The document discusses setting up SharePoint on Azure IaaS. It begins with an introduction of the speaker and their background. It then provides an overview of key Azure IaaS concepts like virtual machines, disks, availability sets, and virtual networks. The document discusses why SharePoint may be deployed on IaaS and provides examples use cases like development/testing environments and disaster recovery. It then outlines the "Jumpstart Method" for automating SharePoint deployments on Azure and provides recommendations for SharePoint, SQL Server, storage, and Active Directory configurations.

1. Navigating the Turbulence on takeoff
Setting up SharePoint on Azure IaaS the right way
Jason Himmelstein, MVP
Senior Technical Director
@sharepointlhorn

2. • Senior Technical Director, SharePoint
• SharePoint Server MVP
• SharePoint Community Leadership Board, Chair
• Microsoft PTSP
• Blog: www.sharepointlonghorn.com
• Twitter: @sharepointlhorn
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhimmelstein
• SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/jasonhimmelstein
• Email: jase@sharepointlonghorn.com
• Author of Developing Business Intelligence Apps for
SharePoint
– http://bit.ly/SharePointBI

3. made

4. • What is Microsoft Azure IaaS?
• Why SharePoint on IaaS?
• Pieces & Parts
• Use Cases
• The Jumpstart Method
• Recommendations
Agenda

5. What is Microsoft Azure IaaS?

6. Windows Azure Virtual Machines
IT Pro experience
Support for key server applications
Easy storage manageability
High availability features
Advanced networking
Integration with compute PaaS
If it requires a developer, it’s not IaaS

7. Images Available

8. Create a Trial from Image Gallery

9. Virtual Machine Sizes
Size Name CPU Cores Memory Max. data disks Max. IOPS
ExtraSmall Shared 768 MB 1 1x500
Small 1 1.75 GB 2 2x500
Medium 2 3.5 GB 4 4x500
Large 4 7 GB 8 8x500
ExtraLarge 8 14 GB 16 16x500
A5 2 14 GB 4 4X500
A6 4 28 GB 8 8x500
A7 8 56 GB 16 16x500
A8 8 56 GB 16 16x500
A9 16 112 GB 16 16x500
Each data disk can hold up to 1 TB of storage.
SharePoint Virtual Machines

10. •
–
Service Level Agreements
What’s included
Compute Hardware failure (disk, cpu, memory)
Datacenter failures - Network failure, power failure
Hardware upgrades, Software maintenance – Host OS Updates
What is not included
VM Container crashes, Guest OS Updates
99.95% for multiple role instances
4.38 hours of downtime per year

11. Virtual Machine Names and DNS
Resolves VMs by name within the same cloud service
Machine names are modeled explicitly and registered in the DNS service

12. Cross-premise Connectivity

13. Why SharePoint on IaaS?

14. SharePoint Cloud Continuum
Lof
CONTROL
COST-EFFICIENCY
SharePoint (On-premises)
• SharePoint
Value Prop:
• Full h/w control – size/scale
• Roll-your-own HA/DR/scale
Value Prop:
• 100% of API surface area
• Easy migration of existing apps
• Roll-your-own HA/DR/scale
SharePoint (IaaS)
• Hosted SharePoint
Value Prop:
• Auto HA, Fault-Tolerance
• Friction-free scale
• Self-provisioning, mgmt. @ scale
• SharePoint Service
Office 365 (SaaS)

15. Why IaaS for SharePoint?
• Maintain ownership & management of
the virtual machine
• Build complex solutions not supported in
Microsoft’s Public Cloud
• Design, implement, and develop with no
hardware commitment

16. Why Should I Care
Quickly get new SharePoint
developers on your projects up
and running with little downtime.
Quickly get new system test
environments provisioned.
Tear down developer machines
when vendors leave the project.
Reduced capital expenditures as
no laptops need to be issued to
new developers.
Tear down system test
environments when not in use or
a particular release has finished.
Integrate the customer’s vendors
easily. The customer doesn’t have
to add the vendor to the
corporate domain.

17. Azure
footprint
16 regions worldwide in 2014

18. Pieces & Parts

19. Affinity
Group
Affinity Groups (AG)

20. • An AG is a container to keep your Virtual Network in a single
data center
– Required before you can create a Virtual Network
• To create PowerShell or go to Settings at the bottom of the
Management Portal
Affinity Groups (AG)

21. • Declare your own address space in the cloud
– Private and Persistent IP Addresses (unless you de-allocate the VM)
– Support for Static Internal IP addresses (even if you de-allocate a VM)
• Advanced Connectivity
– Support for Hosting Active Directory in Azure Virtual Machines
– Connect multiple cloud services privately on the same virtual network
– Connect Virtual Networks in the same or separate regions
– Support for Internal Load Balancing
– Optional - Hybrid Connectivity – Site to Site, Point to Site and
ExpressRoute
• Virtual Networks are Required for a SharePoint Farm
Virtual Network

22. Reserved IP Addresses
New Feature for Virtual Machines

23. IP Allocation with Virtual Networks
• IPs are allocated based on order of provisioning. (1st 4 IPs are reserved)
• Subnet: 10.0.0.0/24
• 1. VM1 = 10.0.0.4
• 2. VM2 = 10.0.0.5
• If VMs are re-allocated in a different order they get different IP
addresses
• 1. VM2 = 10.0.0.4
• 2. VM1 = 10.0.0.5
• Use Static IP addresses to retain IP regardless of order
• Set-AzureStaticVNetIP

24. • A container for VMs that acts as a network and security
boundary
– Required before you can create a Virtual Network
• Allow external traffic into one or more VMs create an endpoint
• Cloud Service IP Address
– Cloud service URL is mapped to a public IP
http://riroxsp.cloudapp.net = 137.135.68.130
– All external traffic to virtual machines uses this IP
– IP can be lost if all VMs are de-allocated (unless using a
reserved IP)
Cloud Service

26. Availability Sets
A label that tells Microsoft Azure your virtual
machines perform the same workload
router/switch
power supply
network cables
physical machine

27. SharePoint Farms and Availability Sets
For each tier
create an
Availability Set
Availability Sets do not span cloud services
SPVNET

28. • Operating System (OS) Disk
– This disk is a copy of a source .vhd file and the new copy is registered as an OS disk
– Maximum of 127 GB
– Three copies of the disk are created for high durability
– When using disaster recovery that is geo-replication based the VHD is replicated at a distance of
greater than 400 miles
– Registered as SATA drives and are labeled as the C drive
• Temporary Disk
– Created automatically
– Used for Page File or Swap File
• Data Disk
– A data disk is a VHD that can be attached to a running virtual machine to persistently store
application data
– The maximum size of a data disk is 1 TB
– Data disks are registered as SCSI drives and are labeled with a letter that you choose
– The size of the virtual machine determines the number of disks that you can attach to it
Azure Disks

29. • Azure Subscription
– Affinity Group
• Virtual Network
–Cloud Service
»Availability Set
• Virtual Machines
• Azure Disks
How does it build?

30. Use Cases

31. SharePoint Workloads
SharePoint for Internet Sites (FIS)
Public facing, anonymous access sites
Developer, Test and Staging Environments
Quickly provision and un-provision entire environments
Hybrid Applications
Applications that span your data center and the cloud
Disaster Recovery
Quickly recover from a disaster, only pay for use

32. Develop and Test in Azure
Writing new SharePoint code for
new product features in Windows
Azure virtual machines.
System testing new product
features and releases from the
development environment.
User acceptance testing: product
releases once system testing is
completed, the stage before going
live into production.

33. Dev / Test
Cloud Service
Virtual Network
SQL DR1
(A6)
SP DR1
(Large)
AD1
(X-Small)
SQL DR2
(A6)
SP DR2
(Large)
SP DR4
(Large)
SP DR5
(Large)
SP DR3
(Large)
Visual Studio Online
Test Agents
Load Test

34. IaaS and Disaster Recovery
Cloud Service
Virtual Network
Windows Azure
SQL DR1
(A6)
SP DR1
(Large)
AD1
(X-Small)
On Premises
SQL DR2
(A6)
SP DR2
(Large)
SP DR4
(Large)
SP DR5
(Large)
SP DR3
(Large)
VPN Tunel
SQL Server Log Shipping

35. Extranet and Public-Facing Internet
Cloud Service
Virtual Network
Windows Azure On Premises
Active
Directory
Site developers and
authors
VPN Tunnel
SharePoint 2013 Farm
Web Application
Windows Azure Active Directory
Internet Zone
Anonymous
Extranet Zone Default Zone
WindowsWindows
SAML
FBA
Active Directory
Domain Services
Partners and
Customers
Visitors

36. Hybrid Solutions
IaaS
PaaS
SaaS

37. The Jumpstart Method

38. SharePoint 2013 Automation Scripts
https://github.com/windowsazure/azure-sdk-tools-samples

39. Single Virtual Machines Template
AD/DC/DNSLB WEB/APP SQL
80
20000
Cloud Service
Virtual Network
Windows Azure
Web/App Tier
1 x Large
(4 Cores & 7 GB)
Data Tier
1 x A6
(4 Cores & 28 GB)
Identity Tier
1 Small
(1 Core & 1.75 GB)
K

40. Highly Available Template
AD/DC/DNSLB WEB SQLAPP
80
20000
Cloud Service
Virtual Network
Windows Azure
AVSET
SPWEB
AVSET
SPAPP
AVSET
SQLHA
AVSET
DCSET
Web Tier
2 x Large
(4 Cores & 7 GB)
App Tier
2 x Large
(4 Cores & 7 GB)
Data Tier
2 x A6
(4 Cores & 28 GB)
1 x Small (Quorum)
(1 Core & 1.75 GB)
Identity Tier
2 Small
(1 Core & 1.75 GB)
K

41. Recommendations

42. SharePoint
Deployment Tips
SharePoint only goes on the C: drive
Put each SharePoint tier into its own availability set (WFE, APP etc…)
Put blob cache on a data disk to increase available IOPS.
Use Static IP addresses to avoid issues if virtual machines started out of order.

43. SQL Server Best Practices
Storage Recommendations
Split content databases across multiple disks for increased IOPS
Verify Disk Cache Settings on Data Disks
Use Data disks for databases
Put database and transaction log files on separate drives
Use SQL Server File Groups instead of Disk Striping
Split and move TempDB & TempLogs to separate data disks
Database Recommendations
Use database page compression to reduce I/O
High Availability Recommendations
Consider latency between primary and replica when choosing sync mode
Use Availability Sets

44. More on Storage for SQL Server
Performance Considerations
Do not use the temporary disk (D:) (including for TempDB)
Use SQL file groups across multiple disks instead of disk striping
Put logs, data and backup on separate disks
Disable geo-replication on storage account for consistency
Remember storage account capacity planning.
20,000 IOPS per Storage Account – 500 IOPS per disk maxiumum
Consider compressing any data files when transferring in/out of Windows Azure.
Scale Out Not Up
Move content databases to separate SQL Servers
Move search databases to separate SQL Servers
Add more WFE for scaling SharePoint services
Add dedicated Search Servers and SQL Server

45. Storage Capacity and Planning
Supports up to 40 data disks using maximum IOPS per disk
Random I/O
(8 KB Pages)
Sequential I/O
(64 KB Extents)
Sequential I/O
(256 KB Blocks)
Reads Writes Reads Writes Reads Writes
IOPS 500 500 500 300 300 300
Bandwidth 4 MB/s 4 MB/s 30 MB/s 20 MB/s 70 MB/s 70 MB/s

46. Active Directory Design Considerations
Should only be deployed in a virtual network
Predictable and stable IP Addresses
Specify Static IP to ensure persistence (Set-AzureStaticVNetIP in PowerShell)
Active Directory should be deployed in an AD specific subnet to guarantee the IP address will not be
acquired by another virtual machine.
Directory Information Tree (DIT) / SYSVOL Location
Deploy DIT / SYSVOL on a data disk
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj156090.aspx

47. Q&A

48. • Senior Technical Director, SharePoint
• SharePoint Server MVP
• SharePoint Community Leadership Board, Chair
• Microsoft PTSP
• Blog: www.sharepointlonghorn.com
• Twitter: @sharepointlhorn
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhimmelstein
• SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/jasonhimmelstein
• Email: jase@sharepointlonghorn.com
• Author of Developing Business Intelligence Apps for
SharePoint
– http://bit.ly/SharePointBI