1. Running SP 2016 in Azure The Do’s and the Don’ts
Jasjit Chopra
Penthara Technologies

2. Jasjit Chopra Penthara Technologies
MS Cloud Architect with strong background in SharePoint, Office 365 and Azure. As a SharePoint expert he has worked with many multinational clients including HP, Avanade, Accenture, Unistar Nuclear Energy, Warner Music Group, Inventiv Health and iHeartMedia. Jasjit holds a Masters of Business Administration in Technology and Management from CERAM, Sophia Antipolis, France. Having worked for different clients across the United States Jasjit has gained insight knowledge on Business Processes for the State Government and Manufacturing, Nuclear, Pharmaceutical and Music industries.
Twitter Facebook : jasjitchopra LinkedIn : jasjitchopra

3. If you can do it in Office 365 do it there
WHY
Don’t Do It
If you can do it in Office 365 do it there

4. Why do it ? Retire existing datacenter / hardware Fresh start
Evaluation
Elasticity *

5. Scenarios Dev/test Pilot / Proof of Concept Production
Disaster Recovery
Hybrid
Dev/Test – Automate scheduling of VM Shutdowns
Production – Storage Type, operation workloads like backup, patching OS, AD SQL SP does not go away – power yes, hardware issues
DR – RPO RTO, Passive Infra, Cold, Warm or Hot, Log Shipping
Hybrid – Same MS Network - things work faster

6. Design Process Identity Resource groups Connectivity Virtual Machines
Storage
Security
The Azure infrastructure services environment is different than on-premises data centers and requires additional planning. The following design process steps you through determining the following elements of Azure infrastructure:
Mapping on premises SP infra to Azure will always be complex specially for HA production farms. Like on premises have 2 of everything in Azure as well.
ID – bring your on premises AD. AD DS not supported (working on it in test right now) – people picker and AD import (Global Catalog lookup limitations)
Follow best practices for AD in Azure – static IPs etc

7. Resource Groups By Function / Role Life Cycle Project Based
Department Based

8. Connectivity Express Route recommended Be vary of Data costs
Latency based on location
IP address spacing
Static IPs
Azure Load Balancer
Not at par with F5
Third party appliances for load balancing

9. There is no PERFECT size for SharePoint
Virtual Machines
Design limited by VM sizes in Azure
Use large memory sizes for un-precited usage patterns
Undersize issue
Disk Size limitation
Disk count limitation
IOPS limitations
Availability Sets
Sys prep supported
Pre-loaded Azure VM images – minimum supported version
There is no PERFECT size for SharePoint
Apart from these – use same guidance as you would for on premises.
Load test
Availability sets – timer job config cache – SLA

10. VM Costs Number of Server Cores Server SKU RAM in GB Approx Cost
Per Month
4 Cores
D12 Standard 28
$ 485
D3 v2 Standard 14
$ 417
D12 v2 Standard
D3 v2 Promo
$ 286
D12 v2 Promo
$ 335
8 Cores
D13 Standard 56
$ 870
D4 v2 Standard
$ 830
D13 v2 Standard
D4 v2 Promo
$ 570
D13 v2 Promo
$ 670

11. Storage Premium Storage (SQL and SP running Search Role)
200 MBPS min IOPS requirement for Index
Not just IOPS but bandwidth limitations as well play a role
Separate storage accounts per VM recommended (2 VMs OK)
Diagnostics
Use the same RG as VM
Managed Disks
Disk as an ARM resource
Managed Disks – Only LRS, No Shrinking or downsizing option available yet

12. Storage (Continued…) Run SQL TempDB on Non-Persistent SSD drive
Extend Content DBs directly to blob storage (SQL 2014 onwards)
VM NICs have direct access – better performance
Easy disk management (less drive letters)
LRS Only supported

13. How? PowerShell ARM (ASM – No No) DSC
Other Third Party Orchestration systems
To get Started:
SharePoint Server 2016 High Availability Farm in Azure Deployment Kit

14. Supportability
Non-production farms, such as those used for dev/test environments or for proof-of-concept
As a disaster recovery target using log shipping, SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups, or Azure Site Recovery
Production farms, using Azure premium storage for servers running the search role
Production farms running SharePoint 2013 are also supported. SharePoint 2010 is no longer in mainstream support, however it can be installed on Azure VMs for testing and validation of migration scenarios.

15. Supportability
Office Web Apps !!

16. SP 2016 with SQL Always On