1. Best Practices for SharePoint Administration
ILTA: SharePoint for Legal 2009 Symposium
June 17th 2009

2. Agenda Introductions Topics
Evan Callender – Senior Architect – West Monroe Partners
Topics
Central Administration
Governance
Backup and Restore
Content Databases
Large Farms
Content Tracking
Identity Management
Top 10
Q&A
KYLE: gets get the agenda in sync with the slides

3. Central Administration
Farm Administrators
By Default, the System Account that was set up during the initial MOSS/WSS with be the sole account with Farm Administration rights
Best practice is to keep this default settings. However, additional users can be granted Farm Administrator access
Site Quotas
Quotas can be set to limit the amount of content a site can contain
Site Quota templates provide an automated content quota on all new sites created using the template
Quotas (Set quotas on site templates….out of the box is mysites) Screenshot

4. Governance Plans
A Sound Governance Plan will provide an organization a comprehensive containing key details around that organizations SharePoint Solution and accompanying governance policies including:
Authority to create Sub-Sites
User access rights to all areas of the SharePoint Solution
Responsible parties for all pertinent sections of a successful SharePoint Solution including:
Site and Sub-Site Administrators
IT Administrators
Database Administrators
Support Levels
Technical Resources
Reference: Microsoft Governance Plan Template
Microsoft Governance Template

5. Backup and Restore
Running scheduled backups is vital to the success of a SharePoint Solution. Backups generally take place at both the database (SQL) level and the site level.
SQL Database Backups
Maintenance plans and transaction log checkpoints
Issues with a restore of the SharePoint configuration databases
Site Level Backups
Administrators can use the “stsadm –o backup” command for site collection level backups
These backup files can be used to restore the site collection to a previous state
Site Export/Import
At a more targeted level, the “stsadm –o export” and “stsadm –o import” commands can be used to backup individual Sites and import them where needed

6. Backup and Restore SharePoint Backups
Configured and managed in Central Admin
Not heavily used
Data Protection Manager – High level points on the solutions
Continuous data protection for Windows
Rapid and reliable Recoveries from the item to catastrophic level
Advanced technology for enterprises of all sizes
3rd Party
Handful of tools that allow for item level restores and setting up granular backups for different areas of the farm
Continuous Data Protection for Windows Application and File Servers DPM protects core Windows Server workloads by continuously capturing data changes with application-aware byte-level agents, providing an easy-to-manage and robust disk/tape back-end platform, and one-click lossless application recovery.
Rapid and Reliable Recovery DPM enables IT administrators and end-users to easily recover data in minutes from easily accessible disk instead of locating and restoring from less-reliable tapes.
Advanced Technology for Enterprises of All Sizes DPM brings together the best aspects of CDP real-time protection with traditional tape backup/restore to provide a comprehensive disk-to-disk-to-tape data recovery solution. Combined with Microsoft Windows Server technology, DPM 2007 provides a technically advanced and comprehensive data protection solution for the most demanding Windows environments—from the SMB to the Enterprise.

7. Managing Content Databases
Site Collection Storage Limits and Warnings in Central Administration
Site Collections can be locked down at different levels
Site Collections can be limited to a maximum size of content
Site Collections can also have warning s configured to send when content size reaches a certain limit
Mapping SQL Growth
The database should be configured to grow correctly in order to avoid segmentation (more later)
Online Database vs. Offline Database

8. Content Database Administration
Size of databases and number of sites
50 to 100 GB per
Number of sites varies based on size
Segmenting different types of sites
Internal vs. external
Departmental
MySites
How are your databases growing?
Auto growth settings
Transaction logs
Quotas and limits
Other databases to watch
Shared services search
Sharepoint configuration

9. Large or Multiple Farms
When running multiple farms, it is vital to have a effective method to monitor all content. There are a number of third party tools that can prove to be beneficial
Quest Administration Toolkit
Contains 30 operational reports, ability to build custom reports, set global policy settings, manage permissions and provide audit data and reports for the entire SharePoint environment
Features Include:
Discover and understand the extent of SharePoint
Establish security policies by managing all access and permissions to information
Help ensure compliance by providing a consolidated report of log data on activities
Validate the health and performance of SharePoint servers and sites
Analyze metrics, trends and user activity to provide quality information to stakeholders
Optimize IT’s time by issuing global policy configurations to all servers and sites

10. Large or Multiple Farms
AvePoint DocAve SharePoint Administrator
Offers a central console for administrators to easily view, search, manage, report, and replicate settings, configurations, and securities of SharePoint objects (individually or in bulk).
Features Include:
Real-time Discovery and Monitoring
Administration and Security Management
Advanced STSADM Graphical User Interface
Management and Reporting

11. Large Farms Microsoft Administration Toolkit
Contains the ability to perform bulk operations on site collections, an Stsadm operation to update alert s after the URL for a Web application has been changed, and a User Profile Replication Engine tool
Additional Features Include:
Batch Site Manager
User Profile Replication Engine
Customizable MSI
The MSI also supports the /quiet switch for quiet installation.

12. Root Site Owners/Members/Visitors
Multiple Sites
The key to a successful SharePoint Solution is to set up the appropriate site/sub-site structure and its related permissions.
If you are going to break permissions each Site should have it’s own groups of Owners, Members and Visitors
Owners: Full Control
Members: Contribute
Visitors: Read Only
Root Site Owners/Members/Visitors
Sub-Site 1 Owners/Members/Visitors
Tertiary Site 1
Owners/Members/ Visitors
Tertiary Site 2
Owners/Members /Visitors
Sub-Site 2 Owners/Members/Visitors
Using AD Groups vs. SharePoint Groups (new slide???)

13. Security Groups Security Groups: Active Directory vs. SharePoint
In organizations in which an Active Directory structure is already established, those AD groups can be utilized within SharePoint Groups
When to use Active Directory and when to use only SharePoint Groups?
AD Groups can be used across site collections
SharePoint groups are defined at the site collection level and have to be manually replicated to other site collections
Best Practices for utilizing SharePoint Security Inheritance
Attempt to have base permissions set at the root site level
While inheritance can be broken down to the document level, there is a limit to the number of items with broken inheritance in a document library
Sample Security Groups
SP Group: Global Owners
AD Group: SP_Administrators
SP Group: Global Members
AD Group: SP_Managers
AD Group: SP_ProjectMgrs
SP Group: Global Visitors
AD Group: NT_ AuthenticatedUsers
AD Group: SP_ProjectMgrs

14. Where is my Valuable Content?
Site Collection Usage Reports
KYLE: Screen shots of available reports and audit events

15. Where is my Valuable Content?
Site Collection Usage Reports
KYLE: Screen shots of available reports and audit events

16. Where is my Valuable Content?
Search Usage Reports
KYLE: Screen shots of available reports and audit events

17. Where is my Valuable Content?
Policy Auditing
KYLE: Screen shots of available reports and audit events

18. Third party of custom applications
Identity Management
Active Directory
ADAM
SQL
Third party of custom applications
Virtual Identity Server (VIS) from Optimal IdM

19. Top
. . . Thing to keep in mind about SharePoint Administration
Who is a farm administrator?
Who gets to be site collection administrator?
Managing Custom Development (Solutions/Features)
Database Growth
Site Creation and Growth
Leveraging Active Directory (groups profile)
Governance Plan (Define roles across entire solution)
SharePoint Update Path and Process
External vs. Internal User Access
Backups – catastrophic vs. item level

20. Questions
Q & A

21. Contact Information
To learn more about West Monroe Partners and our SharePoint experience please contact us at:
Evan Callender
Doug Armstrong
Mary Jummati

22. References
AvePoint:
Quest:
MS Administrator Toolkit:
Virtual Identity Server:

23. Thank You.