SharePoint 2010 Capacity Planning Tool

When you are architecting a SharePoint Portal it is very import that you understand the boundaries and thresholds that will impact performance and maintenance of the environment. You should always consider the capacity planning while architecting any solution. Microsoft has well documented and provided lot of resources around Capacity planning and that information can be found in http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff601870.aspx.

Apart from these resources, for SharePoint 2007 Microsoft provided Capacity planning tool which really helped many people in designing basic architectural diagram and configuration for the SharePoint portal implementation using MOSS 2007.  

HP (Hewlett-Packard) also provides an excellent Sizing Tool which helps many architects in designing and tuning Farms for SharePoint 2010. Also provides an understanding on Pricing of the Server Farm, you can do lot of tuning.

Download HP Sizer for Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Download HP Sizer for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Cheers!!!

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Finally... Macbook Pro 15"

Finally, I got Macbook Pro - 15" (intel core i7 - 2.66 GHz, 8 GB Ram, Mac OS X). I delayed my purchase expecting Apple will release Macbook Air with i7 processor, but I was disappointed with  20th Oct MBA announcement. So, I went immediately and bought Macbook Pro. It is performing well and hoping to have Windows Server 2008 with SharePoint 2010 installed on VMWare Fusion.

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SharePoint 2010 - Technical Diagrams

I felt following information really useful in Deploying SharePoint 2010 based Solutions (Reference: Microsoft - SharePoint 2010 Documentation).

SharePoint 2010 - Technical Diagrams

You will find design / technical diagrams on the following items

1. Design Sample: Corporate Portal with Classic Authentication
2. Design Sample: Corporate Portal with Claims-based Authentication
3. SharePoint 2010 Products Deployment
4. Services in SharePoint 2010 Products
5. Cross-farm Services in SharePoint 2010 Products
6. Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010
7. Extranet Topologies for SharePoint 2010 Products
8. Hosting Environments in SharePoint 2010 Products
9. Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products
10. Search Environment Planning for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
11. Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
12. Design Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
13. Business Connectivity Services Model
14. Content Deployment in SharePoint Server 2010
15. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Planning
16. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Approaches
17. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Test Your Upgrade Process
18. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Services Upgrade
19. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Upgrading Parent and Child Farms
20. Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010
21. Databases That Support SharePoint 2010 Products
22. SharePoint 2010 Products: Virtualization Process

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SharePoint 2010 Capacity Planning

It's been quite long, I wrote my last blog. I hope from now on I will try to contribute and share my ideas and understandings on SharePoint.

As a SharePoint Architect or Consultant when you are designing a solution you need to understand what are SharePoint boundaries that will affect the performance of the SharePoint. I have interacted with many people they often forget about Performance and Capacity instead they focus on delivering. Let's explore the limitations of SharePoint as recommended by Microsoft.

References:

1. SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits
   
2. Performance and capacity test results and recommendations (SharePoint Server 2010)
   

Web application

Limit	Maximum	Notes
Content database	300 per Web application	Try to limit your content databases per web application to 300 (I don't think many organizations will end up having 300 content databases per web application (the most I have seen is around 50)). Make sure not to have big databases, it will be difficult to manage. It is recommended to use Windows PowerShell to manage a web application which has Large number of content databases. Windows Powershell 2.0 installed by default in latest operating systems (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2).
Zone	5 per Web application	The number of zones defined for a farm is limited to 5. Zones include Default, Intranet, Extranet, Internet, and custom. It is similar to previous version, no difference here.
Managed path	20 per Web application	Managed paths are cached on the Web server, and CPU resources are used to process incoming requests against the managed path list. Exceeding 20 managed paths per Web application adds more load to the Web server for each request.

Application Pool

Limit	Maximum	Notes
Application pools	10 per Web server	Try to limit the number of application pools per web server to 10, as it is mainly driven by RAM and Server Hardware

Content database

Limit	Maximum	Notes
Content database	200 GB	Make sure not cross 200GB limit for Content Database, even though Content database can scale up to 1 TB (only recommended for Large and Single Server Repositories).
BLOB Storage	20 milliseconds	Access to RBS (Remote BLOB Storage) should not exceed 20 milli seconds limit.

Site collection limits

Limit	Maximum	Notes
Site collections per content database	2000	Try to limit Site Collections per database to 2000. But Microsoft supports till 5000 site collections.
Web site	250,000 per site collection	The maximum recommended number of sites and subsites is 250,000 sites. As per my experience, I would advice not to exceed more than 5000 sites per Site Collection (As it will be difficult to manage and Govern).
Site collection size	100 GB per site collection	A site collection should not exceed 100 GB unless it is the only site collection in the database.

List and library limits

Limit	Maximum	Notes
List row size	8,000 bytes per row	For each list or library item in a Row can use only maximum of 8000 bytes in total in the database, that means data stored in the row should be 8000 bytes of size.
File size	2 GB	Supported by SharePoint is 2 GB, but default limit is set to 50 MB.
Documents / List Items	30,000,000 per library / List	Do not exceed the documents stored in library / List to more than 30,000,000 items.
Major versions	400,000	If you exceed this limit, basic file operations—such as file open or save, delete, and viewing the version histor— may not succeed.
Rows size limit	6 table rows internal to the database used for a list or library item	Specifies the maximum number of table rows internal to the database that can be used for a list or library item. To accommodate wide lists with many columns, each item may be wrapped over several internal table rows, up to six rows by default. This is configurable by farm administrators through the object model only.
Bulk operations	100 items per bulk operation	You can only select upto maximum of 100 items for any bulk operation (like editing in Datasheet)
List view lookup	8 join operations per query	Only 8 Look up or Join operations allowed per List View, example, you are looking for Person, another list or calculation it is limited only to 8, if you cross more than that operation is blocked.
List view	5,000	By default list view is limited to show maximum of 5000 items per view. If you would like to display more items than you might end up in Performance issues.
List view	20,000	This limit is only for Auditors and Administrators (Special privileged people J)
Subsite	2,000 per site view	Limit number of Subsites to 2000 per site view
Coauthoring in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint for .docx, .pptx and .ppsx files	10 concurrent editors per document	Recommended maximum number of concurrent editors is 10. The boundary is 99 (with Performance issues and "File in use" error J).

Page limits

Limit	Maximum	Notes
Web parts	25	Limit to 25 webparts per page.

Security limits

Limit	Maximum value	Notes
Number of SharePoint groups a user can belong to	5,000	Recommended to limit a user to 5000 user groups. It is similar to Active Directory User Groups management.
Users in a site collection	2 million per site collection	You can add millions of people to your Web site by using Microsoft Windows security groups to manage security instead of using individual users. This limit is based on manageability and ease of navigation in the user interface. Use Power Shell to manage Users if you have large User Base per site collection.
Active Directory Principles/Users in a SharePoint group	5,000 per SharePoint group	SharePoint Server 2010 enables you to add users or Active Directory groups to a SharePoint group. Having up to 5,000 users (or Active Directory groups or users) in a SharePoint group provides acceptable performance. The activities most affected by this limit are as follows: Fetching users to validate permissions. This operation takes incrementally longer with growth in number of users in a group. Rendering the membership of the view. This operation will always require time.
SharePoint groups	10,000 per site collection	Above 10,000 groups, the time to execute operations is increased significantly. This is especially true of adding a user to an existing group, creating a new group, and rendering group views.
Security principal: size of the Security Scope	5,000 per Access Control List (ACL)	The size of the scope affects the data that is used for a security check calculation. This calculation occurs every time that the scope changes. There is no hard limit, but the bigger the scope, the longer the calculation takes.

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