MOSS 2007 upgrade to SharePoint 2010

Requirements, requirements & REQUIREMENTS - gathering, understanding, refinement, gathering, understanding, refinement, gathering ....


We need to understand the business and customers'/users' requirements first.  The requirements can be broken into existing SharePoint 2007 usage scenarios and new usage scenarios. Since SharePoint 2010 enables lots of cool new features, we should educate our users on the new features and understand which ones appeals to them.

Once we understand the requirements, we can then map them into the services that is needed to fulfill those requirements. It is good to have some knowledge on the those services especially in terms of hardware requirements to run them properly. We need to truly understand what services are needed and how intensive they will be used. If what we have collected from users cannot answer these two important questions, then we need to go back to users. This is a very important activity as it will help us to get the right hardware to build our SharePoint 2010 environment.

Perfmon Counters to Monitor SharePoint Environment's Servers

List of perfmon counters that I gathered for MOSS 2007. However, I believe it is applicable for SharePoint 2010 as well.

SharePoint 2010 Services & its Hardware Requirements

When planning to setup SharePoint 2010 environment, we need to understand what are the services that will be required and how heavy each of them will be used. This will help us them to understand the hardware requirement and design the right size of hardware for our SharePoint 2010 environment to ensure optimum performance.


Below are some of the services that is either processing, memory, storage size or  storage speed (IOPS) intensive and any combination of them We need to be extra careful during planning if these services is needed and will be heavily used in our organization. This analysis is based on technet article on capacity management.

1. SharePoint Search Service. This is the king of all services in terms of resource (processor, memory, storage space & speed) utilization across all the 3 tiers - web, application & sql servers. I guess because on this nature, MS recommends that for large farms, we use separate search service farm to host search applications. Note that search service is one of the cross farm service enabled services.

2. User Profile Service and PowerPivot Service. Both services requires lots of resoures in the application and sql servers.

3. Office related services such as PowerPoint, Excel Calculation, Visio, Access, Word Conversion and InfoPath Form services utilizes high application server CPU & RAM.

4. Database operation intensive services such as Logging, Web Analytics and Project service applications requires high end SQL Servers. In most cases, this requires separate SQL Servers to cater for these services applications.

Hardware and Software Requirements for SharePoint 2010

SharePoint in a multiple server farm production environment needs the below minimum hardware specifications

1. 64 bit processors, 4 core servers

2. 8GB of RAM

3. Around 120 GB for system drive (80GB + 30% buffer for daily use +2*RAM size) - this is just my estimation. Varies for each farm/environment.

For its back end (SQL Server), it needs

1. 64 bit, 8 cores

2. 16 GB to 64 GB of RAM (medium to large farm)

3. 80 GB ++ for system drive. ++ means additional space required depends on size of SharePoint content.

SharePoint 2010 needs the following software to work.

A. SQL Server

1. SQL Server 2005 64 bit with Service Pack 3 (SP3) + Cumulative Update Package 3 (CUP3) or

SQL Server 2008 64 bit with SP1 + CUP2.

B. SP Server

1. Windows Server 2008 with SP2

2. Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP3

3. MS .NET Framework (FW) v3.5 with SP1

4. MS Chart Controls for MS .NET FW 3.5.

Microsoft Chart Controls for .NET Framework provides rich data visualization for developers. Using the Chart controls, you can create ASP.NET pages or Windows Forms applications with simple, intuitive, and visually compelling charts for complex statistical or financial analysis. These controls are specifically designed for use with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.

5. MS Geneva FW . More details here. Basically this enables claims based authorization.

6. MS Sync FW Runtime v1.0(x64). More details here.

Microsoft Sync Framework is a comprehensive synchronization platform that enables collaboration and offline scenarios for applications, services and devices. Developers can build sync ecosystems that integrate any application, any type of data, using any protocol over any network.

7. MS Filter Pack 2.0.

The Microsoft Filter Pack is a single point-of-distribution for Office IFilters. IFilters are components that allow search services to index content of specific file types, letting you search for content in those files. They are intended for use with Microsoft Search Services (Sharepoint, SQL, Exchange, Windows Search).

8. MS SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) ADOMD.NET.

ADOMD.NET is a Microsoft .NET Framework data provider that is designed to communicate with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS). More details here.

9. ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2.

WCF Data Services (formerly ADO.NET Data Services) is a platform for what Microsoft calls Data Services. It is actually a combination of the runtime and a web service through which the services are exposed. More details here.

Great resources on SharePoint 2010

I have been searching and learning about SharePoint 2010. Here is the list of resources that I find useful & interesting to me so far.

Video resources

1. Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 for IT Pros


2. Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010


3. Channel 9 videos


4. MSDN Chopsticks

Reading resources

1. A series of great articles in A Static State


2. Performance Tuning


3. Common Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Installation Issues and Resolutions


4. One of the new & coolest feature


5. Database Mirroring in SharePoint 2010

Tools

1. SPMetal


2. SharePoint Manager 2010