Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft Hyper-V on Cisco UCS Rack-Mount Servers
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Table Of Contents
About Cisco Validated Design (CVD) Program
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft Hyper-V on Cisco UCS Rack Server
Cisco Unified Computing System
Cisco C240 M3 Rack Mount Servers
Cisco C220 M3 Rack-Mount Servers
Three-Tier Role Based Architecture
Advantages of Three-Tier Architecture
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 Sizing Considerations
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 Search
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 Design Considerations
Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Architecture
Prepare the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Servers
Configure Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC)
Connecting and Powering on the Server (Standalone Mode)
Enable Virtualization Technology in BIOS
Install Microsoft Windows Server on Cisco UCS C240 M3 Servers
Install Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Prepare and Configure the Cisco Nexus 5548UP Switch
Configure the Cisco Nexus Switches
Adding Port Channel Configurations
Configuring Virtual Port Channels
Prepare and Configure the Cisco Nexus 3048 Switch
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2: Adding Roles and Features
Implement High Availability in SharePoint 2010
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Scale Out with Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack-Mount Servers
Measuring Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Server Performance
Environment Configuration Tuning
Performance Results and Analysis
Virtual Server- Processor Utilization
Performance Results and Analysis
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft Hyper-V on Cisco UCS Rack-Mount ServersLast Updated: November 1, 2012
Building Architectures to Solve Business Problems
About the Authors
SY Abrar, Technical Marketing Engineer, SAVBU, Cisco SystemsSY Abrar is a Technical Marketing Engineer with Server Access Virtualization Business Unit (SAVBU). With over 10 years of Experience in information technology, his focus area includes Microsoft Product technologies, server virtualization and storage design. Prior to joining Cisco, Abrar was Technical Architect at NetApp. Abrar holds a Bachelors degree in computer science, and is a Storage Certified and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist.
Vadiraja Bhatt, Performance Architect, SAVBU, Cisco SystemsVadiraja Bhatt is a Performance Architect at CISCO, managing the solutions and benchmarking effort on UCS Platform. Vadi has over 17 years of experience in performance and benchmarking the large enterprise systems deploying mission critical applications. Vadi specializes in optimizing and fine tuning complex hardware and software systems and has delivered many benchmark results on TPC and other industry standard benchmarks. Vadi has 6 patents to his credits in the Database (OLTP and DSS) optimization area.
Acknowledgment
For his support and contribution to the design, validation, and creation of this Cisco Validated Design, we would like to thank:
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Tim Cerling
About Cisco Validated Design (CVD) Program
The CVD program consists of systems and solutions designed, tested, and documented to facilitate faster, more reliable, and more predictable customer deployments. For more information visit http://www.cisco.com/go/designzone.
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Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft Hyper-V on Cisco UCS Rack Server
Executive Summary
A Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Environment, comprising of various servers, that collectively host the core applications and provides services, is termed a SharePoint Farm. This Farm is responsible for providing various functions to the user. A three-tier architectural topology, in which the SharePoint tiers (Web, Application, and Database) are deployed using independent servers responsible for each tier, is among the most used SharePoint 2010 farm topology. To size each tier of a SharePoint farm it is essential to do a detailed study of the workload requirement and the farm usage patterns along with the performance capabilities of each hardware component deployed in the system.
This document describes the performance of a medium-sized SharePoint farm built using Microsoft Hyper-V on Cisco UCS Rack Servers implementing a three-tier architecture. A load generation framework developed by the SharePoint engineering team at Cisco performs load test and measures the performance metrics while keeping the required response time less than one second. This paper shares the test results that provide guidelines and better understanding of the performance impact of different SharePoint workloads. It also assists you in sizing and designing the best farm architecture to support different workloads and recommends the best infrastructure elements for an optimal SharePoint implementation.
This study provides detailed information on how the recommended farm architecture supports up to 20,000 users with 10 percent of the total users working concurrently. It also shows how to achieve sub-second response time and highlights the performance benefits of the Cisco Servers used in this study.
The virtualized SharePoint Server 2010 small farm is deployed on multiple virtual machines hosted by the Cisco UCS Rack C240 M3 Servers, using Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 with Microsoft Hyper-V™ instead of a conventional solution deployed on physical servers.
The SharePoint Server 2010 medium farm whitepaper describes how it is built and configured on physical servers. This solution also offers performance results of the physical server SharePoint 2010 for various load tests. For more information, see:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns517/ns224/ns944/cisco_ucs_scalability_performance.pdf
For Larger configurations, the SharePoint 2010 for FlexPod on VMware farm design solution provides an end-to-end architecture with Cisco, VMware, Microsoft, and NetApp technologies. This solution virtualizes the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 servers, to support up to 100,000 users with 10 percent concurrency; offering high availability and server redundancy.
This performance study aims at understanding the performance characteristics of the large SharePoint farm on FlexPod architecture, where Cisco UCS servers with Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX), (universal pass through) switching provide improved application performance and operational efficiency, NetApp tools and technologies improve storage efficiency, and the innovative stack of VMware virtualization.
For more information, see: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/UCS_CVDs/ucs_sharepoint2010_flexpod_vmware.html
Introduction
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 allows users to easily create, share and connect information and applications. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has evolved from an earlier version of Microsoft SharePoint Office 2007. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 provides all the useful features present in the earlier version such as collaboration, information sharing, and document management. It has several new features and important architectural changes that have improved the product. The essentials for any SharePoint capacity planning are to understand the requirements, such as, the total total number of users, number of concurrent users, number of service applications, and so on. It is also important to take into consideration how the requirement would scale in the future and how a custom developed application, which can be a part of an implementation, may influence the sizing of storage and servers.
Objective
The main objective of this document is to study the capacity and performance characteristics of a medium-sized Microsoft SharePoint 2010 farm in a Microsoft Hyper-V environment using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Team System to generate the workload. This workload consists of SharePoint collaboration, search, and design based on the most commonly adopted three-tier architectural topology built using the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Servers.
Audience
The target audience for this document are solution architects, sales engineers, field engineers and consultants involved in the planning, design, and deployment of the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 hosted on Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization solutions on the Cisco Unified Computing System. This document assumes that the reader has an architectural understanding of the Cisco Unified Computing System, Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Office SharePoint 2010 Server, and other related software.
Purpose of this Guide
This SharePoint 2010 deployment on the Cisco UCS Rack Server for Microsoft Hyper-V Cisco Validated Design guide demonstrates how small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers can apply best practices in the Microsoft Hyper-V SharePoint environment, Cisco Unified Computing System, and Cisco Nexus family of switches.
The design validation for this study is completed using specific Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 workloads, and Visual Studio Load Test agents simulating a realistic 20,000 user load with 10 percent concurrency across SharePoint 2010.
Solution Overview
This solution provides an end-to-end architecture employing Cisco and Microsoft technologies.
It demonstrates that the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 servers can be virtualized to support a medium farm topology and provide high availability for small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers.
The following components are used for the design and deployment of SharePoint 2010:
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This solution is designed to host scalable and mixed application workloads. The scope of this design is limited to the SharePoint 2010 SP1 deployment only. The SharePoint farm consists of the following physical and virtual machines:
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Figure 1 Application Server Assignment with Cisco UCS Rack Server
Cisco Unified Computing System
The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a next-generation data center platform that unites computing, network, and storage access. The platform, optimized for virtual environments, is designed using open industry-standard technologies. It aims to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. The system integrates a low-latency; lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) unified network fabric with enterprise-class, x86-architecture servers. It is an integrated, scalable, multi chassis platform in which all the resources participate in a unified management domain.
The main components of the Cisco Unified Computing System are:
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The Cisco Unified Computing System is designed to deliver:
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Cisco C240 M3 Rack Mount Servers
Building on the success of the Cisco UCS C-Series M2 Rack Servers, the enterprise-class Cisco UCS C240 M3 server enhances the capabilities of the Cisco Unified Computing System portfolio in a 2-rack-unit (2RU) form factor. With the addition of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family, it delivers significant performance and efficiency gains. Figure 2 shows the Cisco UCS C240 M3 rack server.
Figure 2 Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server
The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server also offers up to 384 GB of RAM, 24 drives or SSDs, and two 4 GE LAN interfaces built into the motherboard. This translates to outstanding levels of density and performance in a compact package.
The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server balances simplicity, performance, and density for production-level virtualization and other mainstream data-center workloads. The server is a two socket server with substantial throughput and scalability. The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server extends the capabilities of the Cisco Unified Computing System. It uses Intel's latest Xeon E-2690 series multi-core processors to deliver enhanced performance and efficiency. These processors adjust the server performance according to application needs and use DDR3 memory technology with memory scalable up to 384 GB for demanding virtualization and large dataset applications. Alternatively, they can have a more cost-effective memory footprint for less demanding workloads. The options for the mezzanine card include either the Cisco UCS VIC P81KR Virtual Interface Card, a converged network adapter (Emulex or QLogic compatible), or a single 10GB Ethernet Adapter.
Cisco C220 M3 Rack-Mount Servers
Building on the success of the Cisco UCS C-Series M2 Rack-Mount Servers, the enterprise-class Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack-Mount Server enhances the capabilities of the Cisco Unified Computing System portfolio in a 1-rack-unit (1RU) form factor. With the addition of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family, it delivers significant performance and efficiency gains. Figure 3 shows the Cisco UCS C220 M3 rack server.
Figure 3 Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Server
The Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Server also offers up to 256 GB of RAM, eight drives or SSDs, and two 1 GE LAN interfaces built into the motherboard. This results in outstanding levels of density and performance in a compact package.
The Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Server is ideal in situations where the SharePoint topology needs to be scaled out as it offers excellent computing resources that can easily accommodate the scaling out of Web and Application tiers. Both these tiers do not require large storage, but need greater compute resources which the Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack-Mount Server aptly offers.
Cisco UCS P81E VIC
The Cisco UCS Rack-Mount Server has various Converged Network Adapters (CNA) options. The Cisco UCS P81E Virtual Interface Card (VIC) option used in this design is unique to the Cisco UCS Rack-Mount Server system. This mezzanine card adapter is designed around a custom ASIC specifically intended for virtualized systems. As is the case with the other Cisco CNAs, the Cisco UCS P81E VIC encapsulates Fibre channel traffic within the 10 GE packets for delivery to the Ethernet network.
The Cisco UCS P81E VIC provides the capability to create multiple VNICs (up to 128) on the CNA. This allows complete I/O configurations to be provisioned in virtualized or non-virtualized environments using just-in-time provisioning. It leads to tremendous system flexibility and allows consolidation of multiple physical adapters.
System security and manageability is improved by providing visibility and portability of network policies and security even to the virtual machines. Additional P81E features like VN-Link technology and pass-through switching minimize implementation overhead costs and complexity. Figure 4 shows the Cisco UCS P81E VIC.
Figure 4 Cisco UCS P81E VIC
Cisco Nexus 5548UP Switch
The Cisco Nexus 5548UP is a 1 RU 1 Gigabit and 10 GE switch that offers up to 960 gigabits per second throughput and scaling up to 48 ports. It offers 32 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet fixed enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP+) Ethernet/FCoE or 1/2/4/8-Gbps native FC unified ports and three expansion slots. These slots have a combination of Ethernet/FCoE and native FC ports. The Cisco Nexus 5548UP switch is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5 Cisco Nexus 5548UP switch
For the purpose of this study, the Cisco Nexus 5548 has been used. However, the Cisco Nexus 3048, a 1 GE switch, is also recommended, as it offers solution that is very well suited for a SMB environment.
Cisco Nexus 3048 Switch
The Cisco Nexus® 3048 Switch is a line-rate Gigabit Ethernet top-of-rack (ToR) switch and is part of the Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches portfolio. The Cisco Nexus 3048, with its compact one-rack-unit (1RU) form factor and integrated Layer 2 and 3 switching, complements the existing Cisco Nexus family of switches. This switch runs the industry-leading Cisco® NX-OS Software operating system, providing customers with robust features and functions that are deployed in thousands of data centers worldwide.
Figure 6 Cisco Nexus 3048 switch
The Cisco Nexus 3048 is ideal for SMB customers that require a Gigabit Ethernet ToR switch with local switching that connects transparently to upstream Cisco Nexus switches, providing an end-to-end Cisco Nexus fabric in their data centers. This switch also provides features such as vPC, which has been demonstrated using 5548 in this paper. The switches can be interchanged to suit the enviroment without any impact on the performance or results as observed in the Microsoft SharePoint Farm 2010 farm reported in this document.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is an extensible and scalable web-based platform. It consists of tools and technologies that support collaboration and sharing of information within teams throughout the enterprise and on the web. The total package is a platform on which one can build business applications for better storage, sharing, and management of information within an organization. Microsoft SharePoint turns users into participants; allowing users to easily create, share, and connect with information, applications, and people. SharePoint 2010 provides all the useful features present in the earlier versions along with several new features and important architectural changes that improve the product.
Three-Tier Role Based Architecture
The three-tier role based architecture of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm includes Web Server Role, Application Server Role, and Database Server Role. See Figure 7.
Web Server Role—SharePoint web server is responsible for hosting web pages, web services, and web parts that are necessary to process the requests served by the farm. The server is also responsible for directing requests to the appropriate application servers.
Application Server Role—SharePoint Application Server is associated with services, where each service represents a separate application service that can potentially reside on a dedicated application server. Services with similar usage and performance characteristics can be grouped on a server. The grouped services can then be scaled out onto multiple servers.
Database Server Role—SharePoint databases can be categorized broadly by their roles as Search Database, Content Database, and Service Database. In larger environments, SharePoint databases are grouped by roles and deployed onto multiple database servers.
Figure 7 Three-Tier Architecture
Advantages of Three-Tier Architecture
A few of the major benefits that a three-tier architecture provides are described below:
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Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 Sizing Considerations
In the context of SharePoint, the term "farm" is used to describe a collection of one or more SharePoint servers and one or more SQL servers. These servers together provide a set of basic SharePoint services bound together by a single Configuration Database in SQL. A farm in SharePoint marks the highest level of SharePoint administrative boundary.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 can be configured as a small, medium, or large farm deployment. The topology service provides you with an almost limitless amount of flexibility, so you can tailor the topology of your farm to meet your specific needs.
A key concept of any SharePoint design is "right sizing" the SharePoint implementation to meet the needs of the organization. Classic errors in design include, either over building, or under building the SharePoint environments. Over building can result in an overly complex SharePoint environment, with upwards of a dozen servers (or even more), often with an overwhelming number of features enabled (such as managed metadata, workflows, forms, business intelligence and other SharePoint Enterprise features) that exceed the ability of the IT to support. This results in the impression that SharePoint is "too complicated" or "never works right." Under building can yield results that include slow page loads, time outs during uploads or downloads, and system outages.
Analyzing the characteristics of the demand that the solution is expected to handle is necessary for proper sizing. One must understand both the workload characteristics, such as the number of users /concurrent users at the peak time and the most frequently used operations and dataset characteristics such as content size and distribution.
The farm used in this solution has two web front-end servers, two application servers and a mirrored database server. The farm serves various tiers fulfilling the realistic enterprise needs while being flexible, scalable, and maintainable. The farm has no single point of failure which makes it reliable.
The following sections briefly describe the sizing aspects of each tier of the three-tier role-based SharePoint farm.
Web Front-End Server
Web Front-End servers form the SharePoint connection point for clients that request content or services. All client requests results in some load on the WFE servers, as the WFE servers render pages before returning the requested pages to a browser. WFE servers do not require large amount of disk storage but rely heavily on processor and memory for performance.
The below table provides a high level description of the resource requirements for the different services on the web front-end server. Table 1 describes the processor and memory load characteristics of web front-end servers.
Application Server
Different service applications have different workload profiles but specific servers can be dedicated to specific service applications. Scale out can be achieved by assigning multiple servers for a specific service application. Most application services do not require local storage on the application server but demand a faster processor and low latency memory.
The below table provides a high level description of the resource requirements for the different services on the application server. Table 2 describes the processor and memory load characteristics of application servers.
The following are the best practices for web front-end and application servers:
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Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 Search
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 Search service offers significant benefits for users but places a large workload burden on the farm. When considering the farm performance, search performance must be considered specifically in the context of the farm.
The following are the components of the search servers:
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Database Server
All the data including content, configuration and metadata are stored on the SQL server. Not all service applications affect database servers because only some of them require databases. However, storage access times and storage capacity are a key requirement for this role.
The below table provides a high level description of the resource requirements for the different services on Database Server.
Table 3 describes the processor and memory load characteristics of database servers.
In the default configuration, SharePoint 2010 stores data by uploading it to a SharePoint site in a SQL Server database, with SQL Server 2012 being the version. Since the process of uploading a document to the SQL database is not as efficient as simply storing a file on a file share, optimizing the I/O on the SQL server is very important.
When using a Cisco UCS-based environment, an organization can choose to create physical SQL 2012 servers or create a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual SQL 2012 environment and implement a server cluster or high-availability mirror (HA mirror).
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 Design Considerations
Best practices for designing SharePoint environments have been arrived at to show the many advantages to the organizations which chose Cisco platform and these practices are applicable for organization of all sizes. There are various options that need to be considered while designing an enterprise class SharePoint 2010 environment. Some of the options include SQL Server design, SharePoint "front-end" server configurations, and the configuration of the software and the hardware that runs SharePoint 2010 farms. Organizations must look ahead when planning the management and governance of the SharePoint environment. This ensures that the environment will continue to offer acceptable levels of performance and reliability even in future. An obvious immediate benefit with Cisco is a single trusted vendor providing all the components needed for a SharePoint farm.
The additional capabilities offered by the Cisco Unified Computing System include the following:
Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards
Cisco offers a variety of adapter cards designed for use with Cisco UCS B-series and C-series servers. A Cisco innovation, the Cisco UCS P81E Virtual Interface Card is a virtualization-optimized Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 x8 10-Gbps adapter. It is designed for use with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Servers. The virtual interface card is a dual-port 10 GE PCIe adapter that can support up to128 PCIe standards-compliant virtual interfaces. These interfaces can be dynamically configured so that, both, their interface type (network interface card [NIC] or host bus adapter [HBA]) and their identity (MAC address and worldwide name [WWN]) are established using just-in-time provisioning. In addition, the Cisco UCS P81E can support network interface virtualization and Cisco VM-FEX technology.
To an operating system or a hypervisor running on a Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Server, the virtual interfaces appear as regular PCIe devices. In a virtualized environment, Cisco VM-FEX technology allows virtual links to be centrally configured and managed without the complexity that traditional approaches interpose with multiple switching layers in virtualized environments. I/O configurations and network profiles move along with virtual machines, helping increase security and efficiency while reducing complexity. As a result of close cooperation between Cisco and VMware, network policies and virtual interfaces can be applied to virtual machines in the VMware vCenter. The partnership also enables pass-through switching in the virtual switch, improving hypervisor performance.
Cisco Nexus 5548 Switches
Cisco Nexus® 5000 Series switches provide low latency and choice of front-to-back or back-to-front cooling, copper or Fibre access ports, and rear-facing data ports. The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series is designed for a broad range of physical, virtual, storage access, and high-performance computing environments. This gives customers the flexibility to meet and scale their data center requirements in a gradual manner and at a pace that aligns with their business objectives.
The switch series, using cut-through architecture, supports line-rate 10 GE on all ports while maintaining consistently low latency independent of packet size and services enabled. It supports a set of network technologies known collectively as Data Center Bridging (DCB) that increases the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of Ethernet networks. These features allow the switches to support multiple traffic classes over a lossless Ethernet fabric, thus enabling consolidation of LAN, SAN, and cluster environments. The ability of the switch series to connect Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to native Fibre Channel protects existing storage system investments while dramatically simplifying in-rack cabling.
Figure 8 Cisco Nexus 5548UP
Cisco Nexus 3048 Switches
Cisco Nexus 3048 switches can also be considered for designing the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Server Farm in a SMB environment. The Cisco Nexus 3048 offers Wire-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching and integrates transparently with the Cisco Nexus family of switches to deliver a consistent end-to-end Cisco Nexus fabric. The default system software has a comprehensive Layer 2 feature set with extensive security and management features. The switch supports SFP+ direct-attach 10 GE copper, an innovative solution that integrates transceivers with Twinax cables into an energy-efficient and low-cost solution. The modular operating system is built for resiliency, and provides integration with Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) and XML management tools. Virtual PortChannel (vPC) provides Layer 2 multipathing through the elimination of Spanning Tree Protocol and enables fully utilized bisectional bandwidth and simplified Layer 2 logical topologies without the need to change the existing management and deployment models. The Cisco Nexus 3048 is ideal for small medium business enterprises that require a Gigabit Ethernet ToR switch with local switching that connects transparently to upstream Cisco Nexus switches.
The next critical components of the SharePoint 2010 environment are the servers, virtual or physical, that run the Windows Server 2008, the SQL Server 2012 and the SharePoint 2010. A key part of the design process involves complying with organizational standards while meeting the anticipated needs of the organization for the foreseeable life cycle of the technology. For example, some organizations have standards that require all servers to be virtualized and designs that will meet the anticipated end user requirements for the next three to five years.
The growth of SharePoint in an organization demands more hardware. The implementation of this new hardware, either physical or virtual, is often the biggest bottleneck. A lot of work is involved in implementation of the server configurations and in controlling the overall complexity and the number of servers.
The above mentioned design considerations and Microsoft best practices were followed to design the different SharePoint 2010 SP1 server roles, and for the servers that were deployed virtually on Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as for the servers installed natively on the Cisco UCS Rack Servers.
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V
Microsoft Hyper-V is an integral part of the Windows Server operating system environment and provides a foundational virtualization platform that enables you to transition to the cloud. With Windows Server 2008 R2, you get a compelling solution for core virtualization scenarios—production server consolidation, dynamic datacenter, business continuity, VDI, and test and development.
Microsoft Hyper-V provides you more flexibility with features like live migration and cluster shared volumes for storage flexibility. Microsoft Hyper-V also delivers greater scalability with support for up to 64 logical processors, 2 TB of RAM, NUMA awareness, and an improved performance with support for dynamic memory and enhanced networking support.
Hyper-V Architecture
For detailed information on Hyper-V Architecture, see: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/Perf_tun_srv-R2.mspx
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Architecture
The enterprise deployment design was determined using results from the evaluation deployment based on concurrent users, request per second, and page response times for different features. The final design incorporated additional Cisco UCS Rack Servers and Cisco Nexus end-to-end solution components. The environment comprised two web front-end servers, two application servers, and a mirrored SQL database with a witness server. See Figure 9.
Figure 9 Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Scenario
Table 4 lists the various hardware and software components that occupy the different tiers of the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 large farm under test.
Table 5 lists the details of all the hardware components used during the deployment. Figure 9 depicts the components of the medium Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 Farm.
Prepare the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Servers
Preparing the Cisco C240 M3 servers is a common step for all the Hyper-V architectures. To begin with, you need to install the C240 M3 server in a rack. For more information on mounting the Cisco C240 servers, see:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/c/hw/C240/install/install.html
To prepare the servers, follow these steps:
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These steps are discussed in detail in the following sections.
Configure Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC)
This section describes the procedure to configure the Cisco Integrated Management Controller.
Connecting and Powering on the Server (Standalone Mode)
For connecting and powering on the server in Standalone Mode, follow these steps:
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When the CIMC IP is configured, the server can be managed using the https based web GUI or CLI.
Figure 10 Configuring CIMC
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Enable Virtualization Technology in BIOS
Microsoft Hyper-V requires an x64-based processor, hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT enabled), and hardware data execution prevention (Execute Disable enabled).
To enable Intel ® VT and Execute Disable in BIOS, follow these steps:
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Figure 11 Enabling Virtualization Technology in BIOS
Configure RAID
The RAID controller type is Cisco UCSC RAID SAS 2008 and supports 0, 1, 5 RAID levels. You need to configure RAID level 1 for this setup and set the virtual drive as boot drive.
To configure the RAID controller, follow these steps:
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Figure 12 Cisco Integrated Management Controller Home Page
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Figure 13 Logging into WebBIOS
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Figure 14 Adapter Selection for RAID Configuration
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Figure 15 Selecting Configuration Type
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Figure 16 Creating RAID Configuration
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Figure 17 Saving RAID Configuration in Virtual Drives
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Figure 18 Setting a Boot Drive for the Created Virtual Drive
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Install Microsoft Windows Server on Cisco UCS C240 M3 Servers
This section describes the installation of the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 along with the driver installation.
Install Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
To install Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, using the virtual media, on all the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Bare Metal servers, follow these steps:
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Figure 19 CIMC Login Page
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Figure 20 Enabling Virtual Media
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Figure 21 Launching Virtual KVM
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Figure 22 Adding ISO Image
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Figure 23 Verifying New Virtual Drive
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Figure 24 Creating a Storage Drive for Installing Microsoft Windows
Figure 25 Selecting Drivers
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Figure 26 Selecting the Driver
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To unmap the driver ISO and map the Windows installation image, follow these steps:
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Figure 27 Allocating Disk Space
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Install the Device Driver
The Cisco UCS C240 M3 solution contains the LAN on Motherboard (LOM) and Cisco VIC P81E adapter for which you need to install the drivers. This section explains how to locate and install the chipset and adapter drivers for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
Figure 28 Installing LOM Drivers
To locate and install the chipset and adapter drivers for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, follow these steps:
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Figure 29 LOM Drive Installation in Progress
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Configure the Network
This section provides the steps to configure the NICs and assign IP addresses on all Windows host servers.
The following steps explain how to modify the existing vNICs properties and create vNICs on Cisco P81E VIC for the configuration.
To create and modify the existing vNICs properties, follow these steps:
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Figure 30 Adding vNIC
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Figure 31 Modifying vNIC Properties
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Figure 32 Window Showing vNIC Properties
NIC Teaming of Cisco VIC P81E
Teaming the Cisco VIC P81E provides redundancy and doubles the available bandwidth. This teamed adapter is used for Microsoft Hyper-V VMs access.
For NIC teaming of Cisco VIC P81E, follow these steps:
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Figure 33 Command to Create and Delete NIC Teams
Figure 34 Network Connections Window Showing NIC Teaming
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Figure 35 Assigning IP Address to the Teamed Adapters
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Note
Prepare and Configure the Cisco Nexus 5548UP Switch
This section provides a detailed procedure for preparing and configuring the Cisco Nexus 5548 switches for the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 farm.
In the vPC a pair of switches acting as vPC peer endpoints, one as primary and another as secondary, appear as a single entity to the devices attached to the port-channel. The devices that can be attached to the port-channel are Fabric Extender or a switch, server, or any other networking device. Thus the vPC provides hardware redundancy with port-channel benefits. Figure 36 shows two Cisco Nexus 5548UP switches configured for vPC.
Figure 36 Cisco Nexus 5548 Switches Configuration for vPC
Configure the Cisco Nexus Switches
The NX-OS setup should start automatically after booting and connecting to the serial port of the switch. In the NX-OS CLI, follow these steps to setup Cisco Nexus switches A and B:
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Enable Features
In the NX-OS CLI, follow these steps to enable lacp, interface-vlan and vPC features on Cisco Nexus switches A and B:
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Set Global Configurations
To set the global configurations on Cisco Nexus switches, follow these steps:
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Configure VLANs
Configure VLANs on the Cisco Nexus switches as per the Table 7.
To configure VLANs on Cisco Nexus switches A and B, follow these steps:
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Configure Port Channels
This section provides information on creating and configuring the port-channels.
To create port channels in Cisco Nexus switches A and B, follow these steps:
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To create port channels on the Cisco UCS Server 1, follow these steps:
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To create port channels on the Cisco UCS Server 2, follow these steps:
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Adding Port Channel Configurations
To add port channel configurations on Cisco Nexus switches A and B, follow these steps:
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Configuring Virtual Port Channels
To configure Virtual Port Channels (vPCs) on Cisco Nexus switches A and B, follow these steps:
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Now, all the ports and port-channels are configured with necessary VLANs, switchport mode and vPC configuration.
To validate this configuration type "show vpc brief" command in the CLI as shown in Figure 37.
Figure 37 Validating vPC Configuration
Make sure that all the required VLANs are in "active" state and correct set of ports and port-channels are part of the necessary VLANs in both the switches.
Port channel configuration can be verified using "show port-channel summary" command. Figure 38 shows the expected output of this command.
Figure 38 Validating the Port Channel Configuration
Make sure that the vPC peer status is "peer adjacency formed ok" and all the port-channels, including the peer-link port channels' status are "up".
Enabling Jumbo Frames
Cisco solution for SharePoint 2010 on Microsoft Hyper-V architectures require MTU to be set at 9000 (jumbo frames) for efficient storage traffic. MTU configuration on Cisco Nexus 5000 series switches fall under global QoS configuration. You may need to configure additional QoS parameters as needed by the applications.
The following commands enable jumbo frames on Cisco Nexus switches A and B:
switch(config)#policy-map type network-qos jumbo
switch(config-pmap-nq)#class type network-qos class-default
switch(config-pmap-c-nq)#mtu 9216
switch(config-pmap-c-nq)#exit
switch(config-pmap-nq)#exit
switch(config)#system qos
switch(config-sys-qos)#service-policy type network-qos jumbo
Figure 39 Verifying the Jumbo Frame Size
Prepare and Configure the Cisco Nexus 3048 Switch
To prepare and configure Cisco Nexus 3048 switch, see: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus3000/sw/layer2/503_U3_1/b_Cisco_n3k_Layer_2_Switching_Config_503_U31.pdf
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2: Adding Roles and Features
To install server roles and features in the Microsft Windows Server 2008 R2, follow these steps:
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Figure 40 Adding Roles in Server Manager
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Figure 41 Adding Hyper-V
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Figure 42 Defining Type and Adding the Virtual Network
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Figure 43 Adding Virtual Network to NICs for Teaming
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Create Virtual Machines
After the server roles and features have been configured, the next step would be to create Virtual Machines.
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Figure 44 Creating the First Virtual Machine
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Figure 45 Adding Name and Location for the VM
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Figure 46 Allocating Memory Required for the Operating System
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Figure 47 Connecting the Network Adapter
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Figure 48 Creating Storage to Install the Operating System
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Figure 49 Choosing an Option to Install the Operating System
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Figure 50 Summary of the VM Created
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Microsoft SharePoint 2010 servers now can be installed and configured on the VMs created. For more information, see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262957.aspx
Network Design Considerations
In the SharePoint environment, there is a possibility of high network traffic between clients and WFE servers, WFE servers and the database server, and WFE servers and Application servers. Addition of new features in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 such as Office Web Apps, digital asset storage and playback introduces additional network traffic requirements over previous versions of Office SharePoint. Best practice is to separate the Client-WFE HTTP traffic from the WFE-database traffic and this improves the network efficiency.
To fulfill the high network demands of the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 environment, the Cisco UCS is integrated onto a low-latency, lossless, 10-Gbps unified network fabric. This network foundation consolidates the three separate networks:
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The unified fabric lowers cost by reducing the number of network adapters, switches, and cables, and by decreasing power and cooling requirements; thus making it an efficient and a cost effective network.
Figure 51 VLAN Inbound Outbound Network Connections
For the purpose of this performance study the servers were configured with Cisco UCS P81E VIC and virtual servers with two network adapters that will take part in the Network Load Balanced Cluster. One Network Adapter was connected to the private LAN (inbound network traffic) and the second network adapter was connected to the User LAN (outbound network traffic). Jumbo packet of size 9000 MTU was enabled at the adapter end.
Figure 52 Virtual Port Channel Network Configuration
The Cisco UCS C240 M3 with Cisco UCS P81E VIC access layer LAN configuration consists of a pair of Cisco Nexus 5548UP, a family of low-latency, line rate, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE switches for this test SharePoint 2010 deployment.
Two 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports are configured with vPC whereas on the OS side NIC teaming was configured. vPC and NIC teaming combines multiple network connections in parallel to increase the throughput much more than that compared to a single connection, as well as provide redundancy in case of a link failure.
Network Components
Table 8 lists the network components used for the deployment.
Table 8 Network Configuration Details
Nexus 5548up Series Switch
2
Cisco UCS P81E VIC Adapter
2
See the steps in the corresponding section to complete the task:
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Storage Considerations
For content storage on SharePoint 2010, you must choose suitable storage architecture. SharePoint 2010 content storage has significant dependency on the underlying database; therefore, database and SQL Server requirements will drive the storage choices.
One of the major advantages of the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server is its capability to expand over a wide range of storage-intensive infrastructure workloads ranging from large data to collaboration. The Cisco UCS C240 M3 offers up to 384 GB of RAM, 24 drives, and four 1 GE LAN interfaces built into the motherboard.
The Cisco UCS P81E VIC is a dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe adapter that can support up to 128 PCIe standards-compliant virtual interfaces to provide outstanding levels of internal memory and storage expandability along with exceptional performance.
Since this performance study is in regard to SharePoint 2010 for SMBs, we have considered 7.2 TB of disk utilization just for the SharePoint environment; we have used 300 GB drives. However, customers can utilize higher space disk drives (SAS, SATA or SSD) for their implementation, as the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server supports 300, 600, 1TB, 2TB and 3 TB drives for their various other workloads.
For more information on supported hardware, see:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps10265/ps10493/ps12370/data_sheet_c78-700629.html
Following are the Storage Provisioning used in the SharePoint 2010 farm:
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SharePoint database storage is provisioned on separate Drives for databases and logs.
Disks are configured with Raid 5 and Raid 10. Databases (.mdf) files are hosted on Raid 5 and (.ldf) on Raid10.
To complete the RAID configuration, see the section Configure RAID.
Figure 53 SharePoint 2010 Storage Layout
Implement High Availability in SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 farm topology discussed in this paper is architected with SharePoint high availability on the application layer. High Availability for a three tier SharePoint Farm under test is implemented as described in the following section.
To implement high availability for Web Front-End servers, two Web Front-End servers are used. These servers host the same Web application, with Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) feature.
Figure 54 Status of WFE Servers with Network Load Balancing
NLB is available in Windows Server 2008 Web, Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions.
To Set up NLB, follow these steps:
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Figure 55 shows how to create an entry in DNS for the cluster.
Figure 55 Create New Host in DNS
Figure 56 shows how to set the site binding at the Web front-end server.
Figure 56 Set Binding in the Web Front-End Server
Figure 57 shows how to modify the Alternate Access Mapping for the default site collection http://Webfront-end-1 to http://SAV.
Figure 57 Modifying the Alternate Access Mapping Through System Settings
For information on configuring NLB, see:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754833(WS.10).aspx
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Figure 58 SQL Mirroring Configuration for SharePoint Databases
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Figure 59 Window Showing Principal and Mirror Database
Figure 60 SharePoint 2010 configuration of Failover Server
Failover instances for the SharePoint 2010 Content databases can be set through the SharePoint Central Administration Web UI, but for the Configuration database it can only be set through PowerShell.
Note
For more information on PowerShell see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb978526.aspx
Figure 61 shows the output of PowerShell when the failover instances for the SharePoint 2010 configuration databases are set.
Figure 61 PowerShell Output Showing the Failover Sever Instance
For more information on configuring database mirroring, see:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188712.aspx
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Scale Out with Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack-Mount Servers
In order to meet the needs of the ever growing user base and their requirements, the enterprise should plan for growth, and look for solutions. SharePoint 2010 with its flexible architecture can scale to meet enterprise demands.
SharePoint topology can be easily scaled out and the Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Servers meets the vast compute requirements of the Web and Application Tiers. The two tiers do not have large storage requirements, therefore, Cisco UCS 220 M3 is an ideal fit with its excellent computing resources.
Cisco UCS C220 M3 is a 1-rack-unit (1RU) form factor. And with the addition of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family with Cisco UCS VIC P81E, a Cisco innovation, the Cisco UCS P81E Virtual Interface Card is a virtualization-optimized Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 x8 10-Gbps adapter designed for use with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Servers. The virtual interface card is a dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe adapter that can support up to 128 PCIe standards-compliant virtual interfaces, which can be dynamically configured so that both their interface type (network interface card [NIC] or host bus adapter [HBA]) and identity (MAC address and worldwide name [WWN]) are established using just-in-time provisioning, it delivers significant performance and efficiency gains.
The Cisco UCS Rack Servers C220 M3 also offer up to 256 GB of RAM, eight drives or SSDs, and two 1 Gigabit Ethernet LAN interfaces built into the motherboard, delivering outstanding levels of density and performance in a compact package.
Figure 62 SharePoint 2010 Farm Architecture with Cisco UCS Rack 220 M3
Measuring Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Server Performance
The physical architecture of the test harness consists of one Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 SP1 controller and VSTS Agents. Servers and the network infrastructure, which together create the SharePoint environment, is tailored with respect to the size and topology as explained in the subsequent sections.
Modeling a SharePoint Server 2010 SP1 environment begins with analyzing current requirements and estimating the expected future demands and targets the deployment.
Decisions on the key solution are based on all the important metrics and parameters that an environment must support and establish.
The SharePoint Server 2010 SP1 environment is modeled considering enterprise workload characteristics like number of users, most frequently used operations, datasets like content size, and content distribution demands, and is tailored in accordance with Microsoft recommendations.
Figure 63 shows the specific architecture of the SharePoint 2010 server farm used as the test.
Figure 63 SharePoint Farm Architecture Under Test
Workload Characteristics
Sizing a SharePoint environment workload is one of the key factors of the solution. The system under test should sustain the described work load demands, user base, and usage characteristics.
Table 11 provides workload characteristics considered to size the farm under test.
Workload Mix (60 RPH)
Requirement on the farm includes the number of users, and their usage characteristics. This performance test considers a heavy profile, where a single active user makes 60 different requests per hour to the SharePoint 2010 farm under test, that is, 60 requests/ hour/ user.
User activities or usage characteristics are modeled based on an enterprise business environment needs such as marketing and engineering. In general the environment hosts central team sites, publishing portals for internal teams as well as enterprise collaboration of organizations, teams and projects. Sites created in these environments are used as communication portals host applications for business solutions and provides channel for general collaboration. Searching, editing and uploading documents, participating in discussions, blog posts, commenting on blogs, etc. are among the most common activities. These activities, considered to be part of a typical enterprise user, are included in the workload used for the performance test.
Figure 64 shows various requests, which a user should make over a period of one hour depicting a workload generated during peak hour. These workloads are loaded onto the SharePoint farm with a brief warm up time.
Figure 64 Workload Requests Over an Hour
Dataset Capacity
The dataset capacity of the farm under test consists of defined workload for SharePoint 2010 content.
Table 12 provides few key metrics which were used to determine the capacity of the dataset for the test.
Performance Test Framework
This performance test provides the responsiveness, throughput, reliability, and scalability of a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 farm under a given workload. The results and analysis of this performance test can help you estimate the hardware configuration required for a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 farm to support up to 20,000 users with 10 percent concurrency under production operation.
Test Methodology
For this performance test the load on the farm is applied using Microsoft Load Testing Kit (LTK). The kit is modified to make it more flexible and enhanced to generate the desired load. The LTK generates a Visual Studio Team System 2010 (VSTS); SP1 load test is based on the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Internet Information Services logs. The content database of size 1 TB is created which has sites and site collections and other important features that constitute the dataset. For more information on the created dataset, see the section Dataset Capacity of the farm under test.
VSTS Test Rig
A group of servers are used to generate a simulated load for testing. A single controller machine is used to run tests remotely and simultaneously on several servers with the help of one or more agents, collectively called a rig. The rig is employed to generate more load than a single computer can generate. A controller is used to coordinate with the agents that means, a controller sends the load test to the agents and the agents perform the test received from the controller. The controller is also responsible to collect the test results.
Figure 65 shows the rig created for this performance test. In the test scenario the rig consists of one controller and multiple agents with a Domain Controller.
Figure 65 Rig to Generate Loads
Note
Performance Tuning
Caching Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 has several methods of caching data and objects to help improve the Performance for the end user. When a client requests a page, a copy of the page is stored temporarily in the output cache. Although the duration of the cache is typically small (the default is 60 seconds), this can boost the performance of WFE servers and reduce latency.
Cache profiles are available so that the site administrators can control the output cache behavior. Administrators can also determine whether different users such as the content editors can receive cached pages. Administrators can also adjust the output cache at the site, site collection, or Web application level.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 uses the object cache to temporarily store objects such as lists, libraries, or page layouts on the WFE server. Caching enables the WFE server to render pages more quickly, reducing the amount of data that is required from the SQL Server databases.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has a BLOB cache that temporarily stores digital assets, such as image or media files, but you can use it with any file type. Using the BLOB cache in conjunction with the Bit Rate Throttling feature in IIS 7.0 enables the progressive download feature for digital assets. Progressive download feature enables to download media files in chunks of data, and playback feature starts after downloading the first chunk rather than the whole file. You can enable and control the size of the BLOB cache at the Web application level. The default size is 10 GB and the default setting is in disable mode.
In the performance test we have enabled the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 cache to improve the overall response time of the farm.
For more information on Cache Setting Operations, see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261797.aspx
Environment Configuration Tuning
Table 13 shows the settings to be done at the time of configuration of the environment to enhance its performance and capacity.
Table 13 Environment Configuration Tuning
Site collection:
Object Caching (On | Off)
Anonymous Cache
Profile (Select)
Object Cache (Off | n MB)
Cross List Query Cache Changes (Every Time | Every n seconds)
ON
Enabled
ON- 10GB
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- 1GB
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.
Database Server - Default Instance- Max degree of parallelism
1
The default is 0. To ensure optimal performance, Microsoft strongly recommends that you set max degree of parallelism to 1 for database servers that host SharePoint Server 2010 SP1 databases.
For more information about how to set max degree of parallelism, see max degree of parallelism Option (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=189030).
HTTP Throttling
HTTP throttling is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 that allows the server to discard the server requests when it is too busy. Every five seconds, a dedicated job runs, which will check the server resources to compare with the resource levels configured for the server. By default the Server CPU, Memory, Request in Queue and Request wait time are monitored. The server enters a throttling period after three consecutive unsuccessful HTTP GET checks. The server remains in this period till a successful check is done. Requests generated prior to the server entering into the throttling mode will be taken and completed. Any new HTTP GET and Search Robot request will generate a 503 error message and will be logged in the event viewer. Also while the server is in a throttling period no new timer jobs will get started.
To monitor the server performance the HTTP throttling is turned off as shown in Figure 66.
Figure 66 Setting Off HTTP Throttling to Monitor Server Performance
Performance Results and Analysis
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 server performance in general varies from environment to environment, depending on the complexity of the deployment and the components involved in the architecture.
Performance of the SharePoint architecture is determined by the user experience.
The following are the major performance counters that measure user experience:
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The following graphs show the results as we applied the described workload (60 RPH) on the test SharePoint Farm.
Requests Per Second
The following graph shows the highest number of received requests per second for several user loads (60 RPH). The graph shows smooth performance of the virtual servers on Cisco UCS C240 M3 servers. Request per second is increased along with the user load without causing any stress on the server. On an average, the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 farm performance was 171 pages per second. The following graph also shows the possibility of further scaling up the user load with stablity of the server performance ensured.
Figure 67 Requests Received for Varying User Loads
Average Page Time
The following graph shows the SharePoint 2010 average page time well below one second. The SharePoint response time was less than one second in the performance test for concurrent user load of 2,000 users. The response time varies with the increased load on SharePoint 2010.
Figure 68 Average Page Response Time for Varying User Load
Average Response Time
The following graph shows average response time metrics for several user loads (60 RPH) of the SharePoint farm. The designed SharePoint farm can support more than 2,000 user concurrency and achieve sub-second response time. The graph shows the average response time to be well below one second proving the efficiency and potential.
Figure 69 Sub-second Response Time Average Response Time
Pages per Second
The following graph shows the pages per second metrics for several user loads (60 RPH) of the SharePoint farm. The SharePoint 2010 farm served on an average 113 pages per second.
Figure 70 Page Response for Varying User Loads
Virtual Server- Processor Utilization
Web Front-End Server
The following graph shows the CPU utilization of the two SharePoint Web Front-End servers. Under heavy workloads of 2,000 users and with Network Load Balancing feature to balance the load at the web front-end tier, virtual servers are hosted on the Cisco UCS C240M3 servers. CPU utilization remained at around 65 percent on an average. The graph shows a linear ascent in the CPU utilization with the increase in the user load and their workloads.
Processor Utilization
WFE server CPU utilization is tested with the search service turned off.
Figure 71 CPU Utilization of the Web Font-End Tier
Application Server
The following graph shows the Application Server CPU Utilization. The Application server hosted the Central Administration and search services. The spikes shown on the graph are due to the search crawl during the performance test. At the Application tier both the virtual servers spiked showing 100 percent CPU utilization.
Figure 72 Application Server CPU Utilization
Database Server
The following graph shows the SQL 2012 Database Server CPU utilization. The high availability scenario requires one server to be active and another to be mirrored. The CPU spikes in the graph shows the search crawl services while updating the search databases. On an average, the overall CPU utilization at the database tier with virtual servers remained at around 30 percent. This is observed when the server is hosted on the Cisco UCS C240 M3.
Figure 73 Database Server CPU Utilization
Database Server CPU Utilization
In the database server CPU utilization, search crawl is kept at idle state.
Figure 74 Database Server CPU Utilization
Network Utilization
The following graph shows the network utilization at Web Front-End, Application and Database tiers of the SharePoint 2010 SP1 farm. The graph also shows the aggregated performance numbers of the network utilization on all servers in the farm.
Figure 75 Network Utilization at Web Front-End, Application and Database Tiers
SharePoint 2010 Server Memory Utilization
The following graph shows the memory utilization of the SharePoint 2010 server farm under heavy workloads of 2000 users.
Maximum memory utilization on the Web Front-End servers, Application server and SQL Server with maximum user load is within 50 percent of the available physical memory. This indicates the CPU availability for further expansion, while providing high availability for all the SharePoint roles hosted on various SharePoint tiers.
Figure 76 Memory Utilization of SharePoint 2010 Server Farm
Physical Host CPU Utilization
Hyper-V has performance counters specific to both the host environment (Hyper-V) and each virtual machine, allowing characterization of the workload across the entire environment.
To monitor the performance of Hyper-V, we have used the perfmon.exe tool. Perfmon displays and records the Hyper-V performance counters. The names of the relevant counter objects are prefixed with "Hyper-V". You should always measure the CPU usage of the physical host by using the Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor performance counters. The CPU utilization counters in Task Manager and Performance Monitor report within the root and child partitions do not exactly capture the CPU usage.
For this performance study we have considered these counters \Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor (*) \% Total Run Time and \Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor (*) \% Guest Run Time. The (*) indicates that statistics for all logical processors on the physical host are being gathered. The below graph represents \Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor (*) \% Total Run Time.
The counter represents the total non-idle time of all logical processors.
Figure 77 Total Execution Time of all Logical Processors of Physical Host 1
The below graph represents \Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor (*) \% Guest Run Time.
The counter is an average percentage of time the guest code runs across all the logical processors of the host.
Figure 78 Guest Execution Percentage for Physical Host 1
The below graph represents \Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor (*) \% Total Run Time.
The counter represents the total non-idle time of the logical processor(s).
Figure 79 Total Exceution Time of all Logical Processors of Physical Host 2
The below graph represents \Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor (*) \% Guest Run Time.
The counter is an average percentage of time the guest code runs across all the logical processors of the host.
Figure 80 Guest Execution Percentage for Physical Host 2
Performance Results and Analysis
The test is functionally successful meeting the criteria set to achieve a 20,000 user workload with approximately 10 percent concurrency. Table 14 provides the summary of the performance results with respect to the most important realistic enterprise concerns.
Summary
The Cisco Unified Computing System meets server virtualization challenges with the next-generation datacenter platform that unifies computing, networking, storage access, and virtualization support in a cohesive system managed centrally, and coordinated with virtualization software such as Microsoft Hyper-V server. The system integrates enterprise-class servers in a 10 Gigabit Ethernet unified network fabric that provides the I/O bandwidth and functions that virtual machines and the virtualization software both need. Cisco Extended Memory Technology offers a highly economical approach for establishing the large memory footprints that requires high virtualization density. Finally, the Cisco Unified Computing System integrates the network access layer into a single easily managed entity in which, links to virtual machines can be configured, managed, and moved as readily as physical links. The Cisco Unified Computing System continues Cisco's long history of innovation and delivers innovation in architecture, technology, partnerships, and services.
Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack-Mount Server is all about high performance and internal storage from a single vendor known for its long history of innovation in architecture, technology, partnerships, and services.
The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack-Mount Server is geared towards organizations with mounting data and storage demands. The enterprise-class Cisco C240 M3 Server is equipped with Intel Xeon E5-2600 processing technology, which delivers top-class performance, energy-efficiency and flexibility. Cisco engineers have designed the Cisco C240 M3 Rack Servers with Cisco UCS P81E VIC to handle a broad range of applications, including workgroup collaborations, virtualization, consolidation, massive data infrastructures and SMB databasing. The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server with its rich stack of technological offerings leverages optimum performance in terms of compute, network and provides internal storage in one cohesive system to meet the challenges of virtualization technologies and growing demands of Small Medium Business.
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is an extensible and scalable web-based platform consisting of tools and technologies that support collaboration and sharing of information within teams, throughout the enterprise and on the web. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is both performance and storage intensive. Not all storage-intensive workloads are alike, and the Cisco UCS C240 M3 server's disk configuration delivers balanced performance and expandability to best meet individual workload requirements. The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server is designed for both performance and expandability over a wide range of storage-intensive infrastructure workloads ranging from large data to collaboration.
Three-tier architecture provisions an ideal SharePoint topology. Several servers at individual tier render various SharePoint components together to make up a SharePoint 2010 farm. Servers at web tier render web and search query functions, servers on the application tier are responsible for search indexing and various service application functions and server at the database tier hosts SQL Server databases for the farm. The paper provides ample guidelines on how to go about creating a virtual SharePoint 2010 farm using Microsoft Hyper-V on the Cisco UCS C240 Rack Server.
This performance study is intended to understand the performance and the capacity of medium SharePoint 2010 Hyper-V virtualized farm, hosted on the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server.
The performance study showed that the SharePoint medium Hyper-V virtualized farm hosted on the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server with its own internal storage offered, improved application performance and operational efficiency that could easily support 20,000 users with a minimum 10 percent concurrency. The SharePoint farm with a network access of 10 Gbps connectivity between the tiers provided an average response time well below one second.
Bill of Material
Table 15 and Table 16 provide details of the components used in this Solution.
References
Microsoft SharePoint 2010:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee263917
Cisco UCS:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns944/index.html
VMware vSphere:
http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/overview.html
NetApp Storage Systems:
http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/
Cisco Nexus:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9441/Products_Sub_Category_Home.html
Cisco Validated Design-FlexPod for VMware:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/Virtualization/flexpod_vmware.html
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series NX-OS Software Configuration Guide:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/configuration/guide/cli/CLIConfigurationGuide.html
NetApp TR-3298: RAID-DP: NetApp Implementation of RAID Double Parity for Data Protection:
http://www.netapp.com/us/library/technical-reports/tr-3298.html
Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2010:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/ultimate
Microsoft TechNet Articles:
•
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758647.aspx
•
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189910.aspx
•
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee263917
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