1. Multi-Farm, Cross-Continent SharePoint Architecture
Presentation Title
Multi-Farm, Cross-Continent SharePoint Architecture
Boyan Tsolov, Jon Wright
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@boyan100

2. Thank You Sponsors!
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3. Who are we? New Signature
2015 and 2014 Microsoft United States Partner of the Year
USA, Canada, UK
Professional Services, Managed Services, Cloud Applications
Boyan Tsolov
Team Lead, Senior Consultant – SharePoint (Applications)
Jon Wright
Senior Consultant – SharePoint (Infrastructure)

4. The client

5. Requirements
Consistent Content Types and Managed Metadata across all farms
Global Unified Search with 1 single search box to search all farms
Unified People Search with 1 single search box to search all farms
OneDrive for everyone, local to the employee

6. Consistent Content Types and Managed Metadata
Intranet in “Central Farm” in Toronto
Document Management Collaboration in Toronto and all remote farms
Same Site Columns, Content Types, Managed Metadata Terms
How?
Managed Metadata Service Application in Toronto
Set as Content Type Hub in Toronto farm and published
Remote farms consume Content Type Hub from Toronto
All Web Applications across all farms use this Content Type Hub

7. Global Managed Metadata

8. Performance Considerations
Synchronization occurs with a timer job
Network is not overused
Minimal bandwidth used
Disadvantage: If a remote connection is down, sync does not occur and terms are not available for tagging on remote farm

9. Configuring Managed Metadata Connection
Export Certificate to Primary
Export Certificate to Remote
Trust Primary
Trust Remote and Configure Token Issuer
Give Permission to Remote Farm
Publish MMS
Publisher
Consumer
Create MMS Proxy To Primary

10. Configuring Managed Metadata Connection
Configure Web Application Service Connections on Both Farms
Configure Content Type Hub

11. Global Unified Search
Single search box – get results from all SharePoint farms
How?
“Central Farm” in Toronto with Enterprise Search Center
Search Service Application in each farm crawling “locally”
Remote Result Sources in “Central Farm” SSA
Results shown in “Central Farm” for local SSA and remote SSAs

12. Global Unified Search

13. Search Results Experience

14. Search Results Experience

15. Performance Considerations
Crawl occurs local to each farm. Toronto does not crawl remote farms. Massive impact on preserving bandwidth and data usage limits!
Using remote result sources means:
Toronto requests a query
Query is sent to remote SSA
Remote SSA holds index server and query server. Remote SSA runs the query
Remote SSA returns the results
Toronto presents the results
Search Results page only queries remote farms requested by the user, and not all remote farms on every search request (custom)
Disadvantage: each remote farm’s search results are in their own tab / search results web part

16. Merged Results… Hybrid Search?
SP2013 & SP2016 have Hybrid Search capabilities (Cloud Search Service Application)
Office 365 indexes your on-prem farms
Single merged index in the cloud
Single search box query sent to Office 365
Single search results web part (awesome user experience!)
Not an option for our client
Too much data and bandwidth usage for remote locations, since indexes must be stored in Office 365
Must pay for Office 365 subscriptions

17. Configuring Search Service Connection
Export Certificate to Remote
Export Certificate to Primary
Trust Remote
Trust Primary and Configure Token Issuer
Give Permission to Primary Farm
Publish Search Service
Consumer
Publisher
Create Search Service Proxy To Remote

18. Configuring Search Service Connection
After Configuring Service Connection:
Create a Result Source for each remote site on the Primary Farm
Give Everyone “Read” Permissions to the remote site collection specified in the remote result source

19. Unified People Search
Single search box – search on latest user profiles from all SharePoint farms
How?
User Profile Service Application in each farm
Active Directory synchronizes with each farm
Users update their profiles in their “local” farm
UPRE (User Profile Replication Engine) replicates profile updates to the User Profile Service Application in Toronto
“Central Farm” in Toronto has Enterprise Search Center with People Search
Search Service Application / People Search in Toronto crawls UP locally

20. User Profiles and People Search

21. People Search Experience

22. Performance Considerations
Users view and update their profiles local to them – optimally quick response time
UPRE is very efficient in its network usage as it synchronizes with Toronto
Runs often and collects only deltas
Search indexing and querying is all done in Toronto

23. Unified People Search: UPRE
Install the SharePoint Administration Tool Kit on each remote farm
Configure Windows Service with a Dedicated Service App
Use a unique account for each farm for additional security
Note: User Profile Replication Engine Replicates only from Local (Russia) to Remote (Toronto)

24. Unified People Search: UPRE
User Profile Sync Service on all Farms to Sync the same directory
Configure User Profile with same Properties (If using Custom)
Give Dedicated UPRE service account “Manage Profiles” and “Manage Social Data” permissions to all User Profile Services

25. OneDrives everywhere
Local to the region of the employee (for quick syncs)
Easy to navigate to using top-nav from any SharePoint farm
How?
Trusted My Site Host Locations and audiences

26. OneDrives everywhere Click OneDrive Link Go to current My Site Host
Read current Farm Configuration
Get Audience for User
Get Trusted My Site for Audience
Redirect to My Site host

27. Trusted My Site Host Locations
Ensure the Audiences capture all users in the organization
Consider AD Groups for Audiences since you may have to assign permissions to those groups
Configure one Audience for each Farm
Configure Trusted My Site Hosts for each Farm

28. Performance Considerations
Syncing to OneDrive and sharing documents with co-workers in same office is very fast
Any SharePoint web page in any farm will always redirect you to your own office’s OneDrive storage (fast response time to open OneDrive)
Disadvantages:
If an employee relocates permanently, OneDrive content must be migrated to the new farm local to them
If an employee visits another location temporarily, their OneDrive sync will be very slow

29. Other lessons learned OneDrive everywhere Addition of new farms
Governance is important since employees might fall through the cracks (i.e. not assigned to audiences properly)
Addition of new farms
Delicate set of steps to configure and add new farms to the architecture
Scripting is incredibly important!
OfficeWebApps everywhere
We installed this in every farm to prevent the full download of a document from remote locations
Enabled previews in search remote result sources

30. THANK YOU & See you next year!
Join us for SharePint after the 5:30pm
6982 Financial Dr. and don’t forget to submit feedback after each session for your chance to win great prizes at the end of the day!
Thank you!
Toronto Enterprise Collaboration User Group Change Management, Governance, SharePoint, Office 365, Yammer, PowerBI, etc
Toronto SharePoint Users Group