Copyright 2010. John Stover

Microsoft has some pretty good information posted about the hardware and software requirements necessary for SharePoint 2010.  I still get asked for real world, or ‘best practices’, recommendations all the time.  Like everyone else, I want to get the best performance for the best price.  It’s difficult to strike the balance between ‘good enough’ and ‘optimized’.

A large majority of the SharePoint projects that I work on end up being small-ish SharePoint farms (between 2 and 8 servers).  Due to the licensing required for Windows, SQL Servers, and SharePoint servers, most organizations do try to get by with as few servers as possible, yet still want the best possible performance.  The most common configuration that I see in the SharePoint world involves a single dedicated SharePoint server and a single dedicated SQL Server.  From there, organizations usually first add another SharePoint server, then a 3rd SharePoint server, then a second SQL Server, and then the sky is literally the limit.

Yes, virtualization is fully supported by Microsoft.  Virtualization is not at all new but is one of the biggest IT advancements, maybe ever.  I’m pretty sure that IBM was one of the earliest pioneers of this ‘pseudo machine’ concept in the mid 1960’s.  How’s that for a ‘new technology’ that is nearly 50 years old?  Virtualization for SharePoint isn’t new either, but it is still gaining a comparatively slower adoption than other systems.  Once you do decide that virtualization is the way for you, the next logical question should be ‘What virtualization platforms are supported for SharePoint 2010?’ 

Of course, Microsoft’s own virtualization platform is supported (Hyper-V).  Most people don’t realize that Microsoft will also provide support if you are running an approved virtualized environment.  The current vendors that have approved virtualized environments for running Windows 2008 Server R2 are (in no particular order):

• VMWare (ESX and vSphere)
• Cisco (WAAS Virtual Blades)
• HITACHI (Virtualization Manager / Virtage)
• Citrix Systems (XEN Server)
• Red Hat (Virtualization Hypervisor)
• Novell (SuSE)
• Riverbed Technology (Steelhead Appliance)
• Stratus Technologies (Stratus Avance)

Of course, you can also run Oracle VirtualBox (which is FREE), though this is not an officially supported virtualization vendor registered with Microsoft’s Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).

Should you use SharePoint?  Should you use SharePoint for your public facing website?  Is SharePoint a good CMS?  Does SharePoint have shortcomings as a web content management platform?  Is SharePoint overkill?  Is SharePoint design friendly?

The SharePoint debate is definitely a heated one.  Some people love SharePoint.  Some folks hate SharePoint.  Some people that have never seen or use SharePoint even hate SharePoint.  Some people hate Microsoft and thus by the transitive property also hate SharePoint.

Platform Argument.  SharePoint is a more than just a single web site tool.  This is a great platform that you can use build your Intranet, Extranet, private social network, professional network, search engine tools, and public facing website.  Once you and your team know a little bit about SharePoint, you can focus on doing your job and not learning and supporting niche applications and tools.

Capability.  SharePoint is extremely feature rich.  SharePoint is documents, pages, images, videos, discussions, blogs, wikis, calendars, sites, subsites, security, workflow, search, dashboards, and much more.  The fact that you can construct so many types of solutions without ever writing code is a powerful feature in itself.  If you do write code, then the SharePoint world is your oyster.

Speed of Innovation.  SharePoint is bigger than Microsoft.  There are literally thousands of options available products, add-ons, solution starters, templates, samples, examples, and even source code (see CodePlex).  Even companies that are competitive with Microsoft develop products that ‘tie in’ to SharePoint – even IBM.

Availability of Information.  Do a search for “whatever solution you are thinking about using”.  Then do a search for SharePoint.  Then go to Amazon.  Search for books related to your subject.  Then search for books related to SharePoint.  If you want to become completely self-sufficient (and not rely on the vendor/consultant/IT guy) – there is no platform that has more information available than SharePoint.

Community.  There are more developers, end users, architects, consultants, companies, vendors, Microsoft partners working around SharePoint than any other solution or platform I have every seen.  The SharePoint community exists both online and in person!  There are user groups that regularly meet and talk SharePoint in every major metro area – and many international!  The single most important facet of the community is welcoming attitude of the SharePoint community.  Join any group and participate, or just sit back and watch.  The community is extremely helpful.

Conferences.  There are so many conferences every year that I can’t even keep an accurate count.  Even if the conference isn’t dedicated to SharePoint, there are SharePoint tracks or sessions.

Stability.  I’ve worked with a lot of niche applications that have brand new releases and upgrades every few months.  Wow that sounds exciting!  In an enterprise environment where I’m trying to focus on the business at hand (whether that’s creating content, selling products, providing services, fund raising, representing members, or managing our community), the last thing that I want to do is spend time, resources, and money on continual upgrades.  SharePoint’s major versions are released every few years.  If I do want to continually upgrade and provide new features – I do have the speed of innovation of the entire community.

Speed to Launch.  One of the arguments that I have heard is “I can have a WordPress site up and running in under an hour.”  I’ve always found that amusing…  Are you really going to launch your corporate web site or Intranet or ANY site with that little planning?  Guess what.  If you want to, you can do the same with SharePoint.  There are tons of hosting providers that automatically provision your site and have it turned on and working with any selectable template immediately – even Microsoft.

Marketability.  I’m talking directly to the techies here.  I know many IT folks that have resisted SharePoint.   The best advice I can give any IT person out there is to learn SharePoint.  Take a few moments and peruse the job listings.  Really.  Go to Monster and look around.  SharePoint is an extremely in-demand skill set and has been for years.  From commercial organizations to non-profits and associations to the federal government, SharePoint is in use, and SharePoint experts are in-demand.

Return on Investment.  This is one that gets thrown around a lot – largely because of rumors and suppositions.  One of the most ill informed arguments I’ve heard is that SharePoint is expensive and open source is free!  This final point is one that I could spend entire days discussing.  Here are a couple of high level points.  First, SharePoint Foundation is free.  If you are running Windows Server 2008, you can download SharePoint and use it for … wait for it … FREE!    Okay, but let’s be realistic.  I know that you’ve heard this before – nothing is free.  You have to pay for servers, bandwidth, resources, skills, education, support – regardless of the technology.  If you run any technology platform – you pay for it.   Every preceding item in this blog post also influence ROI.  Availability of information, stability, education costs, capabilities, stability, recurring investments.  Also, what happens when angry IT guy that put in the LAMP solution quits or goes out of business.  Who, where, how are you going to get support?  Is the community and ecosystem big enough to support you in a year?  What about in 5 years?

Technology decisions are complex.  Do I think SharePoint is a good fit for every organization?  Yes!  (just kidding).  I think we can all agree that there is no single technology that is a perfect fit for every organization for every solution.  I think every organization should give serious consideration to the big picture when selecting technology platforms.  Do you want a single platform or individual niche applications?  Do you want commercially supported tools or open source (or a hybrid)?  While I don’t work for Microsoft, I’ve never heard of an IT manager getting fired for choosing Microsoft as a technology platform.

One of the SharePoint features that many end users and site administrators have a hard time understanding is the concept of Audience Targeting.  In fact, I received a question recently asking me to describe how “Audience Targeting” differs from the authentication needed for features like “Collaborative Workspaces”.

The short answer is that Audience Targeting is not security.  Audience Targeting is a type of personalization.  Personalization is not security.

Authentication is the process by which a unique identifier (such as a username and password pair) is used to validate the identity of the user.  The authentication is then used to authorize the requested access, such as gaining access to the Team Workspace areas, working on documents, accessing protected areas of content, etc. 

SharePoint provides the ability for SharePoint Administrators to segment users into logical groupings called ‘Audiences’.  An audience could be ‘new members’.  An audience could be ‘everyone who lives in Dallas’.   Audience Targeting is a way to flag content to be highlighted to authenticated users that are part of a specific Audience.  While Audience Targeting may seem like a complex topic, it can really be thought of as a ‘filter’.  Audience Targeting can be used to show an advertisement, a graphic, a video, a link, or any piece of content to a specific group of users (in the audience).  This does not prevent other users from finding the content (though other links or searching) – it just highlights the content for the targeted users.

To make matters even more confusing for folks, you can actually use SharePoint Security Groups and Authentication Groups (such as AD Domain Groups or custom Roles) as audiences as well – extremely useful but confusing to some nevertheless.

Canon announced the Canon 60D, which B&H details as shipping in September.    The 60D is the replacement for the 50D, should be cheaper than the 7D by $500, but lacks the magnesium body and has only a single DIGIC 4 processor.  The flip out LCD is ‘neat’, but I don’t think I have a real need for that at all.  I’ll likely pass on this iteration and keep saving pennies for more glass like the one of the lenses below…

Canon EOS 60D DSLR Digital Camera

• 18MP APS-C CMOS Sensor
• 1920 x 1080 HD Video Capture
• SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Card Slot
• DIGIC 4 Image Processor
• 5.3 fps Continuous Shooting
• Works with all Canon EF and EF-S Lenses
• Vari-Angle Clear View 3.0″ Flip-Out LCD
• ISO 6400 – Expandable to 12800
• HDMI Output to HDTV
• In-Camera Editing Options

Also of EXTREME interest to me is the new 300mm f/2.8 IS II USM and the 400mm f/2.8 IS II USM.          

Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM Telephoto Lens

• L-Series Optics
• Optical Image Stabilization – 3 Modes
• Fast Ultra-Sonic Motor (USM) Autofocus
• Full-time Manual Focusing Functionality
• High-speed CPU
• Autofocus Stop Feature
• Dust and Water Resistant
• Fluorite Glass f/ Improved Image Quality
• Protective Fluorine Lens Coating
• Security Slot for Wire-Type Locks

Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM Telephoto Lens

I get asked for SharePoint server recommendations nearly every day.  Like nearly all ‘best practices’, there is no single answer for perfect server recommendations.  The answer always seems to be, “It depends.”  What is your budget?  How many users?  What type of users?  What type of activity are the users doing?  What type(s) of SharePoint sites are you running?  Web Content Management sites?  Team Sites?  BI tools?   If you look online for SharePoint 2010 farm configurations, you will see incredible descriptions of server clusters, farms, SAN configurations, hundreds of GBs of memory, incredible RAID configurations, clusters of servers for every imaginable service and other configuration scenarios that most nonprofits could never afford.  If you want some great fun with environment configuration recommendations, download the HP Sizer for Microsoft SharePoint 2010.  I recently ran a scenario through the HP Sizer and got a recommendation for a 32 server environment with full details. 

Most of the nonprofits I work with don’t have the resources available for 32 new servers to run SharePoint.  Is there anything you can do on a shoestring budget to maximize performance with your SharePoint environment?  Absolutely!  You can run SharePoint on a single server.  It doesn’t matter which version of SharePoint, either.  You can run SharePoint 2010 Standard, SharePoint 2010 Enterprise, SharePoint Foundation, Windows SharePoint Services, and MOSS 2007 all on a single server.  Will it be the absolute best performing SharePoint environment ever?  Probably not.  But you can run an effective and efficient solution on a single server.

If you are running SharePoint on a single server, there are some things that you should take into account.

1. Dedicate your server to running SharePoint.  I’ve seen a variety of configurations where a single server was used to run custom apps, ColdFusion, PHP, Media Streaming Services, Exchange, and a host of other things.   Sure you can do this, but should you?
2. Stop unused services.  Do you really need the audio services running on Server? Stop and disable any of the services that you are not using.
3. Add RAM.  RAM is cheap.  Whether virtual or physical – allocate memory to your server.  I run 6GB dedicated to the VM on my laptop – and I’m the only user. 
4. Plan you drives and partitions.  There are heated debates over partitions, RAID systems and drive configurations on the web.  Like RAM – more is better.  If you are purchasing a single machine to run SharePoint – hardware is cheaper than software at this level.  Purchasing a flexible server with multiple SAS drive controllers and fast drives gives you flexibility to run different RAID configurations (RAID 10 is faster than RAID 5).  Running 3 partitions on the same physical drive is slower than running 3 separate drives.  Want to know something interested – partitioning segments of a drive and leaving the drive largely empty often gives the best performance.  If you have a 1TB drive and put a 250GB partition on it and ONLY use the 250GB – you will get better performance than if you use the whole drive.   Sure you are ‘wasting’ 750GB worth of space, but this recommendation is about getting optimal performance from a single server – not conserving drive space.
5. Plan SQL.  If you are using SQL Server Express (which is the default version used during a stand-alone install), then there is very little configuration control you have using the install wizard.   If you are using a Standard version of SQL Server 2008, then you have a ton of control over configuration options.  You can split data, logs, temp db, OS, and page files all to different drive arrays.  If you dedicate controllers/drive arrays to each of these operations then you will gain significant performance gains from SQL.

As you can see, there are tons of things you can do to optimize performance for a single server environment.  All of these steps should be considered with multi-server environments as well.

To paraphrase (and completely rewrite an old saying), your environment is only as fast as the most restrictive bottleneck.

Well, maybe not all you can eat – but all you can fly for a month for one price!  http://www.jetblue.com/aycj/  If you’ve wanted to fly around the country but didn’t think it was affordable, this is a really good deal.  If you wanted to save even more money, you should try Couch Surfing to save on the overnight stays…

Surprised me with the marketing tagline: The new Dell Streak.  More than a smartphone.  More than a tablet. 

While it’s interesting that Dell has a phone that is based on Google Android, what I actually find most interested about this is that it uses Gorilla Glass.  For those that don’t know, Corning invented Gorilla glass back in 1962 as a super strong glass.  It has pretty much sit lifeless as a product ahead of its time and didn’t have any real applications until recently.  Gorilla glass is perfect for tablets, phones, flat screen televisions because of it’s strength and durability. 

I know that Dell has been in the PDA market for years, and I also knew that the Dell super megastore has sells phones.  The Dell Streak is finally here!  Looks like you can have one for only $549.99, and only $299.99 with a 2 year contract on AT&T.  Another funny thing is that the Dell phone isn’t listed on the Dell store! 

Directly from the Dell Streak site:

Introducing the Dell Streak. The perfectly-sized, go-anywhere entertainment, social connection and navigation device.

• Widescreen display optimally designed for mobile web, video and movies
• Integrated social networking widgets and apps, plus tons of apps through the Android Marketplace
• Crystal-clear damage-resistant Gorilla^®  glass screen
• Google Maps^TM  with navigation and text-to-voice, turn-by-turn directions with Street View
• Multitasking Google Android OS that give you the freedom to do what you want