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SharePoint 2013 PLA

Prepared for

Microsoft Services

Version 22 Final

Prepared by

Microsoft Services

Operations Guide

Microsoft Services MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, our provision of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property. The descriptions of other companies’ products in this document, if any, are provided only as a convenience to you. Any such references should not be considered an endorsement or support by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot guarantee their accuracy, and the products may change over time. Also, the descriptions are intended as brief highlights to aid understanding, rather than as thorough coverage. For authoritative descriptions of these products, please consult their respective manufacturers. © 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Any use or distribution of these materials without express authorization of Microsoft Corp. is strictly prohibited. Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. ii Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final Prepared by Microsoft Services

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.

Page 13 Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final Prepared by Microsoft Services

• 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.

• System Administration

Outline standard methods for doing administrative tasks, such as database administration

and site administration.

• Security 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.

• System Troubleshooting

Outline methods for dealing with unexpected issues, including steps to prevent similar

issues in the future.

• Service Level Agreements

Maintain a set of goals for the performance of your IT systems and regularly measure

performance against these goals.

• Documentation

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

Page 14 Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final Prepared by Microsoft Services

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:

• System Response Time

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.

• Storage Capacity

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.

Page 16 Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final Prepared by Microsoft Services

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:

• Availability

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.)

• Reliability

This is a measure of the time between failures of a system and is sometimes expressed as

mean (or average) time between failures (MTBF).

• Time to Repair

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:

• Monitoring

Examining when and for how long services are unavailable.

• Reporting

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.

• Improvement

Page 17 Operations Guide, SharePoint 2013 PLA, Version 22 Final Prepared by Microsoft Services

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:

• Test Team

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.

• Network Team

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.

• Security Team

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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.

• Raise a change request

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:

•  Hardware

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.

•  Software

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.

•  Standard Builds

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