WAN Optimization for Microsoft SharePoint BPOS >

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WAN Optimization for Microsoft SharePoint BPOS >

Best Practices

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Executive Summary

Microsoft SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and information-sharing platform designed as a centralized replacement for multiple web applications. SharePoint leverages HTML front ends, HTTP and SSL protocols to blend intranets with web content management and document management systems. However, ensuring SharePoint performance comes with several challenges, and these factors can impact where and how WAN optimization technologies can be used:

-> The SharePoint version (2007 or 2010)

-> Deployment type (internal or cloud/SaaS) and authentication

-> Use case (document download vs. dynamic ASPX pages)

-> Protocols (HTTP, HTTPS and proprietary extensions)

-> Network dynamics (latency, architecture)

-> Available WAN optimization technologies (traditional symmetric technologies vs. HTTP-intelligent object/

cloud caching)

Blue Coat delivers the fastest performance for SharePoint 2007 deployments.

Performance tests have shown that Blue Coat is uniquely capable of addressing the complex challenges of SharePoint optimization. The key is to use both symmetric optimization and asymmetric object caching. Symmetric technologies address first-pass optimization as well as documents that change in one location and are accessed by another. Asymmetric object caching can significantly improve performance for “second accesses” in a branch office. Using “always verify” rules for downloads can ensure the availability of the most current content and five-minute “time to live” for more dynamic ASPX pages.

Blue Coat also ensures top performance for SharePoint (BPOS) cloud deployments.

Tests have also shown dramatic performance gains for cloud-delivered SharePoint Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) in branch offices. Blue Coat achieves these gains by leveraging the best-practice approach that allows remote offices to go directly to SharePoint BPOS via the Internet. Blue Coat also enables secure access to SharePoint BPOS via asymmetric optimization. While symmetric WAN optimization works, backhauling SharePoint BPOS traffic over the WAN to the branch office adds latency to application performance and can impact user productivity. Backhauling also uses valuable WAN bandwidth that could be used for new business initiatives that drive revenue or reduce costs.

As a result, Blue Coat’s WAN Optimization approach allows IT organizations to:

-> Improve SharePoint BPOS performance and thereby ensure user productivity.

-> Reduce WAN traffic and open up bandwidth for new initiatives.

-> Reduce connectivity costs by enabling remote branch offices to access SharePoint BPOS and other SaaS

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Introduction

Microsoft SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and information-sharing platform designed as a centralized replacement for multiple web applications. In the past (and sometimes now) companies used “file shares” – specific drives on shared servers that users found by navigating through the “Network Neighborhood” to file directories that look like “\\server\techdocs\documents\whitepapers\...” Today, Web and intranet-based technologies provide a much more navigable and effective way to communicate and collaborate. SharePoint leverages HTML front ends, HTTP and SSL protocols to blend intranets with web content management and document management systems.

SharePoint provides the ability to create intranet portals, extranets and websites, collaboration spaces, document management and file management pages. It also incorporates search capabilities and social networking tools, and enables third-party integration as well.

Although SharePoint can be deployed as cloud-delivered SaaS, the majority of SharePoint deployments are done internally. Small, medium and large enterprises install, configure and operate SharePoint on their own servers, in their own data centers. SharePoint is architected, however, to support multiple organizations on a single server farm that enables hosted solutions. Microsoft provides SharePoint as a cloud computing solution as part of BPOS and Office 365. The product is also sold as a cloud solution by local third-party vendors.

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SharePoint BPOS performance: Managing challenges

While many WAN optimization technologies can accelerate SharePoint performance, several different factors impact what technologies can be used and how they are applied.

-> Version: SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 have variations in the workflows, network protocols,

authentication methods and data structure.

-> Deployment method: The decision to deploy internally or through a cloud service will impact optimization

strategies. Internal deployments are relatively straightforward, though certain WAN optimization capabilities can boost performance 2-10x over traditional optimization methods. On the other hand, cloud-deployed SharePoint can significantly improve branch office productivity once the optimization technologies and security requirements are met.

-> Protocols: HTTP and SSL (HTTPS) are the protocols used for SharePoint, whether internally deployed or

cloud-delivered. SSL-delivered SharePoint requires the ability to decrypt and then optimize SSL sessions. If SharePoint is cloud-delivered, the challenges increase because the enterprise doesn’t control the server-side certificates.

-> Content downloads vs. portals, indexes and navigation pages: Downloading a large document is different

than dynamic content that may change every few minutes.

-> Network dynamics: There are a couple of dynamics here. First, how does the protocol interact with latency?

Location is the second issue, because internal deployments deal only with internal client-server network connections. In this setup, each end of the transaction is controlled by the enterprise, generally over the private WAN. Cloud deployments, however, take control of the server side of the transaction away from the enterprise that subscribes to the BPOS service.

-> WAN optimization technology: Common WAN optimization technologies, such as protocol acceleration,

compression and byte caching can accelerate the performance of SharePoint. These two-sided or “symmetric” solutions speed access and reduce the bandwidth required to deliver SharePoint to a distributed user base. Advanced WAN optimization, like application-level caching, can be applied asymmetrically and provide a significant boost in performance and bandwidth gains. These asymmetric approaches also have the benefit of optimizing cloud-delivered SharePoint with no impact to the cloud providers’ infrastructure.

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SharePoint 2007: Internal deployments and BPOS

In this best practices article, we’ll discuss SharePoint 2007 along with the cloud-deployed version of SharePoint 2007, BPOS. Let’s look at some of the deployment options, network impacts and optimization approaches:

Internet

WAN

Cloud SaaS Data Center Branch Branch Branch 3 2 Zone A 1 Zone B Zone C

Figure 1: SharePoint deployment options and network impacts

Internally Deployed

SharePoint This is the simplest case, and most common._{• Zone A, the private WAN, is what requires optimization. The organization controls}

both sides of the transaction, so symmetric approaches can be used.

• Blue Coat symmetric WAN Optimization technologies, which include byte caching, compression, QoS and TCP optimization, deliver significant performance improvement over Zone A.

• Blue Coat’s asymmetric object/cloud caching can provide a significant additional increase in performance to Zone A – between 1.5x – 10x compared to just symmetric technologies. This approach also significantly reduces server load, as the branch office caches are servicing content requests. Servers still must respond to authentication and “freshness” verification requests, but are offloaded from significant amounts of serving.

• Best practice: Use both symmetric optimization and asymmetric object caching. Symmetric technologies are good for first-pass optimization as well as documents that change in one location and are accessed by another. Use asymmetric object caching to significantly improve performance for “second accesses” in a branch office. Use “always verify” rules for downloads to ensure the most up-to-date content and five-minute “time to live” for more dynamic ASPX pages.

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BPOS Cloud SharePoint with Backhaul Network Architecture

• This overall architecture is common, but it creates three challenges. For that reason, this architecture is not “best practice” for performance purposes:

- It creates “two hops” of latency – Zone A and Zone B.

- Zone B requires special optimization approaches because the cloud infrastructure is not controlled by the typical enterprise, eliminating “symmetric optimization” technologies.

- Cloud traffic (as well as recreational traffic that is also backhauled) contends with all other application traffic for the constrained WAN link.

• Symmetric/traditional WAN optimization can accelerate performance in Zone A but not Zone B (between the data center and the cloud service).

• Blue Coat’s asymmetric object/cloud caching can provide a significant additional increase in performance in Zone B. This requires a device to be deployed at the Internet ingress/egress point, a traditional Internet cache for which Blue Coat is well known.

BPOS Cloud SharePoint with Direct Branch to Cloud Access

• Zone C is optimized from branch office to cloud over the Internet. • This architecture is considered best practice for performance.

- It skips Zone A latency, creating higher performance.

- Introduces a second path or connection for the branch office, creating higher availability and redundancy networking for the branch.

- Removes recreational traffic from the WAN. • Requirements:

- Requires either a separate Internet access line or an MPLS service with “split tunnel” to send traffic to the Internet.

- Specialized optimization approaches are required.

› Symmetric WAN optimization typically cannot be applied without the ability to deploy a WAN optimization device or virtual appliance in the cloud SaaS infrastructure, which is rare.

› Blue Coat’s asymmetric cloud caching accelerates “warm data accesses,” and requires no deployment of WAN optimization in the SaaS infrastructure. - Branch-level security for Internet access (on-premises or via cloud service).

Because this is not a DMZ, advanced firewalls are not required. Simple MPLS rules or router configurations should secure access against non-web traffic. Web gateway security becomes the critical enabling technology to:

› Deny all inbound connections (router or MPLS configuration rule), except for return 80 and 443 traffic.

› Block all outgoing non-80/443 traffic.

› Forward 80/443 traffic to the Blue Coat Cloud Service, Web Security module or deploy ProxySG Full Proxy Edition with both WAN Optimization and Web Security.

• Best practice: Use asymmetric cloud caching.

- Blue Coat’s asymmetric object/cloud caching can provide a significant additional increase in Zone C performance, with no equipment required in the cloud

provider’s infrastructure. Note, this does not accelerate initial document accesses, but subsequent accesses are accelerated up to 100x. See Figure 2: “Best-practice results for internal SharePoint deployments” and Appendix A: Figure 3: “Cache configuration details.”

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Best practices for internal SharePoint 2007 deployments

For internal deployments, only Zone A requires optimization between the data center and branch office. Performance was tested using SharePoint 2007 configured with various documents. We used two devices: one to simulate a data center WAN optimization device and one to simulate a branch office device (two are required for symmetric optimization technologies). A WAN simulator was used, which introduced 100 ms of latency. “Cold” reads are the first time data has been downloaded. “Warm reads” are subsequent accesses – the second or third time.

Cold results employ only symmetric WAN optimization. Results show a range of no acceleration to 4.1x faster. This is typical of other WAN optimization vendors, who are limited to only symmetric, network-level optimization.

Warm results demonstrate the power of Blue Coat’s asymmetric object caching technologies. Once the document is stored in the cache (warm), subsequent accesses are 21-138x faster.

SharePoint 2007 Internal Deployment Optimization Results

13MB.mp3

BLUE COAT WARM

76.1 .7 74.7 300k.docx 3.1 0.1 2.9 2MB.txt 4.5 0.2 12.6 1340k.doc 4.9 0.1 8.3 7108k.doc 9.6 0.3 39.8 500k.ppt 2.1 0.1 3.4 3500k.ppt 19.8 0.2 20.4 1100k.xls 2.6 0.1 6.9 1.3 times faster 47 times faster 2.6 times faster 101 times faster 1.6 times faster 26 times faster 4.1 times faster 138 times faster 1.7 times faster 57 times faster 2.8 times faster 76 times faster 21 times faster 107 times faster

BLUE COAT COLD BASELINE

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Best practices for SharePoint BPOS cloud deployments

For cloud/SaaS deployments, you need to optimize either Zone A + Zone B (backhaul architecture) or Zone C (direct Internet access from branch). Best practices recommend direct Internet access from the branch. Performance was tested using a single branch device, pointed to the BPOS service with various documents accessed. A WAN simulator was used, which introduced 100 ms of latency. “Cold” reads are the first time data has been downloaded. “Warm reads” are subsequent accesses – the second or third time.

Cold results demonstrate no improvements, as cloud caching optimizes “warm” reads, when content has already been seen.

Warm results demonstrate the power of Blue Coat’s asymmetric cloud caching technologies. You see that once the document is stored in cache (warm), subsequent accesses are 6-91x faster.

Cloud-SaaS BPOS SharePoint with Direct Branch to Internet Access BLUE COAT WARM

1340K.doc 21.0 1.0 22.0 7108k.doc 116.7 1.3 121.3 1100k.xls 17.7 1.0 17.0 500k.xls 7.0 1.0 6.3 500k.ppt 13.7 1.0 13.0 3500k.ppt 57.7 1.2 58.0 22 times faster 91 times faster 17 times faster 6 times faster 13 times faster 50 times faster

BLUE COAT COLD BASELINE

Benefits of Blue Coat WAN Optimization for SharePoint BPOS

WAN optimization was originally designed to accelerate traffic between data centers and branch offices across the WAN. Today, WAN optimization accelerates data access and applications by optimizing protocols, compressing data sent over the WAN, caching common data near users and assigning a lower quality of service to recreational traffic. To help organizations reduce bandwidth costs and improve business performance, Blue Coat WAN Optimization solutions help:

-> Provide LAN-like application performance to users at remote branch offices to improve productivity.

-> Securely accelerate active SSL-encrypted traffic to minimize risks and increase transaction rates.

-> Reduce bandwidth required for delivery of application data, office files and rich media (streaming or

on-demand video and audio).

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For SaaS applications, such as SharePoint BPOS accessed over the Internet, Blue Coat WAN Optimization provides HTTP and SSL/TLS protocol optimizations along with caching to accelerate and secure user access. As illustrated by recent deployment tests, Blue Coat offers a clear WAN optimization advantage for companies looking to accelerate their SharePoint BPOS deployments.

About Blue Coat

Blue Coat Systems is a leading provider of WAN optimization and Web security solutions. Blue Coat offers solutions that provide the visibility, acceleration and security required to optimize and secure the flow of information to any user, on any network, anywhere. This application intelligence enables enterprises to tightly align network investments with business requirements, speed decision-making and secure business applications for long-term competitive advantage. Blue Coat also offers service provider solutions for managed security and WAN optimization, as well as carrier-grade caching solutions to save on bandwidth and enhance the end-user Web experience.

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Coat, ProxySG, PacketShaper, CacheFlow, IntelligenceCenter and BlueTouch are registered trademarks of Blue Coat Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and worldwide. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

WAN Optimization for Microsoft SharePoint BPOS >