure that the
minimum performance levels specified in your SLA are exceeded. Good capacity management
ensures that you can provide IT services at a reasonable cost and still meet the levels of
performance defined in your SLAs with the client. These criteria can include the following:
This is the measured time that the system takes to do typical actions. Examples include, the
time for a client to receive the “last byte” of a SharePoint site homepage, the time that
Windows allowed to do a full backup of a SharePoint content database, or the time taken to
download a specific document from a document library.
This is the capacity of a storage system, whether it is a content database, a backup device, or a
local drive. Examples include the maximum amount of storage space to be provided per site
and the amount of time that backups should be stored before being overwritten.
Adjusting capacity is frequently a case of ensuring that enough physical resources are available,
such as disk space and network bandwidth. Table 1 lists typical resolutions for capacity-related
issues.
Table 1 Typical resolutions for capacity-related issues
Issue Possible resolution
Slow logon to SharePoint sites Introduce another domain controller to the site
or increase network bandwidth
Slow retrieval of documents from a SharePoint
site
Ensure an appropriate amount of bandwidth is
available through to the end user, and be
aware of the maximum size of documents
allowed in SharePoint Server.
Recovery of a site from backup takes too long. Split your site collections across multiple
content databases or use quotas to decrease
the maximum size allowed for sites.
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availability data. Even if you do not have such formal requirements, it is a good idea to at least
know how frequently a system has failed in a certain time period, for example, system
availability in the last 12 months and how long it took to recover from each failure. This
information will help you measure and improve your team’s effectiveness in responding to a
system failure. It can also provide you with useful information if there is a dispute.
Measures related to availability are as follows:
This is typically expressed as the time that a system or service is accessible compared to the
time that it is down. It is typically expressed as a percentage. (You may see references to
“three nines” or “five nines”. These refer to 99.9% or 99.999% availability.)
This is a measure of the time between failures of a system and is sometimes expressed as
mean (or average) time between failures (MTBF).
This is the time taken to recover a service after a failure has occurred and is sometimes
expressed at mean (or average) time to repair (MTTR).
Availability, reliability, and time to repair are related as follows:
Availability = (MTBF – MTTR) / MTBF
For example, if a server fails twice over a six-month period and is unavailable for an average of
20 minutes, the MTBF is three months or 90 days and the MTTR is 20 minutes. Therefore,
Availability = (90 days – 20 minutes) / 90 days = 99.985%
Availability management is the process of ensuring that availability is maximized and kept
within the parameters defined in SLAs. Availability management includes the following
processes:
Examining when and for how long services are unavailable.
Availability figures should be regularly provided to management, users, and operations
teams. These reports should highlight trends and identify areas that are doing well and
areas that require attention. The report should summarize compliance with targets set in
the SLAs.
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If availability does not meet targets that are defined in the SLAs or where the trend is
toward reduced availability, the availability management process should plan remedial
steps. This should include working with other responsible teams to highlight reasons for
outages and to plan remedial actions to prevent a recurrence of the outages.
Capacity and availability measurements are repetitive tasks that are ideally suited to automated
tools and scripts such as Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager, which is discussed
later in this document.
3.2 Change Management
Changes to your IT environment are inevitable. Changes include new technologies, systems,
applications, hardware, tools, processes, and changes in roles and responsibilities. An effective
change management system lets you introduce changes to your IT environment quickly and
with minimal service disruption. A change management system brings together the teams
involved in modifying a system. For example, when deciding to take advantage of the Office
Online, there are implications. This is separate server software that enables users to read and
edit documents within a browser when integrated with SharePoint. The implementation of this
service, after you have gone into production, requires the involvement of a several teams:
This team load-tests the Office Web Apps Server on a test server, in the process providing
information on the expected usage patterns and expected performance of the productions
servers.
- SharePoint Administrators
This team determines the deployment strategy and scripts the installation where possible.
The team is responsible for ensuring that the change is deployed on the production
environment and, it is responsible for administration afterwards. The team must understand
the effect of the changes and incorporate them in procedures before the changes are put
into production.
This team is responsible for changes to firewall rules, which allow access from the Internet
to the Office Web Apps servers if required. The team is also responsible for ensuring that
the amount of available bandwidth can support the additional load.
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The following example of change management examines how different teams interact and the
actions that are performed when a new service pack is deployed. These actions are organized
and managed by the change management process.
The security team has assessed the latest service pack and confirmed that it resolves a
possible vulnerability in the production system. The team raises a change request to have
the new service pack applied to all servers running SharePoint Server.
- Service pack release notes review
The SharePoint administrator team reviews the service pack release notes to identify the
effect on the system.
- A series of lab tests is done
The SharePoint administrator team must perform test updates on a server in a non-
production environment to decide whether the service pack can be applied successfully
without affecting any of the installed applications and server systems. If there are third-
party or internally-created applications that interface with SharePoint Server in a production
environment, these should be also tested. These tests can also be used to estimate the time
required to perform the upgrades.
- Users are informed of the outage
The SharePoint administrator team, communications team, or user help desk informs all
affected users about the planned maintenance cycle and how long the service will be
unavailable.
- A full backup of SharePoint is performed before the upgrade
The SharePoint administrator team must ensure that there is a valid backup in place to be
able to revert to the original system state if the service pack installation fails. It is
recommended that the backup be restored to a standby server to have this system readily
available if there are problems.
- The service pack is deployed
The SharePoint administrator team does the installation during the planned maintenance
cycle.
Page 20 Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final Prepared by Microsoft Services Managing the Timing of Changes
We recommend that you implement a procedure for scheduling changes to avoid disruptions in
overlapping sections of your work. For example, two teams may both be planning a minor
change to a system. One team may be applying a service pack while another team is installing a
custom Web Part that displays the weather in your location. Neither team is affected by the
changes that the other team is planning, nor each team may not necessarily know about
changes that the other team is planning. If both changes occurred at the same time, there
could be problems implementing the changes. Also, if there are issues after the changes have
been applied, for example if the weather Web Part fails, it may be difficult to decide which
change should be rolled back. There should be regular maintenance period’s set up between IT
and management to test the changes and accept them.
Configuration Management
Configuration management is the process of recording and tracking hardware and software
assets and system configuration information. It is generally used to track software licenses,
maintain a standard hardware and software build for client computers and servers, and define
naming standards for new computers. Configuration management generally covers the
following categories:
This category tracks the pieces of equipment that the IT organization owns, where
equipment is located, and who uses equipment. This information enables an organization to
plan and budget for upgrades, maintain standard hardware builds, report on the value of IT
assets for accounting purposes, and help prevent theft.
This category tracks software that is installed on each computer, the version numbers, and
where the licenses are held. This information helps plan upgrades, ensure that software is
licensed, and detect the existence of unauthorized (and unlicensed) software.
This category tracks the current standard build for the client computers and servers and
whether the client computers and servers meet this standard. The existence and
enforcement of standard builds helps support staff because the staff is required to maintain
only a limited number of versions of each piece of software.
- Service Packs and Hotfixes