Five SharePoint Storage Performance Killers and How to Fix Them

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Quest Software, Inc. QSFT

Rapid user adoption is positive for any organization leveraging SharePoint for content collaboration and version control. As user adoption increases, however, so does the amount of data that must be stored in SharePoint. Content overload can wreak havoc on SharePoint infrastructure, and can become a leading cause of poor performance – not to mention the corresponding management headaches. For example, as the amount of content steadily increases, so does the need to scale database capacity and SQL Server processing power to ensure that performance matches user demand. When this happens, organizations face a dilemma: cope with poor SharePoint performance, or bite the bullet and buy additional SQL storage space and computing power to catch up with demand. Luckily, there is a third alternative.

Quest Software, a leading provider of SharePoint tools for the enterprise, has identified five common storage performance killers in SharePoint that organizations fall victim to, and suggests an easy, cost-effective alternative for resolving SharePoint content overload – data externalization.

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Five Performance Killers in SharePoint Storage:

1. Unstructured Data Takeover – Most SharePoint content is saved in SQL Server as unstructured data, otherwise known as BLOBs (Binary Large Objects). It takes extra processing power and time to read data from these files, and yet, they contribute to nearly 95 percent of storage overhead in SharePoint content databases.¹ Simply put, unstructured data is taking over SQL Server space.
2. An Avalanche of Large Media – SharePoint is not optimized to house large media files such as videos, images and PowerPoint presentations. As more of this content is stored in SharePoint, it amplifies the likelihood that users will experience browser timeout, slow web server performance, and upload and recall failures.
3. Old and Unused Files Hogging Valuable SQL Storage – It's not uncommon for the majority of SharePoint content to go completely unused for long periods of time. Many organizations waste space by applying the same storage treatment for old, unused data as they do for new, active content.
4. Not Building to Scale – As SharePoint content grows, its supporting hardware can become under powered if growth rates were not accurately forecasted from the start. Organizations unable to invest in new hardware need to find alternatives that enable them to adhere to best practices and keep SharePoint performance optimal.
5. Not Leveraging Microsoft's Data Externalization Features – Many organizations have not yet explored Microsoft's recommended externalization capabilities, Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) and External BLOB Storage (EBS), and, therefore, are missing out on significant storage and related performance benefits.

Leveraging Data Externalization to Improve Performance, Reduce Costs

• By taking advantage of Microsoft's data externalization features, SharePoint administrators are able to move large, old, and unused data from a SQL Server content database to secondary, less expensive repositories, all while keeping the data accessible to end users via SharePoint.
• Quest will soon release the next version of Storage Maximizer for SharePoint, a solution that fully supports both RBS and EBS data externalization. Storage Maximizer enables administrators to optimize SharePoint storage to meet the performance requirements of end users.

Supporting Quote:

• Bill Evans, vice president and general manager, SharePoint business, Quest Software
  “Many organizations today aren't taking advantage of data externalization capabilities provided by Microsoft, and supported by third party vendors like Quest. A good number of end-user performance complaints are directly related to storage, which is why we feel it's important to educate the market on the value of these capabilities, and offer guidance on how tiered storage can economically help fix those issues.”

Supporting Resources:

• Quest Software, Inc.: http://www.quest.com/
• “Addressing the Top 3 Headaches of Storing SharePoint Data in SQL Server” webcast: http://www.quest.com/webcast/addressing-the-top-3-headaches-of-storing-sharepoint-data-in-sql-serve816463.aspx
• “The Top Five Performance Killers in SharePoint Storage” Tech Brief: http://www.quest.com/PRTopicalAdvisorySharePointTechBrief03012012
• Quest SharePoint tools: http://www.quest.com/sharepoint/
• Storage Maximizer for SharePoint: http://www.quest.com/storage-maximizer-for-sharepoint/
• More Quest news: http://www.quest.com/newsroom/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/quest
• Facebook: http://www.quest.com/facebook
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
• Quest TV: http://www.quest.com/tv/

About Quest:

Established in 1987, Quest Software QSFT provides simple and innovative IT management solutions that enable more than 100,000 global customers to save time and money across physical and virtual environments. Quest products solve complex IT challenges ranging from database management, data protection, identity and access management, monitoring, user workspace management to Windows management.

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¹ MSDN, “Improving SharePoint with SQL Server 2008,” August 19, 2008