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SharePoint 2016: New Farm Administrator Checklist

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Status: DRAFT

Below is a general checklist I use to help me stay focused when assuming duties as a farm administrator for a new customer.  I also use it as a useful guide when engaged in interviews, whether as the interviewer or the interviewee. 

  • Identify key staff
    • network admins
    • sysadmins
    • SharePoint admins
    • database admins
    • Hypervisor admins
    • IT managers
    • stakeholders (department leads, managers, directors) 
  • Identify customer initiatives
    • Immediate needs and goals
    • Mid/long term needs and goals
    • Urgent issues 
  • Identify SharePoint Farms
    • Number of farms and their network and physical locations
    • Topologies
    • Versions
    • Farm roles: production / staging / development
    • Type / usage / role (content, collaboration, records management, MySites, Legal, etc) 
    • Web application configuration and authentication methods (NT, Kerberos, forms, etc)
    • Patching methodology, status
  • Check Central Administration and become familiar with the farm's:
    • Health Report
    • Search status
    • Web applications and their configuration
    • Internal / external facing
    • Site collections per web application
    • Search Content Sources
    • Search Crawl Schedule
    • Crawl account
    • Managed accounts
    • Failed Job History
    • Service Applications and status
    • Services on Server and status
    • User Profile configuration, sync method: AD Import?
    • Patch status
    • Authentication methods (Windows: NTLM, Kerberos, Basic. Anonymous; Forms: LDAP, SQL Server, Custom; SAML)
    • Authentication Modes (Classic, Claims-based)
    • Installed farm solutions and status
    • Activated farm features
  • Check Site Collections and become familiar with:
    • Navigation
    • Installed site solutions
    • Site collection features listing and activation status
    • Style method: themes, master page, direct CSS
  • Remote into each farm server and become familiar with that server's:
    • Event logs
    • Memory installed
    • CPU
    • Memory and CPU usage
    • NICS: one, two (internal, external)
    • Installed farm systems and their versions (Windows, SP, SQL Server, IIS, AppFabric, Workflow, OWA, PHA, etc)
    • Uses database alias? 
  • Check each server VM (if virtualized) configuration settings:
    • Virtualization host type: VMWare, HyperV
    • Memory allocation start, max, dynamic/static
    • Distributed cache/Search
    • CPU virtual:physical cores: 2:1, 1:1, etc? Oversubscribed? 1:1 best
    • Hyperthreading enabled
    • NUMA?
    • Virtual LAN for farm server-to-server?
    • Failover clustering?
  • Check SQL Server
    • AlwaysOn configuration
    • List databases, sizes, locations, recovery type (simple, - list logons, their mapping and roles
    • Dedicated to farm?
    • Logs

References

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Notes

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