Monitoring and Building for SharePoint Farm Performance...SharePoint Farm Performance Sean P....

Monitoring and Building for SharePoint Farm Performance

Sean P. McDonoughMicrosoft MVPChief Technology OfficerBitstream Foundry LLC

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What We’ll Be Covering

1. Farm Environments

2. Getting a Solid Start

3. Tools and Monitoring Servers

4. Page Performance Monitoring

5. Questions & Answers

6. (LOTS of) References

Farm Environments

Farm Environments

Yes, I said farm, not stamp

• Subtle distinction, but it means we’re likely on-premises …• No SharePoint Online / Office 365

• Unless you’re on a “farm in the cloud”

• Why on-premises?• Significant surface reduction for monitoring in the cloud

• It’s “someone else’s” problem (i.e., a value-add for consumers)

• Administrative APIs very limited vs. on-premises

• Limited tools (no perfmon, developer dashboard, etc.)

• In short: we can’t get at the counters and logs we need!

Farm Environments

Some on-premises assumptions I’m making for this session:

• The big question: are you virtualizing?• Virtualization affords many options

• Virtualization provides many ways to destroy performance

• My assumption: you are virtualizing your environment

• Within the datacenter and beyond it• Easier than ever to build farm interdependencies and distributed environments

• Application and customization options push connections beyond the farm

• My assumption: we are focusing on basic (end-user) SharePoint performance

Getting a Solid Start


“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

When you have the luxury of starting from scratch, you can get the basics right:

• VM Product Configuration

• Virtual Machine (VM) Setup

• Operating System Configuration

• SQL Server Installation


VM Product Configuration

• Treatment of Memory• Amount of memory actively used and

swapped is configurable

• Depending on product, oversubscription is possible

• Your goal should be 1:1

• What if I can’t do 1:1?• Minimize swapping

• Swapping degrades performance



• Virtualization Options• Avoid oversubscription on processors

and cores – nothing is free!

• Understand what you’re enabling and avoid going crazy to avoid potential performance implications











• Do you really know what Intel’s VT-X/EPT extensions are?






• Do you really know what Intel’s VT-X/EPT extensions are?

• VMs inside of VMs …


VM Setup

• Creating virtual disks• SharePoint is an I/O monster, especially when it

comes to SQL Server

• Big question: what is the storage technology in-use? Traditional hard drives? SSDs? Combination?

• Next question: where are the bottlenecks likely to occur? Drives? Controllers? Elsewhere?

• Our goal: avoid too many (abstraction) layers; each layer adds overhead


VM Setup

• Setup a new 100GB HD: Common Example• Create a new 100GB drive• Place on traditional hard drive(s)• Drives are in a RAID-5 configuration• Space allocated on demand

• What you don’t see …• Cost of parity calculations• Cost of virtual translation• Cost to “auto-grow”/allocate real drive

space• Latency at every step


VM Setup: ways to improve the scenario

• Understand common RAID configurations.• RAID-5: cheaper, but costly parity calculations

• RAID-10: better performance, more expensive



• Understand common RAID configurations.• RAID-5: cheaper, but costly parity calculation


• Go “direct to disk” with pass-through options• Hyper-V – “pass-through” storage

• VMware – “mapping” a disk



• Understand common RAID configurations.• RAID-5: cheaper, but costly parity calculation


• Go “direct to disk” with pass-through options• Hyper-V – “pass-through” storage

• VMware – “mapping” a disk

• Pre-allocate virtual disk space• Initialize drive space before it’s needed

• This will chew up real drive space!


VM Setup: ways to improve the scenario (summary)

• Remove unnecessary sources of latency• Allocation at run-time also hurts a lot. Pre-

allocate your storage space.

• Stay off of USB drives in performance-critical scenarios. USB latency hurts.

SLOW!






• Avoid VMDKs and VHDs by passing-through to dedicated storage.







• Software RAID kills performance in so many ways. Use hardware RAID.







• Software RAID kills performance in so many ways. Use hardware RAID.

• Realize that multiple virtual drives on a single drive array degrades performance!



• The great equalizer – solid state drives (SSDs)• Dramatically better performance hands-down

• No moving parts

• Performance varies for SSDs• Choose your protocol: SATA (AHCI) vs. NVMe

• M.2 is a new form factor, not a new standard

• Limits (theoretical)• SATA (300MB/s) or (600MB/s) (SATA 2 or 3)

• NVMe (2GB/s) or (4GB/s) (PCIe Gen 2 or 3)

• The role of so-called “hybrids”


Operating System Options: Paging File

• Various strategies for managing• System managed

• Manual allocation(s)

• Remove entirely

• I prefer to assign an allocation manually• Create a dedicated paging drive

• Pre-allocate space in VM environment

• Size is 1.5x the amount of memory


Operating System Options: Paging File

• Various strategies for managing• System managed

• Manual allocation(s)

• Remove entirely

• I prefer to assign an allocation manually• Create a dedicated paging drive

• Pre-allocate space in VM environment

• Size is 1.5x the amount of memory

• Alter Windows paging options

• (note: be sure to set no paging for C:)


Operating System Options: Miscellaneous

• Visual Effects• “Adjust for best performance”

• Turns off animations and other CPU-wasting eye-candy


Operating System Options: Miscellaneous

• Visual Effects• “Adjust for best performance”

• Turns of animations and other CPU-wasting eye-candy

• If your host drives are removable …• Review removal policies for each drive

• Will likely have policies that optimize for performance – typically by enabling caching.


SQL Server is the performance lynchpin in nearly all SharePoint environments. Luckily, there are some pretty basic adjustments that will help improve performance:

• Instant File Initialization …

• Storage Selection …

• Drive Formatting …

• Data and Log Assignment …

• TempDB Configuration …

• DB Sizing and Autogrowth …

Tools and Monitoring Servers

Reasons

Why do we monitor performance? Reasons typically fall into one of the following three categories:

• We are seeking to understand why our SharePoint environment is underperforming• Troubleshooting!

• We want to ensure that we have enough headroom to scale and grow as desired.• Capacity!

• We want to quantify changes we’ve made to our farm in terms of performance• Improvements!

Troubleshooting

We’re looking for the source of a performance problem. Where should we start?

Performance issues typically originate in at least one general sub-system:

• Memory

• Network

• Processor (CPU)

• Storage (Disk)

Of course, SharePoint problems often muddy the waters by spanning more than one category

Tools

Recommendation: start with monitoring the server(s) over time to gain an understanding:

• First understand “the normal state” of a server

• Then observe the server when a problem occurs

Tools

Recommendation: start with monitoring the server(s) over time to gain an understanding:

• First understand “the normal state” of a server

• Then observe the server when a problem occurs

Many different tools at our disposal:

• Farm Health Analyzer

• Event Viewer

• ULS Viewer

• Fiddler

• Developer Dashboard

• Wireshark

Performance Counters

Today’s focus for performance monitoring is on counters

• Specific performance counters that can help direct further investigation and keep us out of the weeds




How do we view performance counters?

• Windows Performance Monitor (perfmon.exe)






• Windows Resource Monitor (resmon.exe)






• Windows Resource Monitor (resmon.exe)

• More specialized tools (e.g., SysKit’s tools)


Performance Counter Basics

The operating system exposes counters

• Memory, CPU, network, and more





Applications oftentimes expose their own counters

• For instance, SharePoint alone exposes over 20 categories and hundreds of counters





Applications oftentimes expose their own counters

• For instance, SharePoint alone exposes over 20 categories and hundreds of counters

Bottom line: unless you know what to watch, you’ll suffer a cruel and horrible death at the hands of the Performance Counter Gods.

Server Roles and Counters

What should I be watching?

That depends on the role of the server

• Web Front-End

• Application Server

• SQL Server

Web Front-Ends

WFEs serve-up pages through IIS, so we want low values for all of these counters

• ASP.NET: Requests Queued (should be “low”)

• ASP.NET: Requests Rejected (should be 0)

• ASP.NET: Request Wait Time (should be near 0)

• ASP.NET: Worker Process Restarts (should be 0)

Web Front-Ends

WFEs serve-up pages through IIS, so we want low values for all of these counters

• ASP.NET: Requests Queued (should be “low”)

• ASP.NET: Requests Rejected (should be 0)

• ASP.NET: Request Wait Time (should be near 0)

• ASP.NET: Worker Process Restarts (should be 0)

WFEs also use their memory for caching to accelerate web requests.

• ASP.NET Applications: Cache API Trims (should be near 0)

• ASP.NET Applications: Cache API Hit Ratio (should be “high”)

• SharePoint Publishing Cache: Total Number of Cache Compactions (should be near 0)

• SharePoint Publishing Cache: Publishing Cache Hit Ratio (should be “high”)

• SharePoint Publishing Cache: Publishing Cache Flushes / Second (should be 0)

Web Front-Ends

WFEs use disks for BLOB caching

• SharePoint Publishing Cache: BLOB Cache % Full (maintain headroom)

Application Servers

Unless an application server is experiencing issues specific to its function (which might require monitoring specialized counters), consider monitoring the following:

• Processor: % Processor Time (>75% - 85% is bad)

• Memory: Available Mbytes (<2 GB is bad)

• Memory: Cache Faults/sec (>1 is bad)

• Memory: Pages/sec (>10 is bad)

• Disk: Avg. Disk Queue Length (depends)

• Disk: % Idle Time (<90% is bad)

• Disk: % Free Space (<30% is bad)

These also are valid for WFEs, as well!

SQL Servers

Consider watching the following:

• SQLServer:Buffer Manager: Buffer Cache Hit Ratio

• SQLServer:Databases: Transactions/sec

• SQLServer:General Statistics: User Connections

• SQLServer:Latches: Average Latch Wait Time (ms)

• SQLServer:Latches: Latch Waits/sec

• SQLServer:Locks: Average Wait Time (ms)

• SQLServer:Locks: Lock Wait Time (ms)

• SQLServer:Locks: Number of Deadlocks/sec

• SQLServer:Plan Cache: Cache Hit Ratio

• SQLServer:SQL Statistics:SQL Compilations/sec

• SQLServer:SQL Re-Compilations/sec

Page Performance Monitoring


We’ve been looking at server-side performance monitoring thus far. It represents only half of the overall equation.



We need go to put ourselves in the role of the end-user to monitor and diagnose a number of other issues, including page performance issues.



We need go to put ourselves in the role of the end-user to monitor and diagnose a number of other issues, including page performance issues.

What can we do from the other end of the wire?


The answer is “quite a bit”

Your browser is an amazingly capable performance tool – if you understand how to use it.


The answer is “quite a bit”

Your browser is an amazingly capable performance tool – if you understand how to use it.

Requests and their responses are recorded chronologically – including all sorts of information such as HTTP headers, response codes, cookies, and much more.


X-SharePointHealthScore

• A measure of the front-end’s general load or stress. Values from 0 (no stress) to 10 (max stress). We want this low.




SPRequestDuration

• The amount of time your request spends processing on the server (in ms). Ideally less than three seconds (3000ms)




SPRequestDuration

• The amount of time your request spends processing on the server (in ms). Ideally less than three seconds (3000ms)

SPIisLatency

• The amount of time your request spends waiting on the server (in ms). Should be near zero.


Round Trip Time – (SPRequestDuration + SPIisLatency) = Time lost “Elsewhere”



For example:

• Round Trip Time = 76.04ms

• SPRequestDuration = 51ms

• SPIisLatency = 0

• Time Lost Elsewhere = 25.04ms



For example:

• Round Trip Time = 76.04ms

• SPRequestDuration = 51ms

• SPIisLatency = 0

• Time Lost Elsewhere = 25.04ms

This is a high-performance SharePoint

farm that is not under load.

• May not reflect real world conditions

SharePoint On-Premises

This will work for …

• SharePoint 2013 on-prem

SharePoint On-Premises

This will work for …



The Common Outcomes

I’ve got consistently high SPRequestDuration values

• This is oftentimes where we find questionable dev practices

• May be related to server (over-)load or other factors

• X-SharePointHealthScore can corroborate (or not)

The Common Outcomes

I’ve got consistently high SPRequestDuration values

• This is oftentimes where we find questionable dev practices

• May be related to server (over-)load or other factors

• X-SharePointHealthScore can corroborate (or not)

I’m seeing a lot of “time lost elsewhere”

• Network congestion or failure

• Web proxies inserting themselves between you and SharePoint

• DNS resolution issues

• Routing problems

Other Questions?

References

References

1. What does virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI do?https://communities.vmware.com/thread/525101

2. What Are VMware Virtual CPU Performance Counters (vPMCs)?https://www.vladan.fr/what-are-vmware-virtual-cpu-performance-monitoring-counters-vpm1cs/

3. The road to IOMMU (directed video card memory access)https://communities.vmware.com/thread/399066

4. Advantages and Disadvantages of Various RAID Levelshttps://10gbps.io/blog/advantages-disadvantages-various-raid-levels/

5. Configuring Pass-Through Disks in Hyper-V https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2008/10/24/configuring-pass-through-disks-in-hyper-v/

6. NVMe vs. vs. SSD vs HDD Performance: Is it Time to Switch?https://photographylife.com/nvme-vs-ssd-vs-hdd-performance

7. Why Storage Drive Speeds Don’t Hit Their Theoretical Limitshttp://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/457172-why-storage-drive-speeds-dont-hit-their-theoretical-limits/

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/525101

https://www.vladan.fr/what-are-vmware-virtual-cpu-performance-monitoring-counters-vpm1cs/

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/399066

https://10gbps.io/blog/advantages-disadvantages-various-raid-levels/

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2008/10/24/configuring-pass-through-disks-in-hyper-v/

https://photographylife.com/nvme-vs-ssd-vs-hdd-performance

http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/457172-why-storage-drive-speeds-dont-hit-their-theoretical-limits/

References

8. What is SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive)https://www.lifewire.com/solid-state-hybrid-drive-833451

9. Disable Automatic Updates in 2016https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/lync/en-US/d3a2694c-32da-4158-943a-81c2904ffb3d/disable-automatic-updates-in-2016?forum=WinServerPreview

10.Storage and SQL Server Capacity Planning and Configuration (SharePoint Server) https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc298801(v=office.16).aspx

11.Best Practices for SQL Server in a SharePoint Server Farmhttps://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh292622(v=office.16).aspx

12.Storage and SQL Server Capacity Planning and Configuration (SharePoint Server) https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a96075c6-d315-40a8-a739-49b91c61978f(v=office.16)#Section6_3

13.Diskspd Utility: A Robust Storage Testing Tool (superseding SQLIO) https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/DiskSpd-a-robust-storage-6cd2f223

14.Github repository for diskspdhttps://github.com/microsoft/diskspd

https://www.lifewire.com/solid-state-hybrid-drive-833451

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/lync/en-US/d3a2694c-32da-4158-943a-81c2904ffb3d/disable-automatic-updates-in-2016?forum=WinServerPreview

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc298801(v=office.16).aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh292622(v=office.16).aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a96075c6-d315-40a8-a739-49b91c61978f(v=office.16)#Section6_3

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/DiskSpd-a-robust-storage-6cd2f223

https://github.com/microsoft/diskspd

References

15. Using Microsoft DiskSpd to Test Your Storage Subsystemhttps://sqlperformance.com/2015/08/io-subsystem/diskspd-test-storage

16. CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0https://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

17. The Ultimate SharePoint Performance Guidehttps://leanpub.com/SharePointPerformanceGuide/c/SysKit

18. SysInternals Suitehttps://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysinternals-suite

19. AutoSPInstaller on GitHubhttps://github.com/brianlala/AutoSPInstaller

20. AutoSPInstaller GUIhttps://autospinstaller.com

21. Monitoring and maintaining SharePoint Server 2013https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758658(v=office.16).aspx

https://sqlperformance.com/2015/08/io-subsystem/diskspd-test-storage

https://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

https://leanpub.com/SharePointPerformanceGuide/c/SysKit

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysinternals-suite

https://github.com/brianlala/AutoSPInstaller

https://autospinstaller.com/

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758658(v=office.16).aspx

References

22. Performance Testing for SharePoint Server 2013https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758659(v=office.16).aspx

23. Capacity management and sizing overview for SharePoint Server 2013https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758647(v=office.16).aspx

24. SharePoint Performance Monitoring – How and Why?http://blog.syskit.com/sharepoint-performance-monitoring

25. Performance Counters for ASP.NEThttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fxk122b4.aspx

26. Monitor Cache Performance in SharePoint Server 2016https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff934623(v=office.16).aspx

27. ASP.NET Performance Monitoring, and When to Alert Administratorshttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972959.aspx

28. MOSS Object Cache Memory Tuning is not an Intuitive Processhttps://sharepointinterface.com/2009/08/30/moss-object-cache-memory-tuning-is-not-an-intuitive-process/



http://blog.syskit.com/sharepoint-performance-monitoring

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fxk122b4.aspx


https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972959.aspx

https://sharepointinterface.com/2009/08/30/moss-object-cache-memory-tuning-is-not-an-intuitive-process/

References

29. High Avg Disk Queue Length and Finding the Causehttp://www.ithacks.com/2008/09/12/high-avg-disk-queue-length-and-finding-the-cause/

30. SharePoint Performance: Best Practices from the Field https://www.slideshare.net/jasonhimmelstein/sharepoint-performance

31. ULS Viewerhttps://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44020

32. Fiddlerhttps://www.telerik.com/download/fiddler

33. Using the Developer Dashboardhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff512745(v=office.16).aspx

34. The Five-Minute Page Performance Troubleshooting Guide for SharePoint Onlinehttps://sharepointinterface.com/2017/07/07/the-five-minute-page-performance-troubleshooting-guide-for-sharepoint-online/

http://www.ithacks.com/2008/09/12/high-avg-disk-queue-length-and-finding-the-cause/

https://www.slideshare.net/jasonhimmelstein/sharepoint-performance

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44020

https://www.telerik.com/download/fiddler

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff512745(v=office.16).aspx

https://sharepointinterface.com/2017/07/07/the-five-minute-page-performance-troubleshooting-guide-for-sharepoint-online/

References

35. Akamai Reveals 2 Seconds As The New Threshold Of Acceptability For Ecommerce Web Page Response Timeshttps://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2009-press/akamai-reveals-2-seconds-as-the-new-threshold-of-acceptability-for-ecommerce-web-page-response-times.jsp

36. How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Linehttps://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/

https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2009-press/akamai-reveals-2-seconds-as-the-new-threshold-of-acceptability-for-ecommerce-web-page-response-times.jsp

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/

Sean P. McDonoughSharePoint and Office 365 Gearhead, Tinkerer, Microsoft MVP

Email:Twitter:

Blog:About:

[email protected]@spmcdonoughhttp://SharePointInterface.comhttp://about.me/spmcdonough

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