Different Ways to connect Microsoft via Express Route

• Co-located at a cloud exchange
• If you are co-located in a facility with a cloud exchange, you can order virtual cross-connections to the Microsoft cloud through the co-location provider’s Ethernet exchange. Co-location providers can offer either Layer 2 cross-connections, or managed Layer 3 cross-connections between your infrastructure in the co-location facility and the Microsoft cloud.
• Point-to-point Ethernet connections
• You can connect your on-premises datacenters/offices to the Microsoft cloud through point-to-point Ethernet links. Point-to-point Ethernet providers can offer Layer 2 connections, or managed Layer 3 connections between your site and the Microsoft cloud.
• Any-to-any (IPVPN) networks
• You can integrate your WAN with the Microsoft cloud. IPVPN providers (typically MPLS VPN) offer any-to-any connectivity between your branch offices and datacenters. The Microsoft cloud can be interconnected to your WAN to make it look just like any other branch office. WAN providers typically offer managed Layer 3 connectivity.

Note: ExpressRoute capabilities and features are all identical across all of the above connectivity models.

Cloud Strategy in progress ...

Azure Compute Offerings

Virtual Machines	With support for Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM and SAP, Azure Virtual Machines gives you the flexibility of virtualisation for a wide range of computing solutions – development and testing, running applications and extending your data centre. It’s as if there was another rack in your data centre, giving you the power to deploy an application in minutes instead of weeks.
Cloud Services	Cloud Services is an example of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Like App Service, this technology is designed to support applications that are scalable, reliable, and cheap to operate. Just like an App Service is hosted on VMs, so too are Cloud Services, however, you have more control over the VMs. You can install your own software on Cloud Service VMs and you can remote into them.
Batch	Azure Batch enables you to run large-scale parallel and high-performance computing (HPC) applications efficiently in the cloud. It's a platform service that schedules compute-intensive work to run on a managed collection of virtual machines, and can automatically scale compute resources to meet the needs of your jobs.
RemoteApp	Azure RemoteApp brings the functionality of the on-premises Microsoft RemoteApp program, backed by Remote Desktop Services, to Azure. Azure RemoteApp helps you provide secure, remote access to applications from many different user devices. Azure RemoteApp basically hosts non-persistent Terminal Server sessions in the cloud, and you get to use them and share them with your users. DISCONTINUED as announced on 12 August 2016, will replace by XenApp “express” combines the simplicity of application remoting and the scalability of Azure with the security, management, and performance benefits of XenApp, to deliver Windows applications to any employee on any device.
Service Fabric	Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices. Service Fabric also addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud applications. Developers and administrators can avoid solving complex infrastructure problems and focus instead on implementing mission-critical, demanding workloads knowing that they are scalable, reliable, and manageable. Service Fabric represents the next-generation middleware platform for building and managing these enterprise-class, Tier-1 cloud-scale applications.Microservice applications are composed of small, independently versioned, and scalable customer-focused services that communicate with each other over standard protocols with well-defined interfaces.
Virtual Machine Scale Sets	Virtual machine scale sets are an Azure Compute resource you can use to deploy and manage a set of identical VMs. With all VMs configured the same, VM scale sets are designed to support true autoscale – no pre-provisioning of VMs is required – and as such makes it easier to build large-scale services targeting big compute, big data, and containerized workloads.
Azure Container Service	Azure Container Service makes it simpler for you to create, configure, and manage a cluster of virtual machines that are preconfigured to run containerized applications. It uses an optimized configuration of popular open-source scheduling and orchestration tools. This enables you to use your existing skills, or draw upon a large and growing body of community expertise, to deploy and manage container-based applications on Microsoft Azure.
Functions	Azure Functions is a solution for easily running small pieces of code, or "functions," in the cloud. You can write just the code you need for the problem at hand, without worrying about a whole application or the infrastructure to run it. This can make development even more productive, and you can use your development language of choice, such as C#, F#, Node.js, Python or PHP. Pay only for the time your code runs and trust Azure to scale as needed.

Azure Functions & Web Jobs

Min Role - SharePoint2016

https://www.petri.com/minrole-improvements-sharepoint-2016-feature-pack-1

Ignite 2016

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ragnarh/2016/10/02/yammer-roadmap-updates-and-microsoft-ignite-sessions/

SharePoint And Office 365 feature comparison Sheet:
Feature Comparison Sheet

Best Practices for operational excellence in SharePoint 2010 - Part 2

1. Server Updates
• Turn on windows update to download automatically but not install automatically.
• Install updates manually at off-peak hours and rotate servers one at a time during update process to ensure business continuity.
2. Service Accounts
• Use one service account for search per farm.
• Use one  service account for excel service external connection.
3. Use local disk for backups and later copy them else where
4. Backup and truncate the log file regularly.
5. Test & validate backups regularly to ensure business continuity.

Best Practices for operational excellence in SharePoint 2010 - Part 1

1. Network adapters
• Gigabit network adapters for all server roles
• Dual network adapters in production environment for WFE and App servers. One for users and other for SQL Server communication.
• Private network adapters for inter-server communications, for tasks like backups so that this traffic does not affect the overall farm performance.
•  Consider VLANs to reduce network traffic under heavy load conditions
2. Keep minimum network distance between WFE, App and DB servers
• Maintain Latency under one millisecond
3. Web servers and app servers
• Separate system components into logical derives and user RAID for redundancy.
• Allocate 200 GB of disk space for operating system and temporary files
• Allocate 150 GB of disk space for logs.
• Consider number of users, requests and feature required to identify the WFE servers required.
• Consider HA and DR appropriately.
4. Database Servers
• The following databases should be kept separate from other databases:
• TempDB
• Size: Medium
• Must be on a separate spindle from all other databases
• Secure Store
• Size: Small
• Host on a separate database instance and limit the access to one administrator
• Search Crawl
• Size: Extra Large
• Optimize for read
• Host on a separate server from the Search Property database
• Search Property
• Size: Large
• Optimize for write
• Host on its own server
• Usage
• Size: Extra Large
• Optimize for write
• Must be on separate spindle.
• This DB does not need high performance and will not effect farm performance.
• The following databases should be stored in the same location as other databases.
• Configuration DB
• Size: Small
• ReportServerTempDB
• Size: Small
5. DB server health
1. Pre-grow all databases and logs
2. Limit content DB to 200 GB
3. Don't store more than 50 databases on a single physical instance of SQL server when use SQL server mirroring. 
4. Defragment and rebuild indices if possible
5. Performance Counters
1. Network Wait Queue: 0 or 1
2. Average Disk Queue Length(Latency): <5 ms
3. Memory used: <70%
4. Free disk space:>25%
5. Buffer cache hit ratio: >=90%

Boundaries and Limits of SharePoint 2013

- SharePoint 2013 allows 2,50,000 site collection per web application.

- Now SharePoint 2013 supports 300 Content Databases per web application.

- Content database size can be 200GB for normal usage and 4TB in all usage scenarios.

- One content database can support up to 60 million items including list, library, app etc.

- A site collection can have 2,50,000 sites or sub sites.

- A SharePoint 2013 list and library can contain 30 million of items or documents.

- A user can belongs to maximum of 5000 groups.

- A SharePoint 2013 site collection can contain 2 million users.

- A SharePoint site collection can contain 10000 SharePoint groups.

- A web application can contain 5 zones.

SharePoint COE

Please find @ http://dl.dropbox.com/u/89399945/SharePoint%20COE.docx

 

Kerberos VS NTLM Authentication

NTLM Authentication: Challenge- Response mechanism.

In the NTLM protocol, the client sends the user name to the server; the server generates and sends a challenge to the client; the client encrypts that challenge using the user’s password; and the client sends a response to the server. If it is a local user account, server validate user's response by looking into the Security Account Manager; if domain user account, server forward the response to domain controller for validating and retrieve group policy of the user account, then construct an access token and establish a session for the use.

Kerberos authentication: Trust-Third-Party Scheme.

Kerberos authentication provides a mechanism for mutual authentication between a client and a server on an open network. The three heads of Kerberos comprise the Key Distribution Centre (KDC), the client user and the server with the desired service to access. The KDC is installed as part of the domain controller and performs two service functions: the Authentication Service (AS) and the Ticket-Granting Service (TGS). When the client user log on to the network, it request a Ticket Grant Ticket (TGT) from the AS in the user's domain; then when client want to access the network resources, it presents the TGT, an authenticator and Server Principal Name (SPN) of the target server, contact the TGS in the service account domain to retrieve a session ticket for future communication w/ the network service, once the target server validate the authenticator, it create an access token for the client user.

SharePoint 2010 - Claims-based authentication

Claims-based authentication (CBA) is based on concept of identity that works with any identity system. An Identity is represented by a security token. The security token is presented to an application which user is trying to get access. CBA provides a trust-based system between applications and a centralized provider that issues the token. Application trusts the user because it trusts the provider. Therefore, in addition to providing single sign-on environment, this eliminates each application authenticate the user individually.

Also CBA answers two important questions:

1. How users will gain access to the enterprise`s applications regardless to their locations?
• Claim-based identity provides a common way for applications to acquire identity information from users, irrespective of whether they are inside the organization, in other organization or on the internet.
2. How different types of user information will be retrieved by the applications so that applications can accomplish their required functions?
• Identity information is stored in token. A token may contain one or more claims (identity information) about the user. We can think Claim as metadata of a user which stays with the token.

Implementing Claims-based identity generally requires using and understanding a set of core technologies:

1. Windows Identity Foundation (WIF):
• WIF is a set of application programming interfaces (API) that can be used to develop custom applications that uses claims and capable of creating federation with other systems.
2. Active Directory Federated Services 2.0:
• ADFS 2.0 is a security token service (STS) responsible of issuing tokens. ADFS provides both identity federation and single sign-on services.
3. Windows CardSpace 2.0:
• CardSpace stores users` digital identities, and represents the identity information in visual information Cards. Users can exchange these Cards between systems like a real business cards. 

SharePoint 2010 Authentication Options:

There are two options:

1. Classic Mode:
• This authentication refers to the Integrated Windows authentication model supported in SharePoint 2007. Classic mode does not utilize any of the claims infrastructure, and therefore none of the claims features are available.
2. Claims-Based:
• CBA supports 3 different authentication providers out of the box
• Windows Authentication: Includes all the same authentication that Classic Mode Authentication.
• Form Based Authentication: This method includes LDAP, database or custom membership and or role providers.
• SAML Token-Based Authentication: This includes ADFS 2.0, Windows Live ID, and third party providers.

 

SharePoint 2013 Search Architecture Overview

SharePoint 2013 Search Architecture overview along with end-to-end component interaction @ http://dl.dropbox.com/u/89399945/Search%20Component%20Overview.docx

SharePoint 2013 - Search Interface Improvements

The users can quickly identify useful results without opening each search result in ways such as the following:

• Users can rest the pointer over a search result to preview the document content in the hover panel to the right of the result.
• Users can quickly distinguish search results based on their type. For example, Microsoft Office documents display the application icon in front of the title of the search result. Newsfeed conversation results display the number of replies and the number of likes to the right. Site results list the top links that users often click on the site. People in results show the picture and the Lync availability status to the left.
• By default, certain types of related results are displayed in groups called result blocks. A result block contains a small subset of results that are related in a particular way. For example, results that are PowerPoint documents appear in a result block when the word "presentation" is one of the search terms. Administrators and site owners can also create result blocks to group other results. Like individual search results, you can promote result blocks or rank them with other results.

Search helps users quickly return to important sites and documents by remembering what they have previously searched and clicked. The results of previously searched and clicked items are displayed as query suggestions at the top of the results page.

In addition to the default manner in which search results are differentiated, site collection administrators and site owners can create and use result types to customize how results are displayed for important documents. A result type is a rule that identifies a type of result and a way to display it.

Site collection administrators and site owners can use display templates to customize the appearance of search results by using an HTML editor, and they can customize the behaviour of search results by using JavaScript. They can specify display templates that determine how result types appear.

eDiscovery and in-place holds in SharePoint Server 2013

Electronic discovery, or eDiscovery, is the process of identifying and delivering electronic information that can be used as evidence. SharePoint Server 2013 introduces the eDiscovery Centre, a new type of site collection that serves as a portal for managing eDiscovery cases. From this central location you can discover content in the SharePoint farm, in Exchange Server 2013, on file shares, and in other SharePoint farms. You can apply a hold to SharePoint and Exchange content that you discover. The hold ensures that a copy of the content is preserved, while still allowing users to work with their content. When you have identified the specific items that you will have to deliver, you can export them in an industry-standard format.

Managing an eDiscovery case

When you receive a new request for eDiscovery, you create an eDiscovery case in the eDiscovery Centre. An eDiscovery case is a collaboration site that you can use to organize information related to the eDiscovery request. From within an eDiscovery case, you can search for content, apply a hold to content, export content, and view the status of holds and exports that are associated with the case.

The two primary components of an eDiscovery case are eDiscovery sets and queries. Use an eDiscovery set to find content and apply a hold. Use a query to find content and export it.

eDiscovery process flow

To find and preserve content, create an eDiscovery set. Each eDiscovery set contains the following:

· Sources, which are locations to be searched. Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, and file shares can all be sources.

· A filter, which defines what you are searching for. A filter can include search terms, a date range, and an author’s name.

· An option to apply an in-place hold to the sources that contain content that matches the filter.

To find and export content, create a query. Each query contains the following:

· Query filters, which define what you are searching for. Query filters resemble a filter in an eDiscovery set, and can include search terms, a date range, and an author’s name. However, query filters in a query can also use stemming.

· Sources to be searched. Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, file shares, and eDiscovery sets can all be sources in a query.

When you run a query, you can see statistics about the items that were found, you can preview the results, and you can filter the results by message type (for Exchange results) or by file type (for SharePoint results). When you are finished, you can export the results of the query.

The content that you export by using a query is formatted according to the Electronic Data Reference Model (EDRM) specification so that it can be imported into a review tool. An export can include the following:

· Documents: Documents are exported from file shares. Documents and their versions can be exported from SharePoint 2013.

· Lists: If a list item is included in the query results, the whole list is exported as a comma-separated values (.csv) file.

· Pages: SharePoint pages, such as wiki pages or blogs, are exported as MIME HTML (.mht) files.

· Exchange objects: Items in an Exchange Server 2013 mailbox, such as tasks, calendar entries, contacts, email messages and attachments are exported as a.pst file. If Lync conversations are archived in Exchange, those can be discovered and exported, too.

· Crawl log errors.

· An XML manifest that provides an overview of the exported information.

How eDiscovery works in SharePoint products

The Search service application is a key component of the search system in SharePoint Server 2013. (For more information about service applications. You can associate an eDiscovery Centre with a Search service application. Any content that is indexed by the Search service application can be discovered from the eDiscovery Centre. If you configure the Search service application to crawl file shares, you can use the eDiscovery Centre to discover content on the file shares. If you configure the Search service application to crawl other websites - for example, a team site that was created by using Office SharePoint Server 2007 - you can use the eDiscovery Centre to discover content on the websites. For SharePoint 2013 farms, you can also put the content on hold. If you add Exchange Server 2013 to the Search service application as a result source, you can discover content within Exchange mailboxes from the eDiscovery Centre and put the mailboxes on hold. If you archive content from Lync in Exchange, you can also discover Lync content.

A eDiscovery Centre for Search service application.

As the Search system crawls content, it creates a search index. The search index stores data that is used to provide the results for search queries. The search index also stores information about the permissions that are required to access each piece of content. When a user performs a search, the search system uses the search index to identify the appropriate search results. Before displaying the results, the Search service application performs security trimming, by which the system compares the user’s permissions to the permissions that are required to access content that search results link to, and then “trims” the results to show only those results that the user has permissions to view.

In-place holds

SharePoint Server 2013 introduces the concept of an in-place hold. When you apply an in-place hold to a site, content in the site remains in its original location. Users can still work with the content, but a copy of the content as it was at the time that you initiated the hold is preserved. In-place holds differ from the style of hold that you could use in SharePoint Server 2010. In SharePoint Server 2010, users could not change or delete content when it was on hold. By using in-place holds in SharePoint Server 2013, users do not even have to know that their content is on hold.

An in-place hold is applied at the level of a site. When a hold is placed on a SharePoint site, a preservation hold library is created, if one does not already exist. Most users cannot view the preservation hold library. It is only visible to site collection administrators. The search crawler also has special permissions to crawl content in the preservation hold library.

If a user attempts to modify or delete content in a site that is on hold, SharePoint first checks whether the content has been modified since the hold was applied. If this is the first modification since the hold was applied, SharePoint copies the content to the preservation hold library, and then allows the user to modify or delete the original content. Note that any content in the site can be copied to the preservation hold library, even if the content does not match the filter of the eDiscovery set that initiated the hold.

The Information Management Retention timer job cleans up the preservation hold library. The timer job runs periodically and compares all content in the preservation hold library to the filters for the eDiscovery sets that put the site on hold. Unless content matches at least one of the filters, the timer job deletes the content from the preservation hold library.

Two important consequences of this process are as follows:

· The version of content that is current at the time that the hold was applied is the only version that is preserved. If the content is changed multiple times, intermediate versions of the content are not preserved.

· Storage space is used efficiently. Most content in a site does not change, and content that is not changed is not copied to the preservation hold library.

 Integration with Exchange

You can manage the discovery process for Exchange Server 2013 from a SharePoint eDiscovery Centre. You can do the following:

·         Add Exchange mailboxes as sources to either an eDiscovery set or a query.

·         Preview content that is discovered in an Exchange mailbox.

·         Apply a hold to an Exchange mailbox.

·         Export content that is discovered in an Exchange mailbox.

What is eDiscovery?

Electronic discovery, or eDiscovery, is the process of identifying and delivering electronic information that can be used as evidence.

Why would I use this scenario: For a legal case or an audit, you can create eDiscovery sets to identify the specific material to be located, and then preserve the sites and mailboxes in which content was discovered? The user can then create queries to further refine the content that is relevant, preview the content, and export the content. When the case is closed, all of the holds associated with the case are released.

Complete eDiscovery Process:

Ø  Preserve

§  Create Case

§  Apply Hold

Ø  Search

§  Query

§  De-duplicate

Ø  Review

§  Visualize

§  Read

Ø  Export

§  Save as PDF/TIFF

§  Print

SharePoint 2013 eDiscovery Pillars:

Ø  Centralize Management

§  Unified discovery across Exchange, SharePoint & Lync

§  Find it all in one place (Unified console)

§  Find more( In-Place discover the richest data)

§  Find it without impacting user(Give legal team discovery, leave IWs alone)

Ø  Reduce Cost

§  Reduce data volume with targeted search

§  Decrease need for 3rd party discovery and archives

§  Minimize storage requirements with in-place holds

Ø  Empower Legal Teams

§  Delegate discovery to legal team

§  Respond quickly and in full fidelity with real-time data access

§  Discovery without impacting users

SharePoint 2013's 13 Hot Features

·         Add content easily – drag and drop straight into any browser window.

·         Share content easily – share a document with someone by simply clicking the share link.

·         Access anywhere - access content through any browser or smartphone and even on iOS devices. You can sync content on to a device to and work on it offline.

·         My Task list - users can view all tasks on project sites and can easily edit them in the browser window. These are then rolled up into My Site to show users a unified list of tasks including personal tasks that have been added in SharePoint and in Exchange 2013.

·         Leverage experts – use community sites to ask questions to the experts and discuss items with peers. Users can also search for experts based on items they have been working on as well as information they have entered. Over time it will recommend people to follow based on activity and users can follow key documents and sites to keep up-to-date with any changes.

·         Powerful search –search for people, content, social conversations, videos and reports and drill down both via text values and visual refiners to easily find information to reuse. Users can preview documents including drilling down into the detail of the document in a preview pane. Users can also retrieve information easily based on historical search behaviour. 

·         Easily add functionality – the apps for SharePoint are an easy way to add functionality to a SharePoint site and can include applications running outside of SharePoint. This makes it a lot easier to configure a site for a specific purpose without technical knowledge.

·         Collaborate with others on content – work on content at the same time as other people. This is useful for items such as meetings notes via OneNote and putting together large documents or presentations where different users own part of the content. This makes it faster to combine content. 

·         Email integration – work with team based emails from the SharePoint site meaning all team based communication is easily accessible from a single location. These emails live in an Exchange mailbox so are also fully functional from within the mail client.

·         Site policies - site policies can be set to ensure that appropriate actions occur when a site owner marks a site as closed. This means that sites can be archived or other actions performed automatically when an owner no longer needs it.

·         Managed application store – an organisation can have an internal application store. This allows control and security over which applications can be installed by site owners and includes a user interface for requesting and managing licenses. These can be internal applications or applications that are purchased and/or run externally to the organisation.

·         Customisation options – the new application model allows for customised content to be exported outside of the SharePoint environment. This means that the SharePoint environment is easier to manage and maintain. It also means people can reuse existing application skills to present applications via the portal interface. Branding can also be added using a variety of applications rather than just SharePoint designer.

·         Cloud/Hybrid – Office 365 has the equivalent functionality in the majority of features areas when compared to an on-premise installation. This means for larger workloads, such as an Intranet, users can choose to run it in the cloud without loss of functionality or speed. When running on Office 365, Microsoft is responsible for management and maintenance of the service. Hybrid environments can also be created where items such as search can be designed to be self-managing to support reporting and rights management and provide a unified user experience across cloud and on-premise environments.