SharePoint ProSix Steps for Proactively Monitoring SharePoint

• Ron Charity• roncharity@gmail.com

• 416-300-6033

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– Review each page and notes

– Edit as you see fit and highlight change in RED

• The presenter has 15-20 minutes to present

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Abstract (Remove when presenting)

This webinar will take you through a six step process for enabling you to proactively monitor SharePoint health, capacity and to help trouble shoot the root cause of problems.

SharePoint is a platform or services and functionality that enables an organizations to create valuable solutions but with that value comes technical complexity and risk. Common problems that companies face are not meeting SLAs, lack of visibility into performance and health, not able to proactively manage technical risks and speed up / optimize troubleshooting.

BIO

Ron CharityA published Technologist with 20 + years in infrastructure and application consulting.

Experience working in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Has worked with SharePoint and related technologies since 2000.

Plays several bands, rides a Harley Nightster, and enjoys travel, especially to beach destinations.

Agenda

• Points of view on the problem

• Impact to your organization

• How tools can help

• Six steps to address your monitoring needs

• Next steps

• Suggested reading

• Contact information

Points of view on the problem

• The business user expects perfect and consistent service and when things go wrong it should be easy to fix– Not experts

– Just want it to work so they can do their day job

• IT is held/measured based on an SLA – Expectation of service which is difficult to manage

– Lack visibility and insight

• The SharePoint team experienced staff, funding, tools and process to proactively manage– Capacity and performance insight

– Identify problems, troubleshoot and find root cause

– Provide tangible proof of problem

Impact to organization

• The Business experiences–Productivity loss

–Frustration with performance and outages

–Damage to brand

• IT / vendor not able to meet SLA–Noise and pain as a result

–Financial penalty impacts and scores

–Loss of credibility

• SharePoint team not able to–Act proactively - instead reactive

–Can’t predict impact of changes

–Waste time and resources finding root cause

–Lose credibility

How tools can help

• Provides IT and business with factual reporting against SLAs (Confidence IT / vender is delivering)–Removes FUD / guessing from conversation

• Enables IT / SharePoint team so they are able to:–Assessing impact of changes in Quality Assurance

–Visibility into operational issues

–Proactively monitor and prevent capacity and performance issues before they happen - Alert on issues

–Report on performance and capacity / trends, predict impact of changes

• Provides techs with visibility into health regarding the–Physical hardware and OS

–Application Server and SharePoint

–SQL Server

Common mistakes

• Using out of box settings without testing–False Alerts – loses credibility

• Monitoring everything–Not what’s critical

–Key Information gets lost

–No training and awareness

–Nobody knows about or uses it

• Not integrated in change mgmt–How to measure impact of change

–Review changes based on historic data / reports

• Not integrating in to problem mgmt and escalation process–Reports go ignored - Alerts as well

• Not assigning alerts to techs, event tracking, follow up

Six steps

• The steps are solution-oriented• Conduct a gap analysis of the steps and apply what you need

• The six steps:

–1 - Technical and process documentation

–2 - Establish a Quality Assurance (QA) Discipline

–3 - Baseline your SharePoint environment

–4 - Operational readiness

–5 - Deploy monitoring tools

–6 – Launch, monitor and refine ongoing

Step 1 - Technical and process documentation• Document your SharePoint environment

–Servers, storage, network

–Existing process and policy

• Document your process and policy– Incident tracking and Problem mgmt

–Governance / Escalation process

–Grievances and complaints

–Change mgmt

• Review your third party contracts–Outsourcing

–Contractors

–Providers

Step 2 - Establish a Quality Assurance Discipline• Governed and enforced my Executive Mgmt

• Must be integrated into Change Mgmt

• Goal = Enforceable / accountable

• Consists of the following–Experienced and trained QA staff

–SharePoint environment

–Defect tracking, load generation and monitoring tools

• Formalized documentation and work flow–Requirements form

–Test Plan

–Test Scripts

–Report and recommendations

Step 2 - Establish a Quality Assurance Discipline

Before

After

Step 3 - Baseline your SharePoint Environment• Utilizing QA disciplines

–For new deployments

–For existing

• Use PAL / Vendor recommended counters to start

• Load environment to expected levels incrementally

• For new environments use reports for tweaking SP to deliver expected performance

• For existing environments use reports as historic comparison for performance and capacity

• Store reports and learnings for future use – leverage core learnings / share knowledge

Step 4 - Operational Readiness

• Formalized and document process and policy is put into use

• OPs provided with orientation / training

• Tool training provided–One to many

–Recordings

–Manuals

• Staffing models adjusted accordingly

• Tool must–Become integrated into daily work routine

- Alerting , Troubleshooting , Reporting

• Be optimized so its reliable–Mix of baselines and actual use in production

–Stakeholders updated

Step 5 - Deploy Monitoring Tools

• Physical hardware required is deployed–Console

–Server

• Tool installed–Console and Agents on servers

–Security – admins, users

–Counters and thresholds

–Reporting

• Testing to verify correct operation

• Necessary documentation created / updated

• Stakeholders updated

Step 5 - Deploy Monitoring Tools

SharePointServers

SQL ServersHelp DeskServers

Tech

MonitoringServers

Operator

Step 6 – Launch, Monitor and Refine

• Monitoring service is officially launched

• Formal communications

• OPs staff expected to use tool

• Monitoring tools integrated into process and teams–Feedback applied to monitoring, troubleshooting etc.

–Threshold accuracy / changes?

–Need for monitoring other counters

• Important to–Demonstrate value

–Ensure monitoring is accurate

–Alerting is done when required

–Ensure key counters are monitored

Next Steps

CMM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model

Next Steps

•Document the SLA for your SharePoint service offering – get sign off from stakeholders

•Create a business case to obtain funding

•Create project controls for a POC (Charter, Communication plan, schedule, risk plan, test plan etc.)

•Build POC environment and carry out tests and document results

•Review findings and decide on next steps

Next Steps

•Install monitoring tools and use best guess and vendor input as a start

•Baseline and trend environment to optimize your monitoring

•Incorporate baselining into your change control

•Integrate alerts into your help desk software to register issues and action

•Review reports monthly with stakeholders

Further Reading

• Best practices operational excellence -http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc850692(v=office.14).aspx

• Managing application life cycle -http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649081.aspx

• Plan for monitoring - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219701(v=office.15).aspx

• Planning worksheets - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262451(v=office.15).aspx

• Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool -https://pal.codeplex.com/

Contact Information

• Questions? Ideas or suggestions you want to share?

• Text chat or contact me at

– roncharity@gmail.com

– ca.linkedin.com/in/ronjcharity/