Farming in the cloud

A model of a SharePoint farm running on Windows Azure, with a VPN connection to an on-premises site Search WindowsAzure.com, MSDN, or TechNet for the keywords referenced below

Save your resources! Windows Azure

Infrastructure Services frees you to Cloud service Cloud service

create a highly available Internet- WEB FRONT ENDS APPLICATION DATA DOMAIN CONTROLLER

facing SharePoint farm in the cloud A A B C

A
with virtual machines. SQL Server Port 80 LARGE WINDOWS SERVER SHAREPOINT

AlwaysOn manages the SharePoint (HTTP)

SQL AlwaysOn
500 GB Primary
Windows Server AD

databases for you. B

availability group

Port 443 Backup

(HTTPS)
A7 or LARGER WINDOWS SERVER SQL SERVER FAILOVER CLUSTERING

Here’s how to set up a SharePoint 500 GB Site-to-site

VPN
farm with SQL AlwaysOn: Availability set Availability set Availability set Availability set

C
Subnet 1 Subnet 2 Subnet 3 Subnet 4
SMALL WINDOWS SERVER DNS ACTIVE DIRECTORY

I. CONFIGURE WINDOWS AZURE COMPONENTS Windows Server 2012 RRAS

The gateway VMs are automati-
or hardware VPN device
Using the Management Portal, create 1 Virtual Network, 1 Storage Account, 4 subnets, and 4 VHD data
disks. Also create 8 (or more) Virtual Machines for a minimum configuration:
Virtual network cally provisioned by Windows
Azure when you set up a VPN
2 Windows Server 2012 Datacenter (medium) gateway. You can’t access the
2 SQL Server Enterprise (size A7 or larger) VMs—and you don’t need to.
2 SharePoint Server Trial Servers (large) STANDBY VPN ACTIVE VPN

2 Application Servers (large) VPN gateway subnet

ON-PREMISES

2. CONFIGURE DOMAIN CONTROLLERS

1. Add the Domain Controller Role to one Windows Server 2012 VM.
2. Restart the VM.
3. Add user accounts to the domain:
Publish to the Internet
SharePoint Farm Administrator Logical views of the SharePoint farm showing how to manage publishing features and identity for an Internet site
Database Administrator (used to configure WSFC Cluster)
SharePoint Installer
SQL Service Login 1 (Service account for primay SQL Server instance) SharePoint 2013 farm—logical view with sites (option 1) Logical view of the SharePoint 2013 farm with identity management
SQL Service Login 2 (Service account for secondary SQL Server instance)
4. Add the Domain Controller role to the second Windows Server 2012 VM as a backup controller. Separate environments for dev and production
Web Application
http://www.contoso.com https://authoring Author and publish in the same environment
Zone Internet
3. CONFIGURE SQL SERVER VMs Use the cross-site publishing feature to separate authoring from WINDOWS AZURE
Anonymous
ACTIVE DIRECTORY
https://authoring/contoso live sites Authenticated TENANT
For each SQL Server VM, do the following:
1. Attach a 500GB VHD to the SQL Server VM. https://customerweb.contoso.com Apply SharePoint topology guidance for configuring VMs and Zone Default
2. Join the VM to the domain and restart. https://authoring/contoso/customer designing service distribution across VMs Windows Auth (NTLM)
3. Add the database administrator account as a sysadmin role to the default instance. Technet: “Cross-site publishing”
4. Add the database admin account as a machine administrator.
CROSS-SITE PUBLISHING
5. Configure the firewall to allow SQL Server through. SharePoint Farm
6. Change the SQL Server instance to use the respective domain service account (Login 1, Login 2).
OR
7. Add a SQL Server login for NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM with the following permissions: alter any availability
group, connect SQL, and view server state.
SharePoint 2013 farm—logical view with sites (option 2) Use Windows Azure Active Directory for customer accounts while using your
4. CONFIGURE SHAREPOINT VMs Separate environments for development, staging, on-premises Active Directory accounts to authenticate site authors and developers.

1. Join the SharePoint VM to the domain.

and publishing In SharePoint 2013, identity management is factored into the configuration of SP zones and authentication. For Inter-
net-facing sites, the following approach separates internal and external access into different zones:
2. Log on to the VM. Multiple farm environments can be implemented to satisfy
3. Deploy and configure your SharePoint farm with the primary SQL Server VM as the database server.
isolation requirements or different service-level agreements Configure the default zone for your internal accounts
SharePoint Farm A SharePoint Farm B
TechNet: “Plan for SharePoint 2013” Public-facing web site Authoring, dev & staging Cross-site publishing can be used across multiple SharePoint 2013 Configure the Internet zone for customer access, including both anonymous and authenticated access
environment farms
Use Azure Active Directory for customer accounts, or use a different SAML-based provider
5. CONFIGURE THE WINDOWS SERVER FAILOVER CLUSTER (WSFC)
To collaborate with external partners on the same content, an alternative approach is to implement one zone with
1. Add the Failover Clustering feature to the VMs. SAML-based authentication across the different directories, resulting in one URL for all users.
CROSS-SITE PUBLISHING
2. Create the Windows Failover cluster that includes the SQL Server VMs on the primary VM:
WINDOWS AZURE VIRTUAL NETWORK
a. Create a single node WSFC cluster.
b. Take the cluster name offline.

Be more available
c. Configure the cluster name’s IP address to a link-local address (169.254.x.x).
d. Bring the cluster name online.
e. Add other SQL Server VMs to the WSFC cluster.
3. Enable AlwaysOn High Availability in SQL Server Configuration Manager on all SQL Server VMs. AlwaysOn availability groups and Windows Azure availability sets
MSDN: “Tutorial: AlwaysOn Availability Groups in Windows Azure”

6. CREATE ALWAYSON AVAILABILITY GROUPS AND ADD DATABASES

Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) cluster FAULT DOMAIN A FAULT DOMAIN Z AVAILABILITY GROUPS VS. AVAILABILITY SETS

1. Log on to the primary SQL Server VM. AVAILABILITY GROUP AG1

An availability group is a SQL Server
An availability group contains a discrete set of user databases,
2. Create a file share on one of the SQL servers and grant modify rights to the SQL Server Service accounts. AlwaysOn solution that provides high avail-
known as availability databases, that fail over together.
3. Use SSMS to do a full backup of the SharePoint DBs. ability to databases. In contrast, Windows
The database set is known as an availability replica. There is one
4. Run the New Availability Group Wizard to create an availability group (specifying the replicas and DBs). Azure availability sets span fault domains
primary replica and up to four secondary replicas. Secondary replicas
5. Manually create the Availability Group Listener. and ensure that hardware failures do not
are not backups. You should back up your data as usual.
6. Remount the SharePoint databases using the Availability Group Listener. AVAILABILITY take down multiple VMs.
PRIMARY REPLICA SETS
TechNet: “Configure AlwaysOn Availability Groups for SharePoint 2013, Listener Configuration” Deploying availability groups requires a Windows Server Failover The availability set is a supporting configura-
Clustering (WSFC) cluster. Each replica must reside on a different tion to AlwaysOn availability groups.
node of the same WSFC cluster.
VM 1 VM ... VM ... VM ... VM ... TechNet: “Overview of AlwaysOn Availability Groups”
MSDN: “Manage the Availability of Virtual Machines”

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