Departmental collaboration environment technical case study (SharePoint Server 2010)
Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010
This document describes a specific deployment of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. It includes the following:
Technical case study environment specifications, such as hardware, farm topology and configuration
The workload that includes the number, and types, of users or clients, and environment usage characteristics
Technical case study farm dataset that includes database contents and Search indexes
Health and performance data that is specific to the environment
In this article:
Prerequisite information
Introduction to this environment
Specifications
Workload
Dataset
Health and Performance Data
Prerequisite information
Before reading this document, make sure that you understand the key concepts behind SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management. The following documentation will help you learn about the recommended approach to capacity management and provide context for helping you understand how to make effective use of the information in this document, and also define the terms used throughout this document.
For more conceptual information about performance and capacity that you might find valuable in understanding the context of the data in this technical case study, see the following documents:
Capacity management and sizing overview for SharePoint Server 2010
SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits
Introduction to this environment
This white paper describes an actual SharePoint Server 2010 environment at Microsoft. Use this document to compare with your planned workload and usage characteristics. If your planned design is similar, you can use the deployment described here as a starting point for your own installation.
This document includes the following:
Specifications, which include hardware, topology and configuration
Workload, which is the demand on the farm that includes the number of users, and the usage characteristics
Dataset that includes database sizes
Health and performance data that is specific to the environment
This document is part of a series of Performance and capacity technical case studies (SharePoint Server 2010) about SharePoint environments at Microsoft.
.gif "Diagram shows environment in context at Microsoft")
The SharePoint Server 2010 environment described in this document is a production environment at a large, geographically distributed company. Employees use this environment to track projects, collaborate on documents, and share information within their department. This environment is also used for internal testing, and is frequently upgraded to the latest SharePoint Server pre-release versions as they become available.
As many as 9,000 unique users visit the environment on a busy day, generating up to 470 requests per second (RPS) during peak hours. Because this is an intranet site, all users are authenticated.
The information that is provided in this document reflects the departmental collaboration environment on a typical day.
Specifications
This section provides detailed information about the hardware, software, topology, and configuration of the case-study environment.
Hardware
This section provides details about the server computers that were used in this environment.
Note
This environment is scaled to accommodate pre-release builds of SharePoint Server 2010 and other products. Hence, the hardware deployed has larger capacity than necessary to serve the demand typically experienced by this environment. This hardware is described only to provide additional context for this environment and serve as a starting point for similar environments.
It is important to conduct your own capacity management based on your planned workload and usage characteristics. For more information about the capacity management process, see Capacity management and sizing overview for SharePoint Server 2010.
Web Servers
There are four Web servers in the farm, each with identical hardware. Three serve content, and the fourth is a dedicated search crawl target.
| Web Server | WFE1-2 | WFE3-4 |
|---|---|---|
Processor(s) |
2 quad core @ 2.33 GHz |
2 quad core @ 2.33 GHz |
RAM |
32 GB |
16 GB |
Operating system |
Windows Server 2008, 64 bit |
Windows Server 2008, 64 bit |
Size of the SharePoint drive |
3x146GB 15K SAS (3 RAID 1 Disks) Disk 1: OS Disk 2: Swap and BLOB Cache Disk 3: Logs and Temp directory |
3x146GB 15K SAS (3 RAID 1 Disks) Disk 1: OS Disk 2: Swap and BLOB Cache Disk 3: Logs and Temp directory |
Number of network adapters |
2 |
2 |
Network adapter speed |
1 Gigabit |
1 Gigabit |
Authentication |
Windows NTLM |
Windows NTLM |
Load balancer type |
Hardware load balancing |
Hardware load balancing |
Software version |
SharePoint Server 2010 (pre-release version) |
SharePoint Server 2010 (pre-release version) |
Services running locally |
Search Query |
WFE3 – No services WFE4 – Search crawl target |
Application Server
There are four application servers in the farm.
| Web Server | APP1-3 | APP4 |
|---|---|---|
Processor(s) |
2 quad core @ 2.33 GHz |
2 quad core @ 2.33 GHz |
RAM |
16 GB |
16 GB |
Operating system |
Windows Server 2008, 64 bit |
Windows Server 2008, 64 bit |
Size of the SharePoint drive |
3x146GB 15K SAS (3 RAID 1 Disks) Disk 1: OS Disk 2: Swap and BLOB Cache Disk 3: Logs and Temp directory |
2x136GB 15K SAS (RAID 0) 4x60GB SSD, SATA (RAID 5) Disk 1: OS Disk 2: Swap and BLOB Cache Disk 3: Logs and Temp directory |
Number of network adapters |
2 |
2 |
Network adapter speed |
1 Gigabit |
1 Gigabit |
Authentication |
Windows NTLM |
Windows NTLM |
Load balancer type |
Hardware load balancing |
Hardware load balancing |
Software version |
SharePoint Server 2010 (pre-release version) |
SharePoint Server 2010 (pre-release version) |
Services running locally |
APP1 – Central Administration and all applications except for Office Web Applications APP2 – All applications (including Office Web Applications) APP3 – Office Web Applications |
Search Crawler |
Database Servers
There are three database servers, one running the default SQL Server instance housing the content databases, one running the Usage and Web Analytics databases, and one running the Search databases.
| Database | DB1 – Default Instance | DB2 | DB3 |
|---|---|---|---|
Processor(s) |
4 quad core @ 3.2 GHz |
2 quad core @ 3.2 GHz |
2 quad core @ 3.2 GHz |
RAM |
32 GB |
16 GB |
32 GB |
Operating system |
Windows Server 2008 SP1, 64 bit |
Windows Server 2008 SP1, 64 bit |
Windows Server 2008 SP1, 64 bit |
Storage and geometry |
5x146GB 15K SAS + SAN Disk 1: OS (2 disk RAID 10) Disk 2: Swap (2 disk RAID 10) Disk 3: Direct Attached Storage (16 disk RAID 10, Temp DB data) SAS 146 GB 15K Disk 4: Direct Attached Storage (16 disk RAID 10, Temp DB data) SAS 146 GB 15K Disk 5-15: SAN using fiber connection. When possible, one database per two disks. Separating logs and data between LUNs. 15K drives. |
6x450GB 15K SAS Directly attached 14x146GB 15K SAS Disk 1: Usage logs and OS Disk 2: Usage data |
2x136GB 15K SAS (RAID 0) 6x60GB SSD, SATA (RAID 5) Disk 1: OS Disk 2: Swap and BLOB Cache Disk 3: Logs and Temp directory. Solid state drives. 6-60GB Solid state drives (RAID 5) |
Number of network adapters |
2 |
2 |
2 |
Network adapter speed |
1 Gigabit |
1 Gigabit |
1 Gigabit |
Authentication |
Windows NTLM |
Windows NTLM |
Windows NTLM |
Software version |
SQL Server 2008 |
SQL Server 2008 |
SQL Server 2008 R2 |
Topology
The following diagram shows the topology for this farm.
.gif "Farm topology diagram for this environment")
Configuration
The following table enumerates settings that were made that affect performance or capacity in the environment.
| Setting | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Site collection: Object Caching (On | Off) Anonymous Cache Profile (select) Anonymous Cache Profile (select) Object Cache (Off | n MB) Cross List Query Cache Changes (Every Time | Every n seconds) |
On Disabled Disabled On – 100GB 60 seconds |
Enabling the output cache improves server efficiency by reducing calls to the database for data that is frequently requested. |
Site collection cache profile (select) |
Intranet (Collaboration Site) |
“Allow writers to view cached content” is checked, bypassing the ordinary behavior of not letting people with edit permissions to have their pages cached. |
Object Cache (Off | n MB) |
On – 500 MB |
The default is 100 MB. Increasing this setting enables additional data to be stored in the front-end Web server memory. |
Usage Service: Trace Log – days to store log files (default: 14 days) |
5 days |
The default is 14 days. Lowering this setting can save disk space on the server where the log files are stored. |
Query Logging Threshold: Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Database – configure QueryLoggingThreshold to 1 second |
1 second |
The default is 5 seconds. Lowering this setting can save bandwidth and CPU on the database server. |
Database Server – Default Instance: Max degree of parallelism |
1 |
The default is 0. To ensure optimal performance, we strongly recommend that you set max degree of parallelism to 1 for database servers that host SharePoint Server 2010 databases. For more information about how to set max degree of parallelism, see max degree of parallelism Option (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=189030). |
Workload
This section describes the workload, which is the demand on the farm that includes the number of users, and the usage characteristics.
| Workload Characteristics | Value |
|---|---|
Average Requests per Second (RPS) |
165 |
Average RPS at peak time (11 AM-3 PM) |
216 |
Total number of unique users per day |
9186 |
Average concurrent users |
189 |
Maximum concurrent users |
322 |
Total # of requests per day |
7,124,943 |
This table shows the number of requests for each user agent.
| User Agent | Requests | Percentage of Total |
|---|---|---|
Search (crawl) |
4,373,433 |
67.61% |
Outlook |
897,183 |
13.87% |
OneNote |
456,917 |
7.06% |
DAV |
273,391 |
4.23% |
Browser |
247,303 |
3.82% |
Word |
94,465 |
1.46% |
SharePoint Workspaces |
70,651 |
1.09% |
Office Web Applications |
45,125 |
0.70% |
Excel |
8,826 |
0.14% |
Access |
1,698 |
0.03% |
Dataset
This section describes the case study farm dataset that includes database sizes and Search indexes.
| Dataset Characteristics | Value |
|---|---|
Database size (combined) |
1.8 TB |
BLOB size |
1.68 TB |
Number of content databases |
18 |
Total number of databases |
36 |
Number of site collections |
7,499 |
Number of Web applications |
7 |
Number of sites |
42,457 |
Search index size (number of items) |
4.6 million |
Health and Performance Data
This section provides health and performance data that is specific to the case study environment.
General Counters
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
Availability (uptime) |
99.9995% |
Failure Rate |
0.0005% |
Average memory used |
0.89 GB |
Maximum memory used |
5.13 GB |
Search Crawl % of Traffic (Search client requests / total requests) |
82.5% |
The following charts show the average CPU utilization and latency for this environment:
.gif "Chart showing average CPU utilization")
.gif "Chart showing latency in this environment")
In this document, latency is divided into four categories. The 50th percentile latency is typically used to measure the server’s responsiveness. It means that half of the requests are served within that response time. The 95th percentile latency is typically used to measure spikes in server response times. It means that 95% of requests are served within that response time, and therefore, 5% of the requests experience slower response times.
Database Counters
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
Average Disk queue length |
1.42 |
Disk Queue Length: Reads |
1.38 |
Disk Queue Length: Writes |
0.04 |
Disk Reads/sec |
56.51 |
Disk Writes/sec |
17.60 |
SQL Compilations/second |
13.11 |
SQL Re-compilations/second |
0.14 |
SQL Locks: Average Wait Time |
294.56 ms |
SQL Locks: Lock Wait Time |
867.53 ms |
SQL Locks: Deadlocks Per Second |
1.87 |
SQL Latches: Average Wait Time |
5.10 ms |
SQL Cache Hit Ratio |
99.77% |
See Also
Other Resources
Resource Center: Capacity Management for SharePoint Server 2010