SPC223: Deploying SharePoint 2010 in Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud Architectures

The conference sessions has had a few ups-n-downs but there has been a couple that really stood out. Phil Wicklund’s session on Cloud deployment options for SharePoint however was excellent. I had prepared for the conference with a sheet of questions, most of which was targeted to this session, and all of them were covered off the bat in the actual session.

So… what is the Cloud?

First, Phil defined what “the Cloud” really is. Not a bad starter considering the old comments that “Cloud is just a fancy word for hosting”. Well, yes and no. The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines “The Cloud” as:

• On-demand self-service
• Broad network access
• Resource pooling
• Rapid elasticity
• Measured service

Or to put it simply: Virtualization + Automation = Cloud! Whether you are deploying in a private or public cloud, automation is key. The server farm should automatically grow and scale to the increasing (or decreasing) needs of your visitors.

Public? Private? A bit of both?

There are a few options on cloud deployment. In short:

• Public cloud = cloud not in your datacenter
• Private Cloud = your own cloud in your own datacenter
• Hybrid cloud = a little of both (keep dependencies on-premise)

A public cloud, such as Microsoft’s Office 365 solution, gives you a really low TCO, low requirements on maintenance, low time to market but also low levels of customization and control. Users can get up and running in minutes for a few dollars a month but larger projects such as BI solutions with connections to large legacy systems or data warehouses will probably best be deployed on-premise/private cloud. The hybrid scenario is a “little bit of both” where, for example, team sites, My sites and project sites are deployed on Office 365 while the public website and BI solutions are situated on the private cloud.

The Office 365 BPOS solution also comes in “dedicated”, a more advanced deployment option that allows you to have unlimited site collections, larger total content database sizes, better ADFS federation and AD two-way synchronization support as well as Partner Access modules. Also, dedicated supports running full trust code but this has to be approved by Microsoft – quite a lengthy process that you need to take into consideration for your project plan (think months).

Private Cloud Automation

In  a demo, we had a look at Systems Center Orchestrator, a product that allows you to run tasks and code snippets on events in the farm. For example, once a certain database size has been reached, we can run a script to create a new database and move the largest site collections to this new database. The options are almost endless here. The product is still in beta but I for one am going to take it for a spin.

On top of that, Systems Center monitoring is as always a key recommendation as it has pre-configured management packs for SharePoint that will alert you to potential issues in your SharePoint farm.

Trends

Phil guessed that 90% of all SharePoint deployments will be cloud based within a few years. I tend to agree with him, however this would be true for hybrid scenarios or small businesses until the public offerings allows you to run proper publishing websites, integrate BI and additional services such as PowerPivot.

In any case, it is a compelling thought where the bulk administration overhead is moved off premises to a secure and highly performing service offering. Just remember though – your public internet connection/WAN is going to take a beating so take time to use some of that saving from administration in upgrades to your corporate pipe.

Summary

A great session overall. Personally, I am going to read Phil’s new book on Cloud for SharePoint and if you happen to be at the conference, go by the O’Reilly booth for a 50% discount token.

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