BPCUK: Preparing for SharePoint 2010 and Real World Experiences with Paul Grimley
Published 04/13 courtesy of Bamboo Solutions Community
At the European SharePoint Best Practices Conference this morning, Paul Grimley presented a session on preparing for a SharePoint 2010 deployment. Paul began by outlining the challenges and considerations that are particular to a "Greenfield" (fresh) installation versus an upgrade from an earlier version of SharePoint, as "they've both got their own challenges."
Paul discussed the challenges and considerations for the Greenfield approach as being: Identifying why has SharePoint been chosen? ("Cost? There's good value for money at SharePoint."); What is its purpose? ("We've got SharePoint ... make it work." "There needs to be a partnership between the business and IT."); What's currently in place?; What will happen to current content? ("Content migration is a massive part that gets overlooked.").
Challenges and considerations that are specific to the upgrade route include: Why upgrade? ("More powerful tools, things are easier, less time to develop."; Health check current system ("Don't forget IA health check."); Righting the wrongs of the past ("Documentation of customizations - make sure you capture them"; Strategy (You need a "clear view of what everyone's trying to do."); Custom code ("How in-depth is it? Will you be able to upgrade it?"); If you're on SPS 2003, what are the options? ("Can't upgrade directly to 2010," but third-party providers, including Quest, provide the ability to upgrade from 2003); What are the MOSS 2007 options? (upgrading directly is possible, but there may be ramifications such as the requirement for x64); Hardware ("These things need to be thrashed out early on and looked into."); URLs (Planning for access to both the old and the new URLs during the transition and leading up to "go live.").
Requirements: "Ideally, get them all up front, but if you can at least get most of them, that really helps successful projects." "Make sure you capture and circulate requirements" via documentation. "Understand what's driving SharePoint in the organization." "I recommend a steering board in the organization to have focus" on the direction. Finally, you "Need to prioritize requirements to manage properly."
Governance/planning: "As early as you can in the project, if you haven't got a governance plan, you need to write one." This goes for "IA as well ... if we don't have a good structured IA, [consultants] can't advise."
Project approach: Ways to run the project include: the waterfall method ("OK" if all requirements are in place at the beginning); agile ("More flexible" but there are potential downfalls from a budget perspective; or an iterative approach (combination of the two, structured in the early stages and less so once you get to the software dev phase). Remember: "Don't try and deliver it all at once."
Personnel: Who do you need? ("Project manager, technical lead, solutions architect, technical specialist, developer (possibly multiple), graphics and branding / designer, [and a] trainer ... [often you will] see a lot of these roles combined due to budgets." In the real world, "Organizations struggle with training individuals to support SharePoint as a platform." Regarding external consultancy, "If you're looking to bring contractors in-house, you need to be on top of them ... try and understand what they know" because there are lots of good ones, but also lots of bad ones out there.
Hardware: Should we virtualize? "Absolutely if you can, because there's a lot of power in a virtualized solution." Virtualize SQL? "It depends" because it could slow SharePoint down, "especially if you're going to have heavy writes." Regarding the x64 hardware requirement, one option is that you can add 64 alongside existing 32-bit server in your farm, and decommission the 32 bits later. Who do you give access to? It "Comes back to governance... understand the access requirements that are needed." Don't forget capacity planning, about which there's lots of information on TechNet. "Environments are becoming much more complex [but] the more you have, the smoother your customization, code, and testing will be when planning SharePoint projects." Regarding load-balancing, "If you can offload the load-balancing [via hardware], you're freeing up SharePoint to perform its core tasks."
Software: Regarding licensing, "You need to plan for and understand how many licenses [and] servers you'll need in your organization." "Yes, you should have a SharePoint antivirus product as well." Paul recommends "having some kind of monitoring system setup." Regarding desktop version, there are "advantages with Windows 7." Plan for browser support: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263526.aspx. Regarding the Office version you're running, "The later the better, obviously ... as with browsers, if they're older versions they won't be as rich in functionality." Prepare AD / User Profile permissions ("Plan for tapping into AD [and] let the security guys know.").
PowerShell: In SharePoint 2010, "One of the improvements is that you can save time using PowerShell to deliver a requirement." "If you're a technical person, definitely learn it." Also, AutoSPinstaller "is a fantastic CodePlex utility that allows you to create SharePoint farms."
Ongoing support: Regarding training, "Put a training plan together - it will help users. Be sure to "Involve the support team as well." For handover, "Make sure you do a proper handover of the system" particularly with regard to support. "SharePoint never stays still, [so] capture any changes you make," especially for disaster recovery purposes. Exams and certifications are "Good to have, good to benchmark, but [they] can't teach real world experiences."
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