SharePoint has undoubtedly improved the performance of numerous companies around the world.
However, we can get better! Here are four ways to Improve SharePoint Performance
TL;DR
- Optimise SQL for better SharePoint Performance – SharePoint Performance Tricks: Optimizing SQL;
- SharePoint Infrastructure – Technical diagrams for SharePoint Server;
- Server Infrastructure – Performance and Capacity Planning; and
- OS Level – Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Sever 2016.
Intuitive collaboration
Optimising SharePoint for end-user satisfaction and adoption is key to any collaboration and productivity intuitive to what a business executes.
If the platform on which you are building does not deliver the solutions because it is slow or unresponsive, it will undermine your business all the time with major efforts and cost going into it.
Greater focus
As your business adopts the platform more for productivity and ease of use, the greater the focus on performance will become.
A good measure for any SharePoint site is to get sub-second page load times. Once the page is no longer in that threshold (negating bandwidth constraints) there are ways to improve your SharePoint performance. Here are just 4 of them:
- Optimise SQL for better SharePoint Performance. SQL is the heart of SharePoint. Without SQL, there is no SharePoint and therefore logically the best start to optimising SharePoint would be to ensure SQL was running at full tilt. Check out SharePoint Performance Tricks: Optimizing SQL for more info;
- SharePoint Infrastructure. Once SQL has been optimized and no longer the company’s biggest worry, the next bottleneck will be infrastructure. Ensuring you have enough dedicated roles such as Front End, Application, Search, Distributed Cache and custom servers is a key factor in the SharePoint farm performance and user experience. Technical diagrams for SharePoint Server have been made available by Microsoft to understand which topology one should adopt would require monitoring of services on the current farm environment or estimated usage for a new build. For example, if search crawls are long and frequent, a separate server for search is recommended;
- Server Infrastructure. Another significant focus point must be put on hardware. While hardware can fix many things very quickly, it is important that scale is not reliable on hardware alone. All the hardware in the world will still cause issues if the optimization and logical infrastructure are not up to date. Hardware does, however, cure very simple issues quickly. RAM – No less than 24GB per server, CPU – At least 4 cores per server, SSD – SSD’s are always faster and splitting drives for difference purposes is key, NIC – 1GB and NIC Teaming is essential, Virtual – Never host SQL and SharePoint servers on the same physical host. For a deep dive on more check out Performance and Capacity Planning; and
- OS Level. The operating system is a must. Without it, there is no SharePoint. However, certain roles and services do not need to be running on the server at all times. Anti-virus and protection software must exclude specific drives and perform scans outside of search crawl and user interaction times. No server should also be used for a dual purpose, their entire purpose should be to serve and delivery to the SharePoint Farm. Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2016 are available from Microsoft.
As you can see, SharePoint can work wonders for your business, get up to date and reap the rewards.