Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 administrators companion phần 5 ppsx

Business Data in Lists SharePoint Server 2007 provides a new file type, custom, that you can use to make busi-ness data available to all lists and libraries in Web applications associat

Figure 12-7 View Application page

After you have imported an ADF, you should view the entities and give appropriate access

rights according to your requirements, especially if you have chosen at the BDC

permis-sion level to copy all permispermis-sions to descendants in the BDC

When the ADF is imported, a profile page is created for each entity, which you can use to

view an entity instance A business data action will be added to any instance of an entity

pointing to this profile page See Figure 12-12, for an example of a profile page populated

with data from an entity instance These are virtual Web pages created from the business

data profile template within the Content subsite of the Shared Services Administration

Web site The profile template can be customized by clicking the Edit Profile page

tem-plate link on the Shared Services Administration Web page By default, the profile page

template contains one Web Part: the Business Data Item Web Part For an entity profile

page to be created, the metadata must have a SpecificFinder method for that entity.

Planning Because the profile page is exposed from a subsite of the SSP

administration Web site, you should not use a random port number for the Web application that hosts the SSP, especially if you are implementing an Internet site Firewalls are not usually configured to allow requests to Web sites on ports other than port 80

If you have errors in your ADF and need to make amendments, before you re-import theADF, change the version number within the ADF or delete the LOB application by firstclicking the View Applications link on the Shared Services Administration Web page.Then, from the drop-down menu for the appropriate application, click Delete Application

as shown in Figure 12-8

Figure 12-8 Deleting the business data catalog application

Best Practices You should not rely on the import process validation checks to identify errors in the ADF You should check that the business data features—such

as the business data Web Parts and business data actions—include a business data column in a list and that the crawl process can function correctly

After the ADF is imported, you can change the following values at the application level,

using the Administrator Web pages:

■ Authentication mode, labeled as Access Account

■ Connection throttling—that is, you can limit the number of concurrent

connec-tions

■ For Web services business applications: Web Service URL, Web Service Definition

Language (WSDL) Retrieval Account, and proxy server

■ For database business applications: Data Provider, connection stringProxy server

address

Business Data Actions

Actions provide a link to the back-end data source, usually for write-back scenarios

Actions are URLs that are usually defined in the ADF on a per-entity basis You can add

more actions, modify existing actions, or delete existing actions after you have imported

the ADF, and you can do this without the need to delete the application and re-import the

ADF To add actions, follow these steps:

1 On the Shared Services Administration Web page, click View entities The Business

Data Catalog Entities Web page displays a list of all the entities imported into the

BDC From here, you can manage the permissions of an entity or view an entity

2 From the drop-down menu for the entity for which you want to add a new action,

click View Entity The View Entity: <Entity Name> page is displayed as shown in

Fig-ure 12-9 Scroll down the page, and the existing actions are listed in the Actions

section

3 Under the Actions section, click Add Action.

Figure 12-9 View Entity page

4 On the Add Action Web page shown in Figure 12-10, type a name for the action,

type the URL, specify whether to launch the action in a new browser window or not(default), add parameters to the URL if required, and add the icon to display next

to the action You can choose from the Delete, Edit, or New actions, or you canchoose your own image

Figure 12-10 Add Action page

Wherever an instance of an entity is displayed, the actions will be visible and presented

as a drop-down list of the default column If a SpecificFinder method is defined for an

entity, then the entity has at least one action: the action to display the profile page, as

shown in Figure 12-11

Figure 12-11 Business data actions

When the View Profile action is selected, the profile page is displayed, as shown in Figure12-12.

Figure 12-12 A populated generated profile page of an entity instance

Although actions are limited to a URL, you can open a client application from a URL Twoways to do this are by either writing a Web Part that opens the client application usingActiveX or writing an Internet Explorer pluggable protocol handler

How to Use Business Data Catalog Features

After an application is defined in the metadata, business data can be presented by usingbuilt-in business data Web Parts and incorporating business data columns in lists andlibraries You can then exploit the default behavior of Web Parts, lists, and libraries, such

as defining an audience, targeting, filtering, and using Web-Part connections

Business Data Web Parts

SharePoint Server 2007 ships with six generic Business Data Web Parts These Web Partscan be used to display any entity from the BDC, without writing any code After they areconfigured, they will automatically be named after the entity data they are displaying TheWeb Parts that display data from the LOB systems query the metadata cached on eachWeb front-end server, and then the instance data is retrieved from the data source TheWeb Parts are described in Table 12-4

After these Web Parts are placed on a Web Part page, you will need to open the Web Part

tool pane See Chapter 29, “Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 Web Parts,” for

detailed instructions on adding and customizing Web Parts In the tool pane, click the

Browse icon as shown in Figure 12-13

Table 12-4 Business Data Web Parts

Business Data Actions Displays a list of actions associated with an entity defined in

the metadata

Business Data Items Displays one instance of any entity that you register in the

BDC A filter must be defined in the metadata for this Web Part to be used

Business Data Item Builder The Web Part reads the URL of the page and sends the

identifier to the other Web Parts on the page, using data Part connections

Web-Business Data List Displays a list of instances of any entity that you have

registered in the BDC A filter, if defined in the metadata, can

be used to limit the number of instances retrieved

Business Data Related List Displays a list of related entity instances, creating what is

known as a master detail Web page The description for this Web Part states to choose a type of data to display Inmetadata terminology, you would say, “choose an entity to display.” Microsoft believed that “type” was more user friendly for end-users than the term “entity.” To use this Web Part, you

do not need to understand the underlying database query, but you must know the relationships between the entities within an LOB system

Business Data Catalog Filter This Web Part is categorized as a Filter Web Part, which can be

very useful on business intelligence site and dashboards You can use this Web Part to filter the contents of connected Web Parts using a list of values from the BDC

Figure 12-13 Business Data tool pane

The Business Data Type Picker dialog box is displayed as shown in Figure 12-14 It listsall the entities defined in the BDC and the data sources they come from

Figure 12-14 Business Data Type Picker

In Figure 12-13, you can see a Data Form Web Part section All business data Web Parts

are derived from the Data Form Web Part and, therefore, can be extensively customized

using XSL or SharePoint Designer

Business Data in Lists

SharePoint Server 2007 provides a new file type, custom, that you can use to make

busi-ness data available to all lists and libraries in Web applications associated with the Shared

Services where you have defined the business data To add a business data column to a

list, complete the following tasks:

1 Navigate to the list or library where you want to add the column.

2 On the list tool bar, below the list name, click Settings and then List Settings.

3 In the Columns section, click Create column.

4 In the Name And Type section, enter a column name and select the Business Data

type This column type can hold any entity data type The page is redisplayed, and

the Additional Column Settings section now contains business data Browse and

Type Check icons

5 Click the Browse icon and the Business Data Type Picker dialog box is displayed as

shown in Figure 12-14 Choose the appropriate entity, and click OK The dialog box

closes, and the Additional Column Settings section contains a list of properties

associated with this entity, as shown in Figure 12-15

Figure 12-15 Business Data type additional column settings

6 From the Display This Field Of The Selected Type drop-down list, select a field and

then click any related data you want to display For example, you might choose todisplay a reseller’s name together with the reseller’s business type and phone num-ber You can choose to display the Actions menu and link the column to the Profilepage

7 Click OK.

When you create a new column, you can choose whether the column is added to thedefault view If you select related data, those columns are also added to the default view.Now when you add a new list item, you can use the business data Browse icon to displaythe Entity Instance Picker dialog box Up to this point, only the metadata using the

Administrator object model has been used to retrieve the information from the cached

metadata held in the Web front end When the list is displayed, the runtime object model

connects to the business data source, and it copies the identifier and the selected type,

together with any related data, into the list, unlike the business data Web Parts, which

contain only a link to the business data To update the data in the list, you can click the

Refresh icon in the selected type column name A Web page is displayed that warns you

that this operation could take a long time If you click Yes, the data source is contacted to

return the necessary data By copying the business data in the list, the business data

within the list has inherited all list type operations, such as view and filter

Business Data and User Profiles

By default, SharePoint Server 2007 can import a list of domain users from the Active

Directory directory service, LDAP server, or Business Data Catalog SharePoint Server

2007 treats Active Directory and LDAP directories as master connections for importing

user information—that is, it can use them as a source to create user profiles This

arrange-ment implies that, if a user is missing from the master connection, SharePoint Server

2007 assumes the user is no longer in the organization and removes the user from the

user profiles database However, SharePoint Server 2007 treats the business data sources

only as a supplementary data source; it uses the data only to provide additional user

information not available in the master connection The Business Data Catalog data

sources can not be used as the master user list When an SSP is first created, no profile

import is configured To configure the profile import, navigate to the User Profile And

Properties Web page, and click Configure Profile Import On the Configure Profile

Import Web page, which ever the source option selected, a master connection is created,

based on an Active Directory or LDAP source To add a user profile import based on the

BDC, complete the process detailed below

The use of the BDC with user profiles is a two-step process:

1 Import data from the BDC into the profile database.

2 Map the profile properties to the BDC data.

Importing Data from the BDC into the Profile Database

To import data from the BDC into the profile database, follow these steps:

1 On the Shared Services Administration Web page, click User profiles and

properties

2 Click View import connections, and then click Create New Connection.

3 On the Add Connection page, in the Type drop-down list, select Business Data

Cat-alog The page is refreshed and the Connections Settings section contains businessdata Browse and Type Check icons, as shown in Figure 12-16

Figure 12-16 User Profile Import—Add Connection Web page

4 Type a name in the Connection Name text box, and click the Browse icon The

Busi-ness Data Type Picker dialog box is displayed (as shown in Figure 12-14) Choosethe appropriate entity, and click OK to close the dialog box

5 Choose either the 1:1 Mapping or 1:Many Mapping connection type.

Real World Mapping Business Data to User Profiles

Use the mapping connection type to map business source information specific to

one user, such as when a SAP system contains a user’s personal details If your data

source returns one row of personal data per user, then use the 1:1 mapping

connec-tion In this situation, from the drop-down list, “Return items identified by this

pro-file property”, select the user propro-file property, such as, the AccountName In the

metadata, this information has to map to an Identifier property for the entity, with a

matching SpecificFinder method Both the user profile property and the identity

type must match—for example, they both must be text; one cannot be defined as an

integer and the other as a text string If your data source contains more than one

row per user, then use the 1:many mapping connection From the drop-down list,

“Filter items by,” select the property in the entity that identifies the rows in the data

source for a user, and then in the second drop down list, “Use this profile property

as the filter value,” select the profile property whose value can be used as the filter

value

Just as you can with an Active Directory import, you can schedule a process to

synchro-nize the business data periodically

Mapping Profile Properties to BDC Data

To map profile properties to BDC data, follow these steps:

1 On the Shared Services Administration Web page, click User Profiles And

Proper-ties to display the User Profile And ProperProper-ties Web page

2 If you do not have a profile property to map to in the User Profile Properties section,

click Add Profile Property to display the Add User Profile Property Web page

a Complete the Property Settings, User Description, Policy Settings, Edit

Set-tings, Display SetSet-tings, and Search Settings sections according to your

requirements

b In the Property Import Mapping section, from the Data Connection

drop-down list, choose the appropriate data source and map it to the required

entity, as shown in Figure 12-17

Figure 12-17 Property import mapping

3 If you have an existing property that you want to map to a BDC data source, in the

User Profile Properties section on the Profile And Properties Web page, click ViewProfile Properties to display the View Profile Properties Web page

a Find the required property, and from the drop-down list, select Edit to

display the Edit User Profile Property page

b Configure the Property Import Mapping section as described in part b of

step 2

Note In the Edit Settings section of the User Profile Properties page, you can allow users to edit a property You should not allow users to edit profile properties that map to imported properties, as they will be overwritten when the next profile import is scheduled

Business Data and My Site

After you have defined a business application in the BDC and configured the user files, you can use the existing features in SharePoint Server 2007 to personalize and targetcontent to users, including the personalization features on My Site

pro-Connection Reuse in Excel, SharePoint, InfoPath, and

Reporting Services

A new feature in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, is the Data Connection Library(DCL), which provides a place to store, share, and manage connection files The DCL

connection files are designed for use with Excel, InfoPath, and Reporting Services The

connection files managed by the DCL are Office Data Connection (ODC) files that

con-tain information and parameter needs to connect to a business application, such as server

name, table name, and query Therefore, they are very similar to the ADF However, these

connection files should not be confused with the ADF, which can be used only from the

BDC Now you no longer need to embed connection strings into each Excel workbook,

you can save them centrally in a DCL

To create a DCL, create a document library and select Microsoft Office Data Connection

as the document template Further information on this new feature can be found in

Chapter 20 and Chapter 21

Business Data Catalog and Search

The BDC comes with a protocol handler that enables SharePoint Server 2007 to index

and provide full-text searches However, defining data sources in the BDC does not make

data automatically available within search First, the data source must be registered with

the BDC, and the metadata must have defined an IDEnumerator method, which is used in

conjunction with the SpecificFinder method to return data from the data source Then you

must configure Enterprise Search for searching the business data This section details

this second activity, which consists of three steps:

1 Add a content source.

2 Map crawled properties.

3 Optionally, create a search scope, customized search pages, custom search queries,

or all three

Adding a Content Source

To include the content from a data source in the Enterprise Search, you must create

con-tent sources For each concon-tent source, you have the choice of creating a concon-tent source for

all the data defined in the BDC, for each LOB system, or for a combination of LOB

sys-tems To create a content source for business data, complete the following steps:

1 On the SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration Web site, in the left navigation pane,

click the name of the Shared Services Provider where you imported the metadata

4 Click New Content Source, type a name, and then in the Content Source Type

sec-tion, click Business Data The Add Content Source Web Part refreshes, and a list ofall the LOB systems defined in the BDC is displayed, similar to the list shown in Fig-ure 12-18

Figure 12-18 Adding a business data content source

You can set the crawl schedules for the incremental and full crawls at content

source creation time or later Incremental crawls are only possible if a

LastModified-Date property is one of the return fields in a SpecificFinder method for an entity

Sim-ilarly, you can start a full crawl immediately See Chapter 17, “Enterprise Search andIndexing Deployment,” for more information on the Search Settings options

5 Click OK, and then if you haven’t already done so, complete a full crawl.

Mapping Crawled Properties

In SharePoint Server 2007, the Enterprise Search feature is able to discover new

proper-ties, known as crawled properties To make a crawled property available to a user, you need

to make sure it is included in the search index and mapped to a managed property as

detailed in the following steps:

1 Wait for a full crawl to complete on the new content source, and then on the

Con-figure Search Settings Web page, click Metadata Property Mappings

2 In the left navigation pane, click Crawled Properties The Metadata Property

Map-pings page is displayed If this is the first time you have crawled a business data

con-tent source, the Number Of Properties column for the Business Data category

should not be zero if the crawl process was successful and your ADF was correctly

defined

Note Keep track of the number of properties as you incorporate each

business data content source so that, if the number does not rise, you can

quickly identify issues with the IDEnumerator and SpecificFinder method

def-initions in the metadata

3 Click the Business Data link in the Category Name column The Metadata Property

Mappings Web page is displayed, as shown in Figure 12-19

Figure 12-19 Metadata Property Mappings Web page

For each entity that has an IDEnumerator method, there will be at least one property name for each TypeDescriptor defined in the SpecificFinder method Any property

that has a Yes in the Mapped To Content column is already included in the searchindex The default configuration, which you can amend, is to include only textproperties in the search index

4 To include a property in the search index—for example, one of the non-text

proper-ties—click the property name in the Property Name column On the Edit CrawledProperty Web page, in the Mappings to managed properties section, select theInclude Values For This Property in the search index option and then click OK

5 To map a crawled property, you can choose an existing managed property or create

a new one It is likely you will choose to create a new managed property as follows:

a In the left navigation pane, click Managed Properties, and then on the

Meta-data Property Mappings Web page, click New Managed Property The NewManaged Property Web page is displayed

b In the Name and type section, enter a Property Name and select a type of

information for the property

c In the Mappings to crawled properties section, click Add Mapping The

Crawled Property Selection dialog box is displayed, as shown in Figure 12-20

Figure 12-20 Crawled Property Selection dialog box

d In the Select a category drop-down list, select Business Data This dialog box

will show only properties that are of the specified type and included in the

index If the number of properties available is greater than the dialog box can

display, a yellow arrow is displayed You can use the yellow arrow icons to

scroll through the properties or, alternatively, you can use the Find feature

e Select the required property and then click OK The dialog box closes, and

the crawled property appears in the text box

f Select the Allow this property to be used in scopes option, to make the

prop-erty available for use in defining search scoptes

g Click OK, and repeat this procedure for each crawled property you need to

map to a managed property

6 In the breadcrumb, click Search Settings, and then click Content sources and crawl

schedules For the appropriate content source you created, from the drop-down list

select Start Full Crawl

After steps 1 and 2 have been completed, you should be able to find data from the

busi-ness data sources The search results page provides links to the entity’s profile page, as

shown in Figure 12-21

Figure 12-21 Search Center search business data result set

Customizing the End-User Experience

If you want users to limit the search for keywords to a specific business data source, youcan create a search scope with a rule that specifies the content source you created Youcould also create a new tab in the Search Center to display the search results associatedwith this content source Please refer to Chapter 16, “Enterprise Search and IndexingArchitecture and Administration” for information on configuring the user’s experience inthe Search Center

Following are some important practices you should put in place:

■ Expose your business applications as databases or as a Web service

■ Develop BDC-friendly IDEnumerator Finder and SpecificFinder methods

■ Simplify your custom integration code with the BDC runtime API

Summary

In this chapter we’ve explored the Business Data Catalog, a feature of SharePoint Server

2007 that allows you to connect to business data using an application definition file.Once the business application metadata is defined, you can use the data from those sys-tems using the provided Business Data Web Parts, search, business data column and userprofiles This reduces the need to write custom code to access business data and providesstandard methods of integrating business data, with data held within standard Share-Point Server 2007 sites, lists and libraries

Performance Monitoring

and Microsoft Operations

Manager 2005

Understanding System Monitor 450

Preparing to Monitor Performance 454

Working with the Performance Tool 461

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and SharePoint Server 2007 467

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Architecture 468

MOM Management Packs 477

Using MOM 2005 to Monitor SharePoint Server 2007 479

Deploying the MOM 2005 Management Packs for SharePoint Server 2007 480

Supplementary Management Packs 482

Key Monitoring Scenarios 484

Summary 485

An often overlooked component of successfully implemented Microsoft Office

Share-Point Server 2007 servers is performance monitoring Performance monitoring should be

an integral part of routine operations on every system—not just for Office SharePoint

Server 2007 servers However, this chapter will focus on performance monitoring for

SharePoint Server 2007

Ever-growing workload demands, shrinking schedules, and change of scope can cause

server performance monitoring to be overlooked or completely ignored Eventually, all

complex systems will exhibit slowdowns of one severity or another for myriad reasons

This chapter will begin by identifying these potential bottlenecks and then give focused

examples of how to resolve existing performance issues

Of course, a contented SharePoint administrator is one whose server farm is operatingwell, with services that are meeting or exceeding the requirements of the business—anddoing so with the least effort possible The second part of this chapter will help Share-Point administrators get a little closer to that desired state by introducing Microsoft Oper-ations Manager 2005—a product that can automatically monitor and report on the

performance counters, event logs, and the health and availability of enterprise productsand services from across the network, including SharePoint Server 2007 Monitoring sys-tem health closely is essential for spotting and addressing possible issues before theyarise, quickly remedying problems that do occur, and understanding usage demands onthe system to help predict future growth requirements

The tool that most systems administrators find the easiest to use is the Microsoft

Win-dows Performance tool (%systemroot%\system32\perfmon.exe) In previous versions of

Windows Server, this tool was called Performance Monitor, or PerfMon The default view

of the Performance tool is called System Monitor The Performance tool is always able, no matter which Windows Server system you work on The Performance tool pro-vides the required tools to diagnose virtually all performance issues on a MicrosoftWindows Server system, regardless of the applications or products in use, with surpris-ingly little overhead The Performance tool has the capability to monitor thousands of dif-ferent counters, but it is best to identify possible bottlenecks and monitor only those.Trying to monitor too much will yield massive logs and essentially render the tool use-less For a potentially complex application, it is essential that the scope of monitoring benarrowed to effectively use the Performance tool

avail-Understanding System Monitor

Following are the four major pieces to the Performance tool:

and that have been designed to provide performance information about that specific

plat-for m A good example is with SQL Server After installation, objects called

SQLServer:Locks with various counters are added Monitoring these counters will tell

you if two or more SQL jobs are creating a lock on your SharePoint Server 2007 database

and causing you to be unable to serve pages

Figure 13-1 gives us a common view of System Monitor, illustrating operating system

counters for Windows Server 2003

Figure 13-1 Windows System Monitor

Counter Logs

The next important function (and perhaps the most valuable) of the Performance tool is

Counter Logs With Counter Logs, you can create log files based on any counter in the

Performance tool This is extremely helpful when tracking issues over periods of time and

outside normal business hours Using this function of the Performance tool is the best

way to establish the baseline the performance of a system With Counter Logs, counters

can be configured to record with a default interval (how often a snapshot of the value is

taken) and to monitor for a specified period of time

Another important component is how these logs can be recorded The default format is

a binary file, which is a good compact format that can be read by anyone with the mance tool Other ways to record these logs include using a text file (either tab-delimited

Perfor-or comma-delimited), binary circular file (which allows fPerfor-or setting a size limit so that theoldest point is deleted when the maximum size is reached), or SQL database SQL data

is the superior file type for long-term monitoring because it allows you to keep the data

in a very compact format and allows for complex queries on your performance data ure 13-2 shows the Properties configuration screen for the default System Overviewcounter log in the Performance tool

Fig-Figure 13-2 Counter Logs

Trace Logs

Trace Logs are a way to gather detailed data when certain system events occur Instead ofbeing used to record the measurements of specific counters as Counter Logs are used for,Trace Logs are used to record memory and resource events Trace Logs are not readable

by typical programs such as Notepad or Microsoft Office Excel, but rather require parsing

tools that are used by developers, using the Trace Log application programming interface

(API) from MSDN

More Info More information on the Trace Log application programming

interface can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library

/en-us/DevTest_g/hh/DevTest_g/tracetools_f356ef23-eb23-48ab-a266-1f271339513a.xml.asp.

Alerts

The last function of the Performance tool is Alerts Alerts allow administrators to create a

set of conditions with any available counter (See Figure 13-3.) When this condition is

met, such as % Processor Time > 95, an action occurs The following actions are available

by default in the Performance tool:

■ Log an entry in the application log

■ Send a network message

■ Begin a Counter Log

■ Execute a specific program

Figure 13-3 Example of Alert actions

More Info For more information on how to configure alerts using the

Performance tool, see Knowledge Base article KB324752 found at

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/324752

The Performance tool allows you the flexibility of any combination of these actions,based on the list of counters Alerts can also be scheduled For example, you can turn offthe alert for Physical Disk Queue length during the time at which a SQL Log Shippingtransaction is running because high amounts of I/O will be generated for legitimate rea-sons With SharePoint Server 2007, use the Office Server Search Search Gatherer\Docu-ments Delayed Retry counter to alert you when a non-zero value occurs This conditionindicates a server is unavailable during crawling

Preparing to Monitor Performance

The first required task is to understand what subsystems are critical to scrutinize Beginwith one or more of the following subsystems:

of impact might be incurred

Monitoring Processor Utilization

The processor is the most obvious component that is critical to the performance of thesystem But with a long list of potential counters, you need to pare down what is impor-tant to monitor and define the requirement for doing so There are multiple counters thatcan be monitored for potential CPU bottlenecks, but the following three cover the major-ity of issues:

Note When we refer to an object, counter, or instance in this chapter, the mat will be as follows: Object\Counter\Instance

for-■ Processor\% Processor Time\_Total This counter shows the real-time utilization

of the processor or processors A value that is consistently above 50 percent onstrates an emerging bottleneck at the processor Consistent values at or above 75

dem-percent require additional CPUs or farm servers to reduce the load on the

proces-sors being monitored

■ System\Processor Queue Length\(N/A) This counter measures how many items

are waiting to be processed A value based on the following formula (# of CPUs x

2) is the maximum this counter should read for an extended period So in the case

of a two-processor system, a value of four or less is acceptable Sustained values

above four (in this example) either require upgrading CPUs (additional L2 Cache),

additional processors, or scaling out by adding more servers to the same farm role

■ Processor\Interrupts/sec This counter measures the average rate at which the

processor must service system requests for hardware interrupts, such as network,

hard drive, mouse, and system clock This counter should be monitored over a

longer period of time, looking for upward trends Less than 1000 is acceptable for

unhindered performance Dramatic increases in this counter without

correspond-ing increases in system use, indicate faulty hardware Use your system vendor

pro-vided diagnostics to check for hardware anomalies

Monitoring Memory Utilization

In many cases, system administrators are tempted to “throw memory” at the problem

This can work in the short term, but a correctly diagnosed problem will help you to avoid

spending potentially thousands of dollars without actually resolving the issue

Monitor-ing memory counters can reap significant rewards

■ Memory\Pages/sec\(N\A) This counter measures the number of times per

sec-ond that memory must either be written to or read from the hard disk Consistent

values above 150 to 200 typically mean the system is hard page faulting This means

the server is swapping content from memory to the pagefile on the disk or is

thrash-ing for some other reason Even the newest, fastest drives are still orders of

magni-tude slower than system memory, which can potentially cause a severe system

impact This counter should be monitored over a longer period of time, as normal

activity can cause short periods of paging

■ Memory\Pages Faults/sec\(N\A) This counter measures the number of hard and

soft page faults per second Soft page faults, which means accessing other parts of

physical memory for the memory pages needed, are not critical because modern

processors are powerful enough to handle many thousands of them per second

Hard page faults, reading from disk, will create a serious bottleneck with even just

a small number due to the very slow speed of disk compared to memory The way

to determine whether a system is experiencing hard page faults is to monitor

Mem-ory\Pages/sec in conjunction with PhysicalDisk\Avg Disk Bytes/Read Multiply

the value of the PhysicalDisk counter by 4096, and if these values are

approxi-mately equal, the system is experiencing excessive page faults To resolve this issue,

increase the amount of physical memory

■ Memory\Available Mbytes\(N\A) This counter measures the amount of physicalmemory available to the system Although this counter is something you shouldobviously monitor, it is often overlooked You will find it helpful to monitor thisalongside other predictors A low value, such as less than 10 percent of total phys-ical memory, over even a short period of time indicates a dire need for additionalmemory The longer a low physical memory condition persists, the greater theimpact on system performance due to the use of the pagefile.

■ Memory\Pool Nonpaged Bytes\(N\A) The number of bytes that cannot bepaged to disk and must remain in physical memory This counter is not widelymonitored but has a very drastic effect on system performance Monitor it in com-bination with Available Bytes to determine whether there is an application requir-ing large amounts of memory that is unable to be paged This condition couldindicate either a need for additional memory or a poorly written application Thiscan be monitored directly by using Process\Pool Nonpaged Bytes\ for specificSharePoint Server 2007 processes The most important processes are Office andWindows SharePoint Server Search (both called mssearch.exe), Windows Share-Point Services Timer (owstimer.exe), Windows SharePoint Services Tracing(wsstracing.exe), and Internet Information Services (IIS) (inetinfo.exe) The twolargest consumers of memory will be the Server Search (Office or Windows) andIIS If any combination of these processes claims 90 percent or more of the availablenonpaged bytes, an interesting problem occurs IIS will stop serving requests, butthere will be no symptoms To resolve the issue, restart IIS and then determinewhich items are causing the excessive use of nonpaged memory

Monitoring Disk Utilization

There are two types of counters for disk: physical and logical Physical disk refers to a disk

without regard for grouping configurations, such as a concatenation of disks or RAID

sets Logical disk counters report only on the activity of the logical disk in a grouping A

great deal of performance benefit can be gained by tracking down and resolving diskissues Because even the newest modern hard drives are orders of magnitude slower thanmemory or processor, even small gains will return large rewards Note that if you arefocusing your monitoring on disk-related issues, you should log your data to anotherserver to ensure you are not adding load to your disk subsystem

■ PhysicalDisk\% Disk Time\DriveLetter This counter measures the percentage oftime within the reporting window that the physical drive is active If this counterconsistently shows values above 80 percent, there is a lack of system memory or adisk controller issue There are other counters you will use in conjunction with thisone to determine the fault

■ PhysicalDisk\Current Disk Queue Length\DriveLetter This counter measures the

number of requests waiting to be serviced by the disk at the instant of the poll Disk

drives with multiple spindles can handle multiple requests If the value of this

counter is over two times the number of spindles for a sustained period of time,

along with a high % Disk Time, a disk upgrade is required in the disk subsystem

Typically, drives have only a single spindle You should add to the number of disks

available in the RAID set Consider upgrading to a RAID 0 or RAID 5 configuration

if this is a single drive

■ PhysicalDisk\Avg Disk sec/Transfer\DriveLetter This counter measures the

aver-age number of disk transfers per second The value for this counter should remain

below 0.3 Higher values indicate possible failures of the disk controller to access

the drive If this occurs, confirm that the drive, as well as the disk controller, is

func-tioning normally

The counters just listed for physical drives pertain to logical disk as well, and in the same

manner Differences occur with RAID sets and dynamic disks With a RAID set, it is

pos-sible to have greater than 100 % Disk Time Use the Avg Disk Queue Length counter to

determine the requests pending for the disks When dynamic disks are in use, logical

counters are removed When you have a dynamic volume with more than one physical

disk, instances will be listed as ‘Disk 0 C:’, ‘Disk 1 C:’, ‘Disk 0 D:’, and so on In situations

where you have multiple volumes on a single drive, instances will be listed as ‘0 C: D:’

Storage Area Network Disk Monitoring

There are differences when monitoring disks on a Storage Area Network (SAN) A

SAN is different than a physical disk in that you must be concerned with how many

disks make up the logical unit number (LUN) Your SAN administrator will be able

to provide that information Most SANs will return a value to the Performance tool

as if a physical disk is being monitored This number is inaccurate because it is the

additive value of all the disks To determine the correct value, divide the

Perfor-mance tool result by the number of disks in the LUN Typically, physical disk

counters and logical disk counters will return the same value on a SAN It is a good

idea to check with your SAN team before you start using the Performance tool, as

tools specifically written for the SAN hardware generally give better information It

is likely this data will not be available in a usable format, and this is where the

Per-formance tool can be very useful

Monitoring Network Utilization

Many companies employ server administrators who must wear multiple hats It is notuncommon for the person who maintains servers to also maintain personal computersand the network Windows Server exposes some very good counters for helping to tracknetwork-related issues If you must play the role of the network engineer in a smallercompany, be aware that there are a multitude of helpful counters In large companies withdistinct network and server teams, these counters can be invaluable in coordinating withother groups to resolve complex challenges

In most modern servers, the network card has a processor to handle the moving andencoding of network traffic However, you might still administer systems that do not haveserver-level network cards It is important to monitor processor and memory along withnetwork statistics to determine the root cause of problems that arise Unlike othercounters previously covered in this chapter, network monitoring is done at different lay-ers of the OSI model ranging from the Data-link layer up to the Presentation layer.Because most companies use Ethernet as the network medium and TCP/IP as the proto-col, that will be the focus of this section The TCP/IP layer model maps directly to the OSImodel All layers are monitored with different counters due to the unique nature of each

More Info For more information on how TCP/IP is implemented on Microsoft Windows platforms, see the online book titled TCP/IP Fundamentals for Microsoft

Windows found at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/network/evaluate

/technol/tcpipfund/tcpipfund.mspx For a map of the TCP/IP and OSI models, go to

the following Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/library/media/1033/technet

/images/itsolutions/network/evaluate/technol/tcpipfund/caop0201_big.gif.

Monitoring at the Data-Link Layer

The data-link layer is the bottom layer in the TCP/IP protocol stack Even though the cesses within the layer are dependent on the physical medium (Ethernet, SONET, ATM,and so on) and devices drivers, the information is passed on to the TCP/IP stack It is cru-cial that you monitor these counters when exploring network-related bottlenecks

pro-■ Network Interface\Bytes Sent, Received and Total/sec This counter measuresthe number of bytes sent, the number of bytes received, or the sum of both thatpass in and out of the network interface per second during the polling period.These counters can be monitored individually or as a total Typically, the total is theimportant counter, unless there is a specific application with heavy data flow in onedirection Monitor these counters for a longer period during normal productionhours This approach will help you chart a baseline for network activity so that youwill be able determine whether the issues are network related

A good rule of thumb for maximum expected throughput is ((Network Card Speed x 2)

/ 8) x 75% Most network-use switches allow for full duplex (sending and receiving at the

same time), which is why the speed is doubled in the formula Divide the result by 8 to

get the speed measured in bytes The reason for only 75 percent of the listed speed is due

to TCP/IP’s and Ethernet’s error checking and packet assembly/disassembly For a

100-Mbit Ethernet card, you can expect a maximum throughput of 18.75 megabytes (MBs)

per second If applications or users are experiencing slow data-transfer speeds, confirm

that your network cards are set to full duplex if you are in a switched environment If you

are not sure, set the card to auto-detect duplex or ask your network administrator for

their requirements

Monitoring at the Network Layer

This is the first layer that is independent of the physical medium The network layer

han-dles the routing of packets across a heterogeneous network When referring to the OSI

network model, this layer and its functions are referred to as layer 3.

■ Network Interface\Datagrams (Forwarded, Received, Sent, Total)/sec A s w i t h

the data-link layer, each of these counters should be monitored for a specified

length of time during normal production hours so that a baseline can be

estab-lished The throughput of the datagrams through the network interface depends

on a variety of factors Most importantly, if a significant increase occurs, consider

upgrading your network cards to server-class cards or upgrading the speed of your

network Problems with the network layer arise from the inability of the card and

server to process the packets quickly Server-class cards offload this functionality

from the server

Monitoring at the Transport Layer

The transport layer is responsible for ensuring packets arrive intact or are rtransmitted,

congestion control, and packet ordering This layer does a lot of the heavy work with

regard to the network Many of the problems with network issues can occur here, and

therefore, this is one of the most critical layers to monitor

■ Network Interface\Segments (Received, Sent, Total)/sec Again, you should

estab-lish a baseline level of performance to look for with these counters to help assess future

problems Transport-layer work is handled by servers on each end of the

communica-tion and is not an intensive task for modern servers

■ Network Interface\Segments Retransmitted /sec If this value shows a sudden

significant increase, check the status of your network card Retransmissions occur

when duplexing is set incorrectly or there are issues with a network route

Monitoring at the Presentation Layer

This layer ensures that the information from the network layer is available in the correctformat to the system It ensures translation and encryption or decryption is performedbefore the data is passed

There are two types of counters under this heading to be concerned with: server and rector The server object is specifically for monitoring the server or the machines servingthe information The redirector is used when monitoring client machines Either or none

redi-of these machines could be a server in the hardware sense, but this refers to how theyinteract with each other in the client-server paradigm

■ Server\Nonpaged Pool Failures The number of times a failure occurs whileattempting to read from the Nonpaged Pool This is the memory that cannot bepaged After you have established a baseline for this counter, consider upgradingthe memory in your system after a 10 to 20 percent increase

■ Server\Work Item Shortages The number of times during the polling interval theserver had nothing to do or that a time slice could not be allocated for the request.This counter should remain unchanged, with a value under 3 If it does not, con-sider increasing the value of InitWorkItems or MaxWorkItems in the registry underHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanman-Server If the values do not exist, create them as REGDWORD with values in deci-mal format InitWorkItems can range from 1 through 512, and MaxWorkItems canrange from 1 through 65,535 For any value of InitWorkItems or MaxWorkItems,start with a value of 4,096, then double both values until the counter stays below 3

■ Redirector\Server Sessions Hung The number of sessions either hung or unable

to be processed due to a server that is too busy Any number above zero indicatessome kind of bottleneck, but do not be concerned until the number is higher thanone per second If the number is higher, check the other counters for memory andprocessor on the server side to help trace the issue

Note It is helpful to involve networking staff when tracking down possible work issues Network engineers understand the network and are familiar with how

net-it should respond Be cautious when monnet-itoring network counters wnet-ithout the

cooperation of the network team

Baselining Your SharePoint Server 2007 Install

There are many references to baselining in this chapter, but what exactly does it

mean? Baselining means recording performance statistics for a relevant set of

counters during normal usage times Normal usage times should be during regular

operating hours and off-peak times Gathering statistics during timeframes with

heavy, light, and no usage will help define what is normal for an individual system

There are quite a few options for you to choose from when monitoring your

front-end SharePoint servers, but the most important ones are listed in Table 13-1

Working with the Performance Tool

You need to have an understanding of what to monitor and how to perform that

moni-toring Using the Performance tool can be daunting without first knowing how to choose

your counters and the ways in which to choose them To help understand how to use the

Performance tool, please follow along on your own machine with the tool open After

opening the Performance tool, start by deleting the default items listed You can do this

by selecting the first counter, typically Memory\Pages/sec, and pressing the Delete key

until all counters are deleted or clicking the “X” on the toolbar

Table 13-1 Monitoring Options

Processor\% Processor Time\_Total <75%

System\Processor Queue Length\(N/A) <# of CPUs x 2

Memory\Available Mbytes\(N\A) < 80%

PhysicalDisk\% Disk Time\DataDrive <80%

PhysicalDisk\Current Disk Queue Length

.NET CLR Memory\% Time in GC Time spent on garbage collection Thresholds

depend on many factors, but a value over 25% could indicate there are too many unreachable objects

You can use the default counters, but deleting these confirms you will not be monitoringany extraneous items Next, add a counter by pressing the plus (+) button beside thedelete (X) button A window will appear where you can select the counters to monitor InFigure 13-4, Processor\% Processor Time\_Total is selected, which is the total percent-age of all processor capacity in use.

Figure 13-4 Selecting counters

In Figure 13-5, you can see where more counters have been selected These counters areimportant to monitor general system performance and also to allow for demonstration ofthe capabilities of System Monitor First, notice there are colored lines that represent eachcounter you have chosen Colors are chosen for you, but you can change them Examples

of how to customize your counters are in the next section, “Customizing the Display.”Below the graph there is a legend describing the color, scale, counters, and computer

Figure 13-5 Example of System Monitor with multiple counters

The red, vertical line shows the point in time the graph is displaying On the left of the red

line is the most recently displayed performance data, while immediately to the right of

the red line is the oldest data, which is about to be overwritten The graph continually

wraps as time progresses Data collection can be paused by clicking the red circle with

the small white x, which appears in the toolbar at the top of the graph The right-hand

axis shows the scale, which by default begins at 0 and ends at 100

Customizing the Display

The display can be customized to your needs Right-click the graph and select Properties

This opens the System Monitor Properties window Figure 13-6 shows an example of

Sys-tem Monitor properties

Figure 13-6 The Data tab of the System Monitor Properties window

By default, the Data tab is selected, which allows you to change the color, width, style, andscale of each counter currently displayed Select the General tab to change items such asthe View, Display Elements, and sampling rate The sampling rate is set to one secondunless you change it Many times this is too high of a rate and can affect performance of

an already taxed system The sampling rate should be no less than 15 seconds unless youhave some very good reasons to set it that low In Figure 13-7, you see the General tabwith examples of the various settings

Figure 13-7 The General tab of the System Monitor Properties window

The Source tab allows you to choose your data source for displaying data By default,

Cur-rent Activity is selected for the counters chosen The Source tab can also be used to

change your input to previously logged Performance sessions, allowing you to review in

detail counters you have logged to a file or database In addition, a time range can be set

so that you can focus more finely on the period of time desired Lastly, the Appearance

tab gives options to customize different aspects of System Monitor’s color and font

Additional Features

There are quite a few features of System Monitor that do not fit readily in a single

cate-gory, and those will be covered in this section From the main System Monitor window,

click the View Histogram button to show a comparison of the data in real time A

histo-gram is a graphical representation, usually a bar graph, of the data presented This is a

good way for you to easily compare two or more counters at a moment in time This

fea-ture, like any other counter within the Performance tool, can be used to track counters on

a remote server For example, when adding a counter, choose Select Counters From

Com-puter (refer back to Figure 13-4) and type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path

of the server you want to add counters from Figure 13-8 shows an example of a gram.

histo-Figure 13-8 Example of a histogram

There is another option, called View Report, in the toolbar It is denoted by the icon thatlooks similar to the NotePad icon Clicking this icon displays the data in purely numeri-cal format, also in real time This is a very good way to watch for a certain high or low inyour monitoring for a short period of time If there is a need to monitor this over a longerperiod of time, consider using Alerts, which was previously covered To the right of theDelete option (the black “X”) on the toolbar is the Highlight option, which looks like asmall light bulb The Highlight option allows you to choose one counter to emphasize onyour window

Another very handy set of features is the ability to copy the properties of a Performancetool session as well as paste a counter list Just to the right of the Highlight option is theCopy Properties button Clicking this button copies the XML data from your monitor ses-sion to the clipboard You can use this to track what you are monitoring or include it in

a Web page The Paste Counter List action lets you choose a list of counters from a textfile and insert them into a monitor session

The last miscellaneous options covered here is very helpful when you see a section of data

you want to examine further That function is the Freeze Display button, which looks like

a red circle with a small white “x” in it It stops monitoring while selected Be careful with

this option because it can skew your chart as monitoring is stopped Clicking Update

Data while the display is frozen causes the display to move only one time period, but that

move is updated with the most current point If you have frozen the display for 60

sec-onds, clicking Update Data moves the display ahead only one second if you are using the

default sample rate This does not, however, unfreeze the display

There are a number of complex features of the Performance tool and many ways in which

they can be applied You are now armed with the knowledge of how to use the

Perfor-mance tool and which counters you can use to track issues you might have You will find

that the more you use the Performance tool, the more you can learn from it

More Info For more information on how to monitor server performance using

the Performance tool, see the Performance Guide volume in the Microsoft Windows

Server 2003 Resource Kit from Microsoft Press.

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and SharePoint

Server 2007

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 helps to centralize management of an IT

infrastruc-ture environment, reducing the complexity and costs of operation Using Microsoft

Oper-ations Manager 2005, the status and performance of many products from across an

enterprise can be automatically monitored, including infrastructure such as hardware or

Domain Name Services (DNS); platform services such as Internet Information Services

(IIS), SQL Server, or Active Directory (AD); and applications such as SharePoint Server

2007 SharePoint administrators can use these capabilities to monitor all the servers in a

SharePoint Server 2007 farm, plus the critical platform services that directly affect

Share-Point; view reports summarizing the performance and issues over time; and even perform

management or troubleshooting tasks affecting those remote products and servers—all

from a single desktop

Using this central console, operators can view live and historical reports of the system

status; they can drill into specific error messages or performance counters from any

com-puter being monitored; and they can even run scripts or commands that affect those

computers to make configuration changes But rather than relying on the operators to

spot problems after they occur and then spending time working out how to solve them,

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 can be always monitoring and ready to respond

quickly Thanks to preconfigured rules, performance thresholds, and best practice

knowledge—provided either by the Microsoft product teams or customized and ured by the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 operators at a specific organization—

config-Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 can automatically detect that warning thresholds

have been exceeded, whether problems have occurred, or if a failure seems likely to occur.

Once something is detected, Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 can respond in a ber of ways—from simply logging a performance issue for an operator to examine later,

num-to sending an e-mail or paged alert message num-to an operanum-tor warning of an urgent issue, num-toexecuting troubleshooting scripts to immediately resolve well-known problems This capability provides a proactive means of troubleshooting issues before they affectusers, and it reduces the time to detect and resolve failures Fewer failures means fewersupport calls, which means lower support costs, and ultimately achieves the goal of verycontented SharePoint administrators

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Architecture

There are two versions of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 available: the full version

of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 group Edition Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Workgroup Edition is suitable forsmall organizations that need to monitor ten servers or fewer as all components areinstalled on a single server

Work-The full version of this product, called Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, is designedfor larger organizations, and each of the main components can be separated and scaledacross multiple computers, if required, to improve availability However, administratorswho plan to monitor fewer than 200 computers can choose to install all Microsoft Oper-ations Manager 2005 components on a single computer that is appropriately sized andconfigured

Note For more information on Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 scalability and sizing, refer to the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Deployment Planning Guide at

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/mom/mom2005/Library

/8331b1ef-ce28-4280-9952-ac3e067214b7.mspx.

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Components

Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 comprises a number of components, which

collectively are referred to as a management group Although additional components are

available for certain scenarios, we will examine the following core components of themanagement group: