10 Tips for a Healthy SharePoint Environment

ILTA Webinar

Let’s Meet.

Ted Theodoropoulos• Acrowire Founder & President• 20+ years as a business owner• 10 years in IT Audit/Risk

Management at Bank of America• Former member of Microsoft SQL

Server team• Certified Scrum Master / Lean Six

Sigma Black Belt

Brian Gough• Acrowire Solutions Architect• 20+ years experience with

Microsoft technologies• 7+ years SharePoint experience

as Developer and Administrator• Twice recognized as SharePoint

Most Valued Professional (MVP)

What We’ll Cover Today

• SharePoint Poll - How critical is SharePoint• Defining a “Healthy” SharePoint• 10 Tips for SharePoint Health• SharePoint MD Overview• Q&A

We are SharePoint Experts.

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Style Tiles & Mockups

Let’s Poll.

How critical is your firm’s SharePointenvironment?

Scale (1-5) Not Critical/ 5=Extremely Critical

What Does “Healthy” Even Mean?

Health refers to the overall state and performance of your SharePoint farm, including:• Database servers• Backups/Restores• Site creation• Search • User Experience

For example, a healthy SharePoint farm undergoes routine restores, has minimal vulnerabilities and a operates with speed.

Tip #1 – Proactively Monitor Your Farm

Allowing your system to collect dust after your farm has been successfully implemented will create risks and failures.

As a rule of thumb, run routine monitoring on your system every month. • Doing so will help prevent outages and poor performance before end users are

impacted.

Service Manager, SQL Sentry, AvePoint are common tools to assist with proactive monitoring for your hardware, network and databases.

Tip #2 – Check Your Configurations

Has it been more than one year since you last checked your configurations?

Routine check-ins are critical for performance.

• Some Service Applications have settings that can be modified for this reason.

• Align your needs with the appropriate configurations.• Try to limit the number of Application pools, as each pool reserves its own

memory and resources so this can consume resources unnecessarily.

Tip #3 – Manage Your Databases

Ask Yourself:

1. How large are my content databases?2. Are my Log files on the same drive as my Data

files? (If so, files should be kept separate)3. Am I familiar with the “built-in” databases?4. Do I understand the difference between Model

databases and Temp databases?

Tip #4 – Update Your Servers

Consider these best practices:• Wait 6 months before installing a patch.• If new users are being on boarded, assume you will have more

content and plan for more resources.• As a general rule of thumb, your DB log files should equal

about 30% of your data file size.

And ask yourself: • Are my servers patched up?• Am I current on the SharePoint updates?• Am I keeping up with RAM and CPU resources?• What about disk space?

Tip #5 – Govern Your Farm

“Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should”

Be mindful about setting guidelines and standards:• Who can create sites or Site Collections? • Do you know when you create a new Site Collection or Site, as opposed to a

library or two?• Who controls Permissions?• Is full control necessary for users?• How are you controlling versions and the size of your lists? Are you allowing

your system to create 2,000+ versions of one document or have you set versioning limits?

Tip #6 – Be Aware of Your Logging

Reduce the amount of logging so your disk space is not compromised.• Have you changed your ULS logging levels for any reason?• Did you remember to change them back to the defaults?• Setting logging to verbose can be very helpful if you need to troubleshoot an

issue.• Leaving your ULS and Event logging at a high level, like verbose, can consume

a lot of processing resources as well as disk space.

Tip #7 – Manage Your Service Apps

If you can have more than one server, you should look at distributing the workload to help your servers run more efficiently.

Ask Yourself: • How are my Service Applications distributed across my farm?• Are they all running on the same server?• Have I provided enough resources (i.e. RAM, CPU, disk space) to

allow them to perform well? • Is my CPU regularly pegged out at 100%?

Tip #8 – Train Your End Users

• Do users know how to properly set up lists and libraries?

• Are users aware of the impacts of file sizes and excessive web parts?

• Is everyone using the same naming convention?

“Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.” – Peter Drucker

And Training.

Tip #9 – Perform Regular Backups

Part of a healthy farm is having reliable backups and being prepared for unforeseen disasters.

Did You Know? World Backup Day was March 31st

X Performing regular backups to reduce the amount of data loss will give you and your users a certain peace of mind.

X Remember, managing the size of your databases will impact your backups.

Tip #10 – Perform Restores

As important as backups are, it is surprising how rarely people actually confirm that the Restore process works. Backups are useless if restores won’t work.

• Take the time to perform a restore from your backups. Knowing without a doubt the process is defined, tested and successful will go a long way to giving you and your users confidence in your system.

Don’t forget to TEST your backups.

Now You’re An Expert.

Maintaining a healthy SharePoint Environment can be done internally with the right people, right knowledge and right frequencies.

Our goal is to supply you with relevant knowledge to help make this happen.

But, We're Still Here to Help.

Finding the time to proactively manage SharePoint to optimize its health is often a challenge for law firms.

Learn about SharePoint MD today and how this comprehensive health check-up can:• Audit your farm configuration and infrastructure• Review your security posture• Provide recommendations for improved performance• Analyze your firm’s migration readiness

Questions and Answersinfo@acrowire.com