Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

222 Part III: Planning and Deployment
■ The indexing server is easily able to handle real-time indexing of documents
that are checked in. It also performs incremental-type re-indexing in a period
of time suitable for frequent periodic indexing, and it can perform an indexinclusive
operation suitable for overnight scheduling. Full re-indexing of large
indexes containing significant content should be achievable over a weekend.
■ Network traffic between the clients and front-end servers, and traffic between
the front-end servers and other configuration systems (search servers, indexing
server, and SQL Server) is not excessive and should be supportable using 100
megabit network segments. For the larger farm configurations, which have
high operation rates, the prescribed network design of two virtual LANs was
used. This design is used to segment differing network traffic (for instance,
HTTP client/front-end traffic and other server intercommunication traffic) onto
two separate LANs so that they do not saturate a network segment and user
response times are not affected by nonclient traffic.
■ Performing database and disk maintenance is strongly recommended. Periodic
execution of an SQL Server query to adjust table statistics and re-index database
tables will result in optimal SQL Server database performance. Periodic
examination of logical disk volume fragmentation levels and appropriate remedial
action will ensure that the I/O subsystem does not impede performance.
Testing for Capacity
Testing for capacity is one of the most important parts of capacity planning. It will
determine whether your planned topology will actually support the number of users
and operations per second you expect. Testing will be employed after you have
planned your infrastructure using the information presented in the preceding sections.
Once the topology is built, before putting it into production, it should be
stressed with both the normal workload mix you expect and the peak workload mix
you expect to ensure that it can easily support the load. There isn’t much that’s
worse for a deployment than spending a lot of time and money planning and building
a solution only to put it into production and have it fail because the system could
not handle the load.
This section will discuss tools you can use to stress test your portal sites as well
as how to use those tools. It will also provide some basic performance monitoring
information, but more in-depth performance monitoring information can be found
in Chapter 10. Before proceeding, you should know the most general workload pattern.
Typical portal site activity for a general business solution is 20 percent corporate
portal site, 15 percent divisional portal sites, 40 percent team sites, and 25
percent My Sites. Your custom workload pattern will probably be different, and you
should apply the information presented to your custom pattern. The examples in
this section will discuss the workload pattern for the general business solution.