Scaling out MOSS 2007 implementation using Windows network load balance clusters (NLB)

Scaling out an existing implementation or implementing high available performance clusters are always challenge, I have hammered my head many time with the requirement with different Microsoft product like BizTalk, SQL Server, MOSS 2007, SharePoint 2003 etc. From my experience I can say to scaling out MOSS 2007 implementation or implementing high performance cluster is comparatively easier then other MicroSoft products. Well if we talk about performance, so I would say it's majorly depend on two things, back end SQL Server is the first and WFE (Web Front-End) is the second. There are some other stuff which are also important for achieving high performance and availability in implementation but here I would like to mainly focus about WFE and MOSS 2007 Farm implementation on Windows network load balance (NLB) cluster in this post.

To demonstrate, I have used two Windows Server 2003 on single NLB cluster. I would also like to discuss some other windows features which are very helpful in such implementation like network connectivity and physical connections, IIS, NLB manager tool.

• Network connectivity and physical network design is very important to achieve best of it, network between servers should be very fast and high available and network design should have minimum possible latency between two servers. 
  
  
• To get best out of IIS 6.0, we can implement compression stream, it also improve performance to some extend.
  
  
• If the physical servers haven't balanced configuration then I would prefer to configure priority and also set distribution bandwidth according to amount of performance excellence between them by using NLB manager. If WFE servers across your farms are not running smiler services or not having same configuration then users or requests can experience imbalance depend on the server which is serving them.
  

NLB Manager

Host Properties

You can see above how to configure load distribution between servers on specific ports if requires.

Well, now we are all set to implement MOSS 2007 in Windows Server 2003 NLB environment.

I have installed Office Server 2007 on both node and selected all component to install, here it's up to need, weather you are planning to dedicate the server for WFE or not (Which will be the requirement in real world scenarios).

That's it, what am I read "That's it"!!!, yes you are right, you just need to install on NLB nodes, another important thing is load balanced URL, I have already made an entry into DNS server with NLB domain and portal URL with NLB virtual IP address, so when I create portal (SharePoint application), it can resolve header and translate name address to virtual IP.

DNS Manager

Now there could be two questions, if this is fresh installation then how to create SharePoint application on load balance or if it's scale out installation then how to extend the existing application. Not a big deal, below are the answers.

How to create new SharePoint application on NLB node?

1. Go to create application page using Application Management in Central Administration Site.

2. Configure the application as standard new SharePoint application. But make sure you are providing the DNS entry we have made for load balanced URL (which translate the virtual NLB cluster IP).

3. After creating application you can notice all load balanced IIS servers are been populated with new SharePoint application. All IIS node servers now have physical website on separate location and respective entry in IIS website.

Bingo!!!!, we are done, now you are on load balance application, let me access the application from different client machine and let's check IIS logs for the websites that which servers are serving our requests.

WIN 1 server's log:

WIN 2 server's log:

You can see above logs' snapshots and see randomly both servers are serving our HTTP GET/POST requests.

We are ON SPOT!! Again BINGO!!

Now the second question, How to extend existing SharePoint application on scaled out NLB Mode?

A very simple answer for that question, you can extend the existing SharePoint application by extending web application to another IIS application from Application Management in Central Administration portal. Make sure you use load balanced URL for the same as we have used in above example.

Hope you like this article, please give your feedback to nilayparikh@gmail.com

Install SQL Server in Windows Cluster environment as failover cluster.

Last few weeks working on building custom cluster environments and custom applications which can support cluster. So took that chance to take some snapshots of SQL Server cluster installation. As other MicroSoft product, SQL Server Cluster installation is very much easy and simple. Let's have a look at below procedures need to follow while installing SQL Server in Windows Cluster Environment. I setup my windows cluster environment from use of Virtual Server 2005 and build two Windows environments and took them both in cluster. Windows cluster configuration is not in the scope of the this article. I will surely produce the article for Windows Cluster too. But for this article I would like to focus on SQL Server 2005 Cluster environment.

The same standard SQL Server installer allows you to set up the SQL Cluster, but if your host OS is Windows Cluster then it will enable few options while installing service for enabling failover cluster for SQL Server Database Engine and Analysis service, no other service support clustering. So let's see below steps to install Database Engine as failover cluster.

1. Follow the standard SQL Server Installation steps but at the screen while you are selecting components to install or upgrade you will notice one check box option labeling "Create a SQL Server failover cluster" for SQL Server Database Service and Analysis Service only, as these both service only support failover clustering and cluster implementation. Please have a look to the below screen, you must check the SQL Server failover cluster option to continue installation or upgrade in cluster mode.

2. If you haven't checked box for cluster installation or upgrading then it following screen will be standard installation installation wizard screen, else you will see the below screen in order to setup the cluster. Every cluster need the virtual server name, that virtual name behave mostly like named instance, you can provide the virtual server name while setting up connection strings to connect databases or while managing cluster through management studio. Please make sure few important checks before naming the SQL Cluster, to avoid conflicts in name and network resolution please provide unique network object name (like computer name, host names etc...). Refer below screen.

3. The next wizard screen is very important to configure the cluster server's virtualization configuration. The Virtual Server Configuration screen will allow you to setup virtual load balance IPs for the networks (These networks are only cluster virtual network which generally we configure while setting up Windows cluster only). You can setup load balance virtual IP for those networks, I will surely suggest you to create public and private virtual IP separately and avoid heartbeat network channel for the cluster for the performance benefits. Refer the below two screen.

4. The next screen will allow you to add the resource to respective manageable cluster group, in my setup I have just created one cluster group so there is not much choice for me to select :-) but it's a really good practice to manage proper cluster group for better and clean administration. Another important input the screen show is data file's location, it will enumerates the physical drives you have added as the resources in cluster. Ideally the drive should be accessible and shared among all cluster servers and should have valid and proper permissions for required operations. Ideally it should be SAN or SCSI device. Also would advice to cross check after installation that physical drive resource has been added to dependencies in SQL Server resource.

5. The next screen will be for configuring Cluster Node. It will allow you to select cluster nodes. It was my first cluster node installation so just displaying single node in list. Other node you can notice under the label "required node".

6. BINGO.... You are back to main land, and standard installation starts, the following steps would be smiler then regular non cluster installation.

SQL Cluster installation is very simple to install and also to manage. I hope the article helps you to install it first time on your machine. Will try to come up with new articles on clusters and installation. I recently setup my R&D environments in clusters and enjoying to working on it. Next installation will be MOSS 2007 on cluster, BizTalk 2006 R2 installation. Will come up with those articles soon.

Hope you like this article, please give your feedback to nilayparikh@gmail.com

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 - A nice point to kick-off IT Infrastructure planning and design for MOSS 2007

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 - A nice point to kick-off IT Infrastructure planning and design for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).

Recently, I have been trying and exploring number of best practices to design and plan IT Infrastructure especially for BizTalk and SharePoint Portal Server implementation. In my exploration drive I come across a very nice tool called System Center Capacity Planner 2007. Here in the post I would like to focus just on MOSS 2007.

The tool allows you to plan hardware, servers and service across organization, different location, etc. There nice demo and help already available inside tool itself so would not like to paste here but there are some snapshot, I would like to post along with the blog post.

You can download the tool from below link. http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=DBEE0227-D4F7-48F8-85F0-E71493B2FD87&displaylang=en

The tool also provides nice wizard to start planning. Have a look to some below snapshots for designs and reports.

1. Global Topology View

I tried to build organization's global topology. Where server farm is located in one continental and that is connected to various offices, branches across the glob. To evaluate such need for implementation, hardware design, scale out processes for services, service and load balance distributions are tricky and time consuming. System Center Planner 2007 perfect tool for such analysis and design. It simulate load and provide stats which could be very helpful for such design and planning.

2. Site Topology View.

3. Server Role Configuration, to design scale out topology it's very important. Also help while making decision to buy new hardware and scale up/out planning.

4. User Profiles which are role based and component base. Allows tool to predict more accurately.

5. Simulation Report.

Tool generate rich statistics in report, where you can estimate with such number of users and dependent on their role, latency in network what will be longest transactions, I/O utilization, Highest CPU Utilization, Bottleneck analysis, Highest storage space utilization, connectivity utilization, etc. It also generate different stats for all servers, clients, SANs, WANs and Thresholds.

Please send your views and feedback at nilayparikh@gmail.com

Thanks.

Setup and Customization of an Axapta Enterprise Portal.

Yesterday, I tried to collect some of EX-Project experiences and skill in Microsoft Dynamics, I have worked few months ago to setup and Enterprise portal and then to customization of the same portal. At that time it was really fresh and new experience for me particularly with limited help on 4.o version. It was self learning experience and that's why I thought to drive the same experience but with latest version of SharePoint (MOSS 2007). I hope it will be a good start or reading for any new comer in such domain.

Steps need to perform as pre-requisites for setting up Enterprise Portal.
1. Have a look to below prerequisites before you start setup process.

1.1 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa493471.aspx, visit the link to see setup guide of MS Dynamics Ax 4.0

1.2 Verify the components installed, and make sure Enterprise portal and supportive components are available to use.

1.3 Make sure other supportive server implementation have all services packs and updates in place if applicable.

1.4 For using reporting services with EP you must to ensure reporting services are well configured and ad-hoc reports also have proper configuration.

1.5 Also it is advice able to uninstall Internet Explorer Enhance Security Configuration.

2. Create Business Connector Proxy account in DC, make sure you create an account with flags like password not expire and to keep more security measures for proxy account you can also flag no interactive rights. You must give following groups right in order to make sure the account works for Business Connector.
IIS_WPG
WSS_WPG
Also it needs any other custom groups if you have plan to access such information falling under those groups inside EP.

3. SharePoint portal or WSS site should have .NET 2.o configuration in IIS.

4. Proxy account which we created for Business connector should have login access of SQL Server as well as it should have dbcreator server role.

5. Configure SharePoint site as integrated windows authentication, you can change the configuration by routing to Application Management -> Application Security -> Authentication Providers. It will list all security configuration, by default it will display 'default' label, you can select active configuration and change to Integrated Windows Authentication with NTLM (EP Portal don't support Kerberos delegation method).

6. Select the application pool in IIS on which EP portal is going to run, check the properties and then Identity tab, change credential to proxy account which we created for business connector. Always rebounce the IIS after any change in contexts by using iisreset /noforce.

7. Open the web.config file of SharePoint file and make sure trust level is WSS_Medium if not then change it to WSS_Medium, you can have custom level of security configuration on need and requirement. It is also advisable to give executionTimeout configuration for 6000 ms for httpRuntime calls.

8. Add below webparts into safecontrol so SharePoint site can use them without any obstructed. IF you are using any custom webparts please make sure they are also listed in safecontrol tags. Recycle the IIS Process after web.config update by using iisreset /noforce command.

Steps for deploy Enterprise Portal.
1. Drive to Enterprise portal configuration wizard (Administration > Setup > Internet > Enterprise Portal > Configuration Wizard), click on wizard and then click on Next button.

2. Configure user groups and map them to Enterprise portal groups. Make sure the customized groups are correctly mapped into Enterprise portal.

3. on next screen you need to give credentials for Business Connector, you can supply proxy user which we have created for Business Connector.

4. Next screen will ask you to map documents type to document categories in Enterprise portal.

5. On fifth screen you need to configure module documents categories.

6. Next wizard form will ask you to configure document movement, number of days that document need to include in the list of latest documents etc.

7. Configure transaction summaries.

8. By clicking on Next Wizard you will be diverted to Enterprise portal deployments wizard if it is already been deployed and you will be diverted to Manage Enterprise Portal Deployment forum (GO to step 11 else follow order). Check below screen to refer deployment wizard.



9. Next screen will ask you to mentioned IIS virtual directory and SSP site to deploy metadata and EP components. Here you can select option for deployment like if you want to use only webparts then you can select webpart deployment that will enable site to used deployed webpart. By selecting full deployment you will get site templates which will be useful to create site collections under Enterprise portal and pre-generated pages for all system objects. Refer below screen.



10. By click on the last page of the wizard you can finish the deployment as well it will give you two option if you want to restart IIS server after deployment and SharePoint new site wizard (SharePoint admin site).



11. Below you can see Site collection form to create and configure new site. Check at the template section where you can see under the custom template tab that list shows Enterprise portal templates which we can use to create portals.



12. Cross your figures and it everything went well in previous steps then you will find the below screen as a success. :-)



13. If the user you are accessing is not registered or mapped under the Axapta then you will see below message.



14. You can setup the relationship between web user and Axapta user by user relationship form (Administration -> Setup -> User relations). Map the user to correct Axapta user.



15. You can also configure site URL to internal website group.



16. Bingo... Now it's done... You have now setup the site and portal.



This article mentioned to create website portal in general scenario you might need to change or perform more steps in order to deploy enterprise portal in working order in different scenarios and needs.

The default deployment will give you all pre developed web solution and interactive pages inside portal. Obliviously every organization needs customization in portal in order to streamline the Axapta main installation customization to streamline portal and native implementation. It is very important to understand Ax, X++, AOT, AOS and development interfaces inside Axapta client to make that customization possible. Main components need to incorporate for streamlining such customization are changes in Data dictionary, functional default processes and data ownership and security. Changes and implementation in native Ax rollout are not automatically going to enterprise portal. You must ensure the same customizations, changes are been implemented in web solution and components and they both went live on the same point of time otherwise it could create complications and integrity issues with present and new data. As within this article I am not covering such practices but given high level idea before any customization with portal.

Customization of Enterprise portal in Axapta.
1. Below you can see the AOT (Application Object Tree), AOT displays entire object model of Axapta like classes, objects, forms, website (web forms, weblets, menus, urls etc...). You can directly add, update and delete that object and start customizing the product from AOT only. But it is not advisable, it's always advisable to take backup (export *.aox) of those target models and object which we are planning to change. Then using projects window you can add new forms and customization which will give you better control over changes and customization.







2. After customization you can compile project or root element of AOT Tree (if doing direct level customization), refer above image which shows in bottom pane about compilation results.

3. After compilation, changes should deploy through manage deployment form (Administration -> Setup -> Internet -> Enterprise Portal -> Manage deployment). IT will give you the control about which associated and register site should receive the recent updates. Unfortunately there is no such versioning and source control available for such changes and deployment, so always it's good practice to export customizations and take the backup and archive those export files (*.xoa). By clicking update button on the screen it will deploy the changes on the sleeted servers and will show deployment summary in new window as seen in below screen.



4. After deployment you can find such customization (new menus, urls, links, and form etc objects) in the list properties of different Enterprise portal’s webparts.



Here in the article, I haven't gone deep inside about the customization. Will defiantly try to come-up with new detail article about the customization of the Enterprise portal.

Hope my article helps you in any manner to understand the process, please share your views and send your feedback to nilayparikh@gmail.com

Microsoft Dynamics Ax 4.0 and Integration Methods (Part-1)

Microsoft Dynamics Ax 4.0 and Integration Methods (Part-1 WebServices -
Application Integration Framework, AIF)


My Dynamics Discovery :-) (nice term) reached to bank of the river "AXAPTA",
few days ago ... Well I have worked for Axapta in a very small project but
long time ago and with previous version too. So it's my turn to refresh and
edge my knowledge on technology Ax. Blogging is my hobby and I can stop my
self to write the first post of the series.

These days if something is making me exciting is Microsoft Dynamics and bet
this is the most hottiee topic these days among Microsoft Professionals. Let's come to the technical subject. Axapta support many integration methodologies to get Integrated across the platforms, like BizTalk Adapter (Axapta), WebServices, X++ AOS Classes and .NET / WCF. Here in this part of article I am focusing on AIF WebServices and possible innovation, I humbly invite you to share your views and ideas on this article.

AIF already has very strong and competitive AIF infrastructure to develop and
config functional WebServices which has direct interaction at AOS Level
(Application Logic). To create such AIF WebServices you need can refer below
steps. In step of creating WebService integration point (Action) you must have at least one WebSite configuration to create respective webserice and supportive files. That website should have configured with Windows integrated authentication as it supported by default in web.config, later you can change and reconfigure it.

1. Configuration of WebSite.


2. Adding WebServices inside Actions.


By clicking on generate button, Axapta will populate all webservices, reference assemblies in Bin folder as well as supportive schema documents in web share folder. Axapta only generate 'Microsoft.Dynamics.IntegrationFramework.WebService.dll' assembly in Bin folder and you need to place dependencies like 'Microsoft.Dynamics.IntegrationFramework.WebService.Process.dll' and localization resource assemblies in respective folder of the ISO Standard name in Bin folder. If you are configuring it in default location it will be present there but for another location you need to configure it manually.

3. Review the Web.Config file.


4. Generated files.


5. WebService view.


6. WebService Method view.


Till here the article demonstrate to configure AIF WebServices with default processes. Axapta also support advance customization and on top logic over Axd classes. Here for an example I am going to explore the customization in logic for AxdSalesOrder class. As well as any new Axd sys level class can provide action point and ability to generate such webservices to integrate data between systems. Please have a look to below steps to do advance customization in AIF actions.

7. Code help explorer.


Code help explorer can help and guide you about the classes and diffrent methods they support, by using it you can find out meta information for every action class and their methods as well as cross references.

8. Class tree to explore AxdSalesOrder Class.


9. Edit and customize code logic inside AxdSalesOrder.


You can see above the all implemented logic behind AxdSalesOrder for action methods. You can customize it as per the requirement.

In further to discuss about the AIF WebServices, they are inbound as well as outbound data services, these days when service orientation is on demand and proving it self as very cost efficient, open end and system friendly in such age AIF is big step towards make implementation and organization more service oriented. As WSE* standards are fully compatible with across the table and technologies as well as if I focused on Microsoft only then newly introduce technologies like WCF and WF could be also do well in such domain with Workflow processing and open end secure communication with Axapta. Defiantly web site integration will be a great advantage of the method too. I welcome your comment and views on the thoughts.

Hope you like my article and please give your feedback to nilayparikh@gmail.com

Call outs (Plug-in)/CRM Adapter Vs Ajax Calls for Microsoft CRM integration

Recently, I have been undergone with experimental investigation during my CRM exploration drive with CRM 4.0. To design event driven data receive from Microsoft CRM, we can use some of in-house functionalities like Workflow, Callouts (Plug-in for 4.0 Version) and BizTalk (CRM Adapter/SOAP Adapter - CRM Web Services) but with these all methodology we are creating extra overhead on CRM Server only. I trial with my laptop and VS 2008 to create such scenario and compare results between different implementation methodologies and I found very interesting results.

My System Configuration is Turion x2 64 1.9 GHz with 4 GB RAM, this system I have used for the excremental drive. I have dedicated virtual PC to CRM and bombard through VS 2008 test agents and generate real-time scenario of 10 active users which I can say equivalent to standard production servers configuration and 100 active users for any SMB organization.

Workflows / Plug-in(s) & Callout(s):

I found some interesting results, first let me go through workflow options, workflows are basically design over the land of Windows Workflow foundation and they follow the same process like custom plug-in(s). I tried to integrate different entities and their data using event driven BizTalk SOAP calls. Workflows have very high latency (more then 4 minutes approx) and also they are very resource consuming, I found my processor was used more then average 65% and some time it picked 100 % utilization. It's oblivious that workflow will be slower as CRM itself takes 30-60 sec to invoke workflow after an event as well as workflows have been called by in process .net assembly (similar like call out assembly) so it would be slower and resource consuming option.
Advantages:
- More control over the Integration.
- Stronger security.
- Collaboration integration.
- Custom composite messages and control over message build
- Synchronized and asynchronized approach, gives flexibility.
Disadvantages:
- Higher latency.
- Resource consuming.
- Slow

CRM Adapter:

CRM adapter is general practice for integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM to external world. It is quite easy and quicker to building solutions. It allows you to fetch all entities in the standard schema format as they have in Microsoft CRM. Let's back to performance, as it relay on different mechanism then workflows and callouts, it talk with SOAP services (Web Services) in CRM so it's bit quicker the previous option but it also generate process overhead on CRM server/databases to fetch data. The same amount of resource utilization i observed for CRM adapter.
Advantages:
- Easy to design and develop schemas and messages.
- Quick development.
- Faster then workflow(s) and plug-in/(s)callout(s).
Disadvantages:
- No control over message structure.
- Only support asynchronize method.
- Resource consuming.

Ajax Calls (Java Script calls):

'AJAX' is very fancy term but believe me it has same qualities inside implementation. Asynchronized JavaScript and XML (AJAX) generally used into web development but it have very large scope of implementation across various scenarios like such client face integration to Servers. I would like to elaborate such functionalities I have implemented in past and the result with this excremental drive. Supremely, it works really well with such load and handling such great traffic of requests without any failures and heavy latency.


img. 1. AJAX WS* Call

In above code you can write the synchronize post method as well as asynchronize post method, as in my organization we are using only IE for CRM client such Microsoft active x object works well with it.
Advantages:
- Very quick as it been called by client side code.
- No overhead for integration on CRM server.
- No read call back to database and CRM Server (unless you require to fatch GUID PK, still they are manageable with advance coding in java script)
- Full control over the message and schema, you can build custom schemas and message as per organization need.
- Full control over process, it support synchronize and asynchronize methods.
- Easily we can develop such bespoke services to plug into existing infrastructure.
- BizTalk and other Integration tools can easily connect without any third party components or services as WS* are standards.
Disadvantages:
- Security, need to provide enhanced security features, if it's called and manage by internal domain then it would be not issue.

Personally, I believe all methods and technologies have advantages and disadvantages; it's up to us what we select as best for the scenario.

Hope you like this article, please give your feedback to nilayparikh@gmail.com

Experience on SSIS and SAP, inspired after viewing some presentation

Experience on SSIS and SAP, inspired after viewing some presentation.

I inspired for the article from one article posted on MSDN blog about SAP and SSIS. It's really cool stuff from Matt Masson in PowerPoint presentation.

Please have a look into the below presentation by Matt Masson. it's really great to know about SAP and SSIS!

BizTalk Adapter Pack (SAP) installation

BizTalk Adapter Pack (SAP) SSIS integration

BizTalk Adapter Pack (SAP) SSIS integration (Advanced)


Below I am just sharing my experience with SSIS and SAP BW/APO.

I have worked in one of project doing integration between SAP BW/APO modules to other ERPs (like JDE, PeopleSoft etc). For that we used to workout everything by building IDocs inside a SSIS Script Component. It's very time consuming but right now I don't think rather then BizTalk there is any simple option available to build and submit IDocs. I Used to build all require segments like Control, Header and Data inside script task and then composing message through Flat File Connection Manager to build IDoc.

As of my best knowledge currently no tool available in market which can give full functionality to play around IDocs inside SSIS (may be I am wrong, you need to search extensive what such features you are looking for and what are available). But the best option I have implemented almost one year ago in my first SSIS implementation was creating IDocs programmatically inside SSIS. Obviously, I need to implement my logic inside script activity and flat flie connection manager, it make system bit slow but still configurable and acceptable. It is time consuming for initial period to build logic but I think once we build it, it's best option to stick on your requirement with few changes in your code to build new structured IDoc.

Really hoping from Microsoft to have SAP Connection Manager if anything near to automation/parser and connection manager it will be adding great value to product and will be great help for such people don't want to connect to SAP DB directly and want to push data by safer IDoc option.

At end really want to appreciate the efforts from Matt for such presentation.

Thanks for reading my views and please contact me for your feedback or suggestion on nilayparikh@gmail.com.