Starting Kit for SharePoint on Azure

8/9/2019 Starting Kit for SharePoint on Azure

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STARTING KIT TO SHAREPOINT

IN MICROSOFT AZURE

by Patrick Guimonet (MVP, Abalon, France)

This eBook is dedicated to people willing to

start deploying SharePoint in VMs on Microsoft

Azure. They will be able to create there first

farm and to choose the correct VM size for

their different environments.


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Summary:This eBook is dedicated to people willing to

start deploying SharePoint in VMs on Microso Azure.

They will be able to create there rst farm and to choose

the correct VM size for their dierent environments.

Author:Patrick Guimonet

Short Bio:Patrick is Enterprise Soluons Architect.

He has founded and is managing Abalon,a consulng

rm specializing in guidance around Oce 365, Yammer

and SharePoint. He is now Oce 365 MVPand had

been SharePoint MVP for 4 years. He is parcularly

interested in:

New funconalies on the yOS plaorm(for Yammer, Oce 365

and SharePoint) like Oce 365 Video,Groups,Delve,

Cloudand Hybridscenarios which he describes on his two blogs one in

French,the other in English.

He worked as employee at Microso, Cap Gemini, Sun Microsystems, Sequent

and Oracle.

Starng kit to SharePoint in Microsof Azure

PatrickGuimonet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutions_Architecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutions_Architecthttp://mvp.microsoft.com/fr-fr/MVP/Patrick%20Guimonet-4029252http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/yos-news/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/office365-video-portal-is-there-and-why-this-is-important/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/office365-chapter-1-of-groups-is-written-and-so-what/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/office365-delve-first-impressions/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/11/29/yos-plateform-workloads-candidates-for-the-cloud/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/office-365-saturday-my-slides-on-yammer-and-hybrid-are-published/http://blogs.developpeur.org/patricg/http://blogs.developpeur.org/patricg/https://yos365.wordpress.com/https://yos365.wordpress.com/http://blogs.developpeur.org/patricg/http://blogs.developpeur.org/patricg/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/office-365-saturday-my-slides-on-yammer-and-hybrid-are-published/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/11/29/yos-plateform-workloads-candidates-for-the-cloud/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/office365-delve-first-impressions/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/office365-chapter-1-of-groups-is-written-and-so-what/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/office365-video-portal-is-there-and-why-this-is-important/http://yos365.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/yos-news/http://mvp.microsoft.com/fr-fr/MVP/Patrick%20Guimonet-4029252http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutions_Architecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutions_Architect


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[#SharePoint in @Azure] My farm in only a few clicks (first part)!

Step 1

You need a subscription!

You can use an existing subscription or use a free trial (you get 150 or $200 windows Azure credit to

spend freely in one month)

Step 2

You should go to the new portal https://portal.azure.com (this is a new functionality of this portal still in

preview)


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Step 3

Click on + new on the bottom left


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Step 4

Choose all parameters for your farm by filling the form (I found it very well designed) :

We can then define :

a resources group: in order to (as the name states it) group the farm resources

a domain accountwhich will be used to manage the farm

an availability level(high or not) for the farm

the farm components configuration. By default, the wizard gives the following options :

1 domain controller (VM size A1 standard) for the domain contoso.com


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1 SQL server (VM size A5 standard), default service account sqlservice

1 SharePoint server (VM size A2 standard).


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It should be noticed that with 2 cores and 3.5 GB we are well under the prerequisites for SharePoint

2013 (cf. Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013) which are 4 cores and 12 GB of

memory. First VM sizes meeting this criteria are A4 and A6 which are then oversized. A good

compromise could be to choose VM size A3 (very close to the prerequisites):


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It should also be noticed that we can also specify thefollowing parameters :

host name prefix (by default its the 10 first

characters of the resource group name)

the default installation account for SharePoint (by

default [email protected])

the farm account (by

default [email protected])

Farm passphrase : by default (as the other

passwords), its the global administrator password

there are other parameters like:

network and storage


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Azure subscription

the Azure Datacenter


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We launch the creation by clicking on create

It took for me :

1 hour 04 for a simple farm and

2 hours 39 minutes for a high availability farm.

The only noticeable problem was an instantiation error :


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[ #SharePoint in @Azure ] Which VM for my farms ?

As shown in my first article of this serie : A #SharePoint farm in @Azure in only a few clics (first part) !,

its now so simple to create a new SharePoint farm in Azure that it may seem leaving no choice for

architectural decision or so.

Nothing can be more false. One of the main and very important decision the architect should take is to

choose the right VM types and sizes for its architecture.

With the recent introduction of D-Series VM in Azure, the choice can be even harder. And basic Tier for D

series are also expected very soon.

DEFAULT CHOICES FROM THE WIZARD

Lets first review the default sizes proposed by the standard template :

Domain controllers SQL Server SharePoint

From the old (J) days of on-premises installations, there is a reference page about minimal sizing for

SharePoint infrastructure : Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013 . This page is still

valid and the first surprise come from the fact that Microsoft default template for SharePoint Farm in

Azure (in solid red and green on the graph below) doesnt follow Microsoft default hardware

requirements (in white square) !


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Building a sizing tool

To help me choose the correct VM sizes I first created an Excel spreadsheet that will help choose thecorrect VM size for a specific need.


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And, here is a graphical summary of the whole choice of VMs we have today on Azure:

However for a SharePoint farm,

Basic VMs are not an option because they cant allow network access between VMs

CI (Computer Intensive) VMs are designed for HPC solutions, they are not useful either for a

SharePoint farm.


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So here is the simplified choice we have:

I was also able to incorporate the standard prerequisites for SharePoint servers, which gives the

following table :

Name Price Core Memory _AD tier _SQL Server tier _SP tier

A0 s 11 0.25 0.75No No No

A1 s 50 1 1.75OK (small) No No

D1 s 88 1 3.5OK (small) No No

A2 s 100 2 3.5OK (small) Extended No

A5 s 166 2 14OK (big) Extended Extended

D2 s 177 2 7OK (medium) Extended Extended

A3 s 200 4 7OK (medium) Extended Extended

D11 s 203 2 14OK (big) Extended Extended

A6 s 332 4 28No OK < 1000 OK

D3 s 352 4 14No OK < 1000 OKA4 s 399 8 14No OK < 1000 OK

D12 s 406 4 28No OK < 1000 OK

A7 s 665 8 56No OK No

D4 s 704 8 28No OK OK

D13 s 731 8 56No OK No

D14 s 1,314 16 112No OK No


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Standard Excel panel and graphic tools are a great way to understand the whole Azure VM offering.

However, at this stage, I decided that a Power View Panel would be more helpful to choose my VMs for

my SharePoint farms.

On the Power View report, we can then easily exclude non interesting features:


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And also choose the VM size according the targeted tier :

With the help of this report it is then much easier to choose the right VM for my farms. There is no one

size fit all answer for every farm. However, the tool and related analysis can help a lot to start a sizing

reflection. Here are my starting choices (before knowing more on what the customer want to do with its

farm J) .

AD TIER

For a production Environment, I would strictly follow the hardware prerequisites from Microsoft. But I

would also take the less expensive config, depending of the size (in users) of the expected config:

For AD, sizing rules are not as well defined as for the other tiers. But here are some estimates, based on

my experience. As this is not the main subject of this post, to go further I would recommend Technet

Wiki - Capacity Planning for Active Directory Domain Services.


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Small VM are good for usual testing and even production purposes:

SQL Server tier

As far as SQL Server is concerned, for production environment, and without more sizing information, I

would take a A6 standard (with 4 cores and 28 GB) for a config with less than 1000 users (This config is

the cheapest to follow the prerequisites of 4 cores and 8 GB of memory).

49.90

87.880

99.790

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

-

20.0

40.0

60.0

80.0

100.0

120.0

A1 s D1 s A2 s

AD er VM

Price Core Memory Data Disks


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At this point we should notice the lack of an A series VM with 8 cores and 28 GB of memory. The new D4

size is filling the gap but is more expensive than A7 (so this later one is a better choice).

If we accept to be under prerequisite figures, for a test or integration environment, A3 is a good

compromise.


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SHAREPOINT TIER

For the SharePoint, in production environments, and without more sizing information, I would take a A6

VM which with its 4 cores and 28 GB of memory, is the cheapest VM being above prerequisites levels ( 4

cores and 12 GB).


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At this point we should also notice the lack of an A series VM with 4 cores and 14 GB of memory. The

new D3 size is filling the gap but is more expensive than A6 (so this later one is a better choice).


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So here are the whole set of VMs that are following the prerequisites figures (4 cores and 12 GB of

memory) for SharePoint tier :

With some more details on their respective configurations:


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If we accept to be under prerequisite figures ( 4 cores and 12 GB), for a test or integration environment,

A5 (with 2 cores and 14 GB) is a good compromise.

Here are others options available for testing purpose :

Summary

To summarize here are my best picks for a small production environment (under 1000 users) :

Domain controllers SQL Server SharePoint


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50 200 166

Here is the final price comparison between these environments:


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FINAL NOTES ON PRICING

Please note that all prices are those displayed on http://azure.microsoft.com/en-

us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/ in as of 2014-10-06 for the North Europe (Dublin) Datacenter.

They are based on Microsoft estimations for a VM running one month. There are some difference with

those displayed on http://portal.azure.com . For example, for a A6 standard :

D series prices are priced at US Central rates until January 1, 2015.

We have used on this study final rate for North Europe

Sources :

Virtual Machine Pricing

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/

New D-Series Virtual Machine Sizeshttp://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/09/22/new-d-series-virtual-machine-sizes/


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Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azurehttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn197896.aspx

Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(v=office.15).aspx


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Pinterest:Patrick Guimonet

Facebook:Patrick Guimonet

LinkedIn:Patrick Guimonet

Twier:@patricg

My blog in French:blogs.developpeur.org/patricg

My blog in English:yos365.wordpress.com

My company site:www.abalon.fr

You can join me on:
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