Project Server 2007 Performance Testing White Paper and Performance Lab Kit

La herramienta de Microsoft por excelencia para el manejo y administración de proyectos a nivel corporativo es Project Server, actualmente versión 2007. Este se integra con SharePoint para ofrecer interesantes beneficios para el almacenamiento de documentos relacionados a proyectos, tareas o entregables (deliveries), y de igual forma para apoyar un poco con la parte de colaboración –permisos, flujos, etc-

Bueno, pues se ha liberado un nuevo Kit de apoyo a la medición de Performance para implementaciones de Project Server 2007, un whitepaper o documento y también un lab.

The white paper answers the following often asked questions:

  • Key metrics for performance
  • Test scenarios (open, save, publish projects, submit timesheet, submit task updates, etc…)
  • Test results for:
    • Access PWA Home Page
    • Submit Task Updates, Approve Task Updates
    • Submit Timesheets, Approve Timesheets
    • Etc…
  • Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Performance Testing (white paper)

This white paper contains a description of an actual performance tuning lab for Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.

The first chapter (“Running a Project Server 2007 Performance Test Lab”), describes how to run performance tests against a Office Project Server 2007 deployment by using Visual Studio Team System 2008 and a set of community-based tools built for the purpose.

The second chapter (“Test Environment”), documents the specifics of the lab environment that was used for the tests we ran for collecting data for this white paper.

The third chapter (“Test Results”), describes in detail the test scenarios that were conducted, and it summarizes the data collected for every scenario.

The Project Server 2007 Performance Lab Kit contains two Visual Studio solutions/tools to help you test your farm environment for capacity planning purposes: the “EPMTestTools” and the “EPM Stress Test” solution.

Para más información consultar el Blog de Christophe Fiessinger

Muy recomendable!!

Taxonomia y algunos conceptos basicos sobre manejo de informacion en SharePoint 2007

Cuando usar una Web Application independiente: (Que es una Web Application, o Aplicación Web desde el punto de vista de SharePoint, para qué me sirve o cuando necesito una?)

Generally speaking, use dedicated Web applications to:

  • Separate content available to anonymous users from content available to authenticated users.

  • Isolate users. For example, you can ensure that partners do not have access to intranet content by placing partner sites in a separate Web application.

  • Enforce permissions. A dedicated Web application provides the opportunity to enforce permissions by policies by using the Policy for Web Application page in Central Administration. For example, you can create a policy to explicitly deny write access to one or more groups of users. Policies for a Web application are enforced regardless of permissions configured on individual sites or documents within the Web application.

  • Optimize database performance. Applications achieve better performance if they are placed in Web applications with other applications of similar data characteristics. For example, the data characteristics of My Sites typically include a large number of sites that are small in size. In contrast, team sites typically encompass a smaller number of very large sites. By placing these two different types of sites in separate Web applications, the resulting databases are composed of data with similar characteristics, which optimizes database performance.

  • Optimize manageability. Because creating separate Web applications results in separate sites and databases, you can implement different limits for each site’s Recycle Bin, expiration, and size, and negotiate different service-level agreements. For example, you might allow more time to restore sites that are not critical to your business.

 

Respecto al uso de site Collections: (Que es un Site Collection o Colección de Sitios, desde el punto de vista de SharePoint, para qué me sirve o cuando necesito una?)

Site collections

A site collection is a set of Web sites that have the same owner and share administration settings. Each site collection contains a top-level Web site and can contain one or more subsites.

Capacity

The recommended guideline for acceptable performance is to implement fewer than 50,000 site collections per Web application. Scaling out by distributing site collections across multiple database servers provides additional storage capacity and throughput.

Sharing and isolation

Site collections introduce several sharing and isolation opportunities that affect permissions, navigation, and feature deployment.

The following items can be shared within a site collection and cannot be shared across site collections:

  • Master pages

  • Page layouts

  • Images

  • Site templates

Additionally, permissions and navigation are isolated at the site collection level in the following ways:

  • Subsites within a site collection can inherit permissions from the top-level site.

  • Site collections cannot inherit permissions from other site collections.

  • There is no built-in navigation from one site collection to another.

Finally, Office SharePoint Server 2007 aggregates search results across site collections based on a user’s permissions, regardless of the number of site collections or databases (depending on search scopes).

 

Finalmente, sobre sites: (Que es un Site o sitio, desde el punto de vista de SharePoint, para que me sirve o cuando necesito uno?)

Sites

A site is one or more related Web pages that are hosted inside a site collection.

Capacity

The guideline for acceptable performance is to implement fewer than 250,000 sites per site collection. You can create a very large total number of Web sites by nesting the subsites. For example, 100 sites, each with 1000 subsites, is 100,000 Web sites. The maximum recommended number of sites and subsites is 125 sites with 2,000 subsites each, for a total of 250,000 sites.

Sharing and isolation

Sites include built-in navigation from one subsite to another within a site collection. There is no built-in navigation from one site collection to another.

As with site collections, separate sites are vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks from other sites within the domain.

Configurable elements

From within each site, you can add user or group accounts to the Owners group for that site.

 

 

Ahora, dentro de los sitios almacenamos información y/o documentos. (finalmente, como manejamos y utilizamos la información que almacenamos o subimos a un sitio de SharePoint –que finalmente se almacena en la base de datos previamente definida de SQL Server-).

Identify primary objectives for sites

SharePoint sites are flexible and can help you accomplish many different things. However, to have a useful and successful site or group of sites, you need to be able to focus the sites on some primary objectives. That is, you need to know what you are trying to accomplish with a site before you can design it. For example:

  • Do you want to communicate with others in your organization by posting bulletins or announcements and gathering feedback?

  • Do you want to foster team collaboration by giving team members a place to share ideas and work on projects together?

SharePoint sites can assist with both of these objectives. If you have multiple objectives, you might best be served by creating multiple, possibly interrelated, sites. However, you can have multiple objectives for a single site. If you are limited to a single site, organize the site so that users looking for the communication point can find it right away, and users looking to share information and ideas or store documents know where to start.

Review the following objectives. Consider which of these objectives most closely align with your needs for each site you are designing.

Document storage

Document storage and workflow are key functions of many sites, even sites that are primarily used for communication or collaboration. However, sometimes you might need a dedicated document storage site for your organization. Whether you require a special site for document storage depends on many factors, such as how many documents need to be stored, how many people are contributing documents, who needs to act on the documents, and so on. You will have time to explore how to structure document storage later in the planning process. For more information, see Plan document libraries (Windows SharePoint Services).

Document storage sites or document storage sections of other sites often include the following features:

  • The ability to check documents in or out, track changes to documents, and keep multiple versions of documents.

  • The ability to route documents for approval or through specific processes before publishing them to a larger audience.

    NoteNote:

    Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 includes a workflow capability that you can use to create a custom workflow process to route documents for approval.

  • The ability to tag documents with metadata, so that documents can be more efficiently sorted and managed.

Para más info: Plan document libraries y Plan site and features

Content Deployment – Best Practices

Dentro de las capacidades que ofrece Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, hay algo llamado Content Deployment o publicación de contenido. Si recuerdan dentro de aquel diagrama ya conocido de funcionalidades del producto –una como esfera de colores-, tenemos algo que es la Administración de Contenido, lo cuál provee una serie de habilidades para administrar la información que se genera o crea, edita, revisa, autoriza y finalmente se publica.

Piensen en el siguiente escenario: cuando las empresas generan contenido mediante alguna aplicación interna (podría ser, haciendo uso de algún sitio o aplicación web dentro de la Intranet), para que posteriormente se revise, autorice y publique dicha información al sitio público a cierta sección o página web disponible para los usuarios en Internet. Hay empresas que tenían o tienen el producto de Microsoft para crear portales públicos y publicar información, Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 o cualquier otro producto.

En la versión de SharePoint 2007, hubo una integración de las versiones anteriores (2003): SharePoint 2003 –producto para crear Intranets Corporativas- y por otro lado MCMS 2002 –producto para crear Portales Públicos, como por ejemplo: www.empresa.com– como ya comentamos anteriormente;e ahora fueron mejorados e integrados en un solo producto: SharePoint 2007.

Entonces, la funcionalidad de manejar todo el ciclo de vida de la información documental desde la creación (inicio) hasta la publicación del contenido (final), ha sido incorporada a SharePoint 2007 (partiendo de la funcionalidad básica que ofrecía MCMS 2002), y todas las características que están incluidas en un set de capacidades orientadas a esto se llama Web Content Management (WCM)

Existe la información necesaria para saber como funciona y configurar la parte de Replicación de contenido (Content Deployment) una vez aceptada o autorizada donde se creó para posteriormente su publicación en automático hacia dicho portal o sitio con permisos para el público anónimo en cuestión., sin la necesidad de copiar manualmente o hacer el backup y restore de el ambiente de creación al de publicación final. Es muy recomendable también descargar el último SDK de MOSS 2007 para mayor información.

A continuación, del blog de Stefan Gossner, tenemos una serie de mejores práticas sobre Content Deployment que vale la pena tener en cuenta para cuando vayamos a configurar esta funcionalidad en nuestra implementación de MOSS 2007.

Cumulative Update (CU) Abril (2009) – WSS 3.0 y MOSS 2007

En unos días será liberado oficialmente el CU de Abril, el cual se recomienda instalar después de haber aplicado el Service Pack 2 tanto para WSS 3.0 como para MOSS 2007

April CU downloads (bajo demanda)

WSS the uber package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850&kbln=en-us

MOSS the current available packages
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968859&kbln=en-us

Para más información:

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/05/01/the-april-cumulative-update-for-wss-v3-and-moss-2007-has-been-released-yesterday.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/joerg_sinemus/archive/2009/05/01/should-i-install-sp2-and-or-april-cu.aspx