Ben Curry - CISSP, SharePoint Server MVP

SharePoint Planning and Capacity Tool Beta

The solutions team has released a marvelous Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server 2007 modeling add-on for the System Center Capacity Planner 2007. It is a pre-sales and design tool targeted at architects and administrators who need to quickly identify basic hardware and software needs for an implementation. There are many benefits to the tool, but the following list is a quick overview of what to expect:

1. Easy to use modeling wizard
2. Pre-configured client profiles (light read, heavy read, light publishing, light collaboration, etc)
3. Pre-configured WAN links (Dial-up to OC3 156Mbps) with ability to change % available and latency
4. Pre-configured hardware (CPU/MEMORY/DISK/SAN)
5. Easy to add high availability in WFE Servers and SQL Server
6. Ability to run Simulation and test parameters such as WAN link latency for problems
7. Export to Microsoft Visio 2007 format

While it is a very nice tool, you should remember it is a planning tool. Nothing replaces real-world Visual Studio testing of an actual server farm before going 'live' (hold tight, I have an in-depth whitepaper coming on this for SharePoint Server and VSTT 2008 - ETA Jan 30). I will also be presenting a Stress Testing session of a SharePoint farm using VSTT at the SharePoint Conference 2008.

There are a few limitations to the tool, and some things are not intuitive (yet). It is still in Beta, so hopefully they are able to address these issues before RTM:

1. You cannot have more than 2TB per farm. This limitation probably came from the 2TB database limit for SQL Server clustering, but seeing as we can have ~100 content databases per Web application, the limit should be more like 200TB per Web App limit. I assume this is an oversight and will be fixed. I realize this is on the outer limits for a single database, but 2TB for a farm seems very small. Hey, I can buy 2TB at Best Buy now for under $1k! If this isn't resolved, simply calculate your storage the old fashioned way (Excel Spreadsheet)
2. You cannot define a SAN (storage area network) in the model wizard (creation time), only in the model editor (afterwords). No biggie, but don't beat your head against a wall trying to add it in the wizard, 'cause you can't.
3. You cannot model search impact, neither query nor crawling, with the tool. Therefore, you cannot model user profile imports either, because they are actually 'crawled', not imported. I have a whitepaper coming on using VSTT2008 to test query servers and index servers.
4. You cannot create custom WAN links. You CAN, however, guess.You can always choose one close and add/remove % used and latency to approximate.
5. You can export a single layered diagram to Visio. You CANNOT export a multi-layered diagram. Wouldn't that have been cool ? :-) If you want a multi-layered diagram, just export each diagram and link together manually.
6. WAN link modification isn't intuitive. I detail later in this blog how to change after-the-fact.
7. You cannot add latency to LAN components, only to WAN links. It would have been nice if we could add copper induced latency on firewalls, switches, routers, etc.

Using the Models for SharePoint

Ok, so you want to see the tool? The following walk-through explains the basics you need to know to create your first model and simulate a working scenario.

First, you need to download the System Center Capacity Planner 2007 Beta here. You also need to get the SharePoint Beta Models here. Load the SCCP tool first, then load your SharePoint Models. If you are only calculating collaboration activity, use the WSS v3 models. Use the SharePoint Server models when you will leverage the Publishing infrastructure. When opening the tool, you have the ability to choose either WSS or SharePoint Server, as seen in Figure 1. We are using SharePoint Server 2007 in this demo.

Figure 1

If you want to create a custom server or storage configuration, you can also do that from the home screen. Otherwise, you can create them later and replace default configurations in the farm. The next screen, Figure 2, allows you to create a new farm. The first farm should be your 'primary' server farm, to make things easier. Select 'Add SharePoint (MOSS) Farm in the top, right-hand corner. (I really hate the term 'MOSS', but they didn't ask me :-)) I suggest you not 'customize usage profiles' until you are familiar with the tool. If you already know you want to change the usage profile, select 'Customize Usage Profiles' before adding a SharePoint Farm. What's a Usage Profile? Basically, the usage profile window allows you to define the traffic 'mix' for each type of user. The default SharePoint Server profiles are 1. Average Collaboration 2. Light Collaboration 3. Heavy Collaboration 4. Average Publishing 5. Light Publishing 6. Heavy Publishing and 7. Light (read) Collaboration and 8. Light (read) Publishing. The last two are basically for anonymous access, but might also be for Intranet access.

Lastly, there is a 'Server Background Load' which essentially guesses at the WFE Server and SQL Server loads. The SQL Server has 'profile import' on or off, but I don't see how it can be accurate because we can't set the number of profiles, nor the update frequency. But, if you are importing profiles, I suppose On(1) wouldn't hurt. You can also define whether or not Indexing is on. It adds a static load to the farm index server (best I can tell).

Figure 2

After you have customized your Usage Profiles (or not, if you took my advice), you are ready to select the types of users and % thereof that will access this farm. Simply name your farm, select the number of clients and type of deployment, and select the % of users that are anonymous vs. authenticated. If you want to see the users in actual #s, select the 'Show Counts' hyperlink to change. These numbers must equal the total number of users, or you will get an error.

Figure 3

Next, you Can add one or many branch office profiles. If you are just trying to get a general overview of the model, you can build a single Branch profile and use it multiple times by selecting the 'Branch Office Count'. Otherwise, you should define a branch for each remote location. Doing the latter gives you more flexibility in simulation, AND allows you to export to Visio actual network and location names. Figure 4 shows how to add a branch office profile, and the two I added for testing. NOTE: you cannot add more than 10 Branch Offices.

Figure 4

After you have added your branch office profiles, you can move on to editing your WAN profiles. Slow down here...you can either set all of your branch office network settings at once, or specify each individually. Setting them individually allows you to edit the % available bandwidth now. There is no way to change latency at this point in time. You must do so after the wizard completes. This is shown in Figure 12. I submitted this as a bug and hope it gets added to the wizard (along with adding a SAN in the wizard). Figure 5 shows the selections when choosing a WAN connection.

Figure 5

After you have added your WAN connections, you can then select up to 3 CPU configurations. You can select up to three, but must make at least 1 selection. If you only have 1 or two processor configurations for your organization, either choose all three as the same hardware, or select 'unspecified' for the last two. You can add custom hardware profiles and change server hardware later. Figure 6 shows the list, and you will notice I added 'CPU Config 63' as a custom configuration. If you would like to add your own, with your own name, see Figure 9.

Figure 6

Next You can specify whether you need high availability for Web services (WFE Servers) and SQL Servers. I *think* the assumption is that all WFE Servers are Query Servers. I'll try to find out. You always want high availability on the WFE Servers and SQL Servers. You can select SQL Clustering, Mirroring, or T-log shipping for the back-end. You should also set the amount of content that will be stored in SQL Server. Unfortunately, the limit is 2TB, which is fairly limiting. I think this will be raised by RTM, but don't know for sure. I did suggest a 2TB per content database limit. I would like to see the ability to add multiple content databases and set sizes on those. The tool could then select one or more SQL instances based on the input. We'll see... Figure 7 shows the HA screen and database sizing.

Figure 7

Once you have entered your information, simply click 'Finish'. It will take you to the Global Topology screen. As you edit components in your model, be sure to verify your scope - Global Topology or Site Topology, as seen in the left hand navigation of Figure 8. If you want to know about a component in either Global or Site Topology', hover over the component with your mouse. Figure 8 shows where I am hovering over 'Branch Profile 1' Internet users and and seeing the details. You can also hover over a server in Site Topology and see the details such as memory and CPU.

Figure 8

Adding your hardware isn't intuitive at first, but definitely not difficult. To begin, select 'Hardware Editor' in the left hand (bottom) navigation, as seen in Figure 8. Then you have 3 choices:

1. Create a new computer by selecting 'New Computer'
2. Edit an existing farm computer by scrolling down and selecting an existing model farm machine.
3. Edit an existing custom computer configuration

Note that you cannot edit the tool's default computer configurations. You also cannot exceed 8 CPUs per machine. You CAN have up to two Quad Cores, or 4 Dual Cores. If you need more than 8 processors, you need to use Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite to perform your design anyway. Just choose one of these to get your basic design, and fine tune in VSTT. If you want to create a new one with a custom name, click 'new computer', then select the computer config under in the 'Configuration name' column. This allows you to rename the server to something you will recognize. I named mine below in Figure 9 'Standard Mindsharp Server 1'. You can create multiple hardware profiles and use them as necessary.

Figure 9

To change components after the fact, simply select them in either global or site topology, and edit by right-clicking on the component. THIS IS REALLY COOL! - You can right click on a server in Site Toplogy, and change server roles. That is, you can ADD or remove roles as needed. If you would like dedicated query servers, you can remove the WFE component and check only query. If you need another index server, same thing. you can also edit the hardware configuration of this box. Figure 10 shows the 'Edit server hardware configuration' screen for WFE1.

Figure 10

Because you cannot add a SAN with the modeling wizard, you must do so after the fact. In Site Topology, select 'Add a SAN' in the right navigation bar. You can add the disk array, SAN switch interconnect count and speed. But, you cannot add custom Disk Arrays.

Figure 11

To change the characteristics of a WAN link in Global Topology, single 'left click' the link, then 'right click' to edit. This is also very cool - you can change the uplink speeds, downlink speed, available uplink and downlink availability, and also the connection latency, as show in Figure 12.

Figure 12

As you can see, this is a very nice planning and design tool. Most of it is straight-forward, and I hope I pointed out the parts that are not. Just be sure you are in the correct topology window for the job. For example, editing WAN links should be done in 'Global Topology', and editing LAN links should be done in 'Site Topology'. If you find other cool stuff, or bugs in my blog, feel free to leave a comment. Remember, this is Beta, and should be even better in RTM.

Ben Curry, CISSP, SharePoint Server MVP

Mindsharp

http://mindsharpblogs.com/ben

http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/10623.aspx

posted on Sunday, January 06, 2008 4:06 PM