Azaleos Managed SharePoint Services Sizing Calculator

In order to assist customers in the process of planning, designing, building and configuring the system & storage layout for their SharePoint 2010 farm and assimilating it into existing infrastructure, Azaleos has created a calculator that helps to identify all of the current and future usage patterns for SharePoint. The biggest mistake IT teams and infrastructure people make is to underestimate the implications of the infrastructure investment required to create a robust SharePoint system. Perhaps the two most frequent “errors” occur around capacity planning and the impact on existing infrastructure. The new calculator (which also works for, but is not optimized for, SharePoint 2007) focuses on driving the server and storage requirements (I/O performance and capacity) as well as the optimal LUN layout for an organization based on a set of input factors.

Why and How
In the process of building the calculator, the Azaleos team of SharePoint experts have drawn on their vast SharePoint experience and lab testing/piloting cycles with both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010, incorporated all the recommendations outlined in the myriad of Microsoft TechNet articles found here and consulted with a number of different additional industry experts on SharePoint. The result is a true one-of-a-kind calculator which is optimized for all hardware and storage platforms and which is not even available from Microsoft!

The calculator works by having the customer step through an initial customer input page of 25 questions relating to their current and/or proposed usage plans for SharePoint. The input requested ranges from number of users, SharePoint version, planned MySite usage, deployment type, user quotas, use of Search, etc. The calculator then uses these answers to extrapolate and model n year(s) growth, sizing and capacity frameworks for Content, Search, MySites, Foundation Services, Standard Server, Enterprise Server and Administration.

Calculator Highlights
• Ability to model and compare different loads and configurations
• Includes option to use a set of “default” variable estimates based on Azaleos conservative/best practice estimates
• Addresses performance and capacity planning for the storage subsystem and models both storage and IOPS summaries across the farm
• Allows rapid modeling of the effects of workload, quota and versioning changes

Getting Started
Azaleos has found that over 95% of the new customers we work with (no matter if they are current or brand new SharePoint users) have a lot of uncertainty and questions as to how they plan to use and evolve their SP system. This, coupled with a lack of detailed SharePoint system knowledge, makes it hard for them to think through all of the variables required to correctly size SharePoint capacity. Thus, the process of working with Azaleos to fill out and compile the calculator emerges as a great forcing function to help the customer think through how they plan to use the SharePoint environment.

The Azaleos tool is all about insuring “no surprise.” By investing up front to correctly model the SharePoint farm for both today and tomorrow, customers can be certain that they are designing a robust collaboration and document management system that will deliver high availability and high speed access whether used as an internet, intranet and/or extranet system.

Organizations looking to get access to the SharePoint Calculator Tool should follow this link for more information about the Azaleos SharePoint HealthCheck offering. At present, the SharePoint Calculator is only available as part of a SharePoint Healthcheck or SharePoint Assessment engagements. If you fill in the customer information form on the SharePoint Healthcheck page, an Azaleos representative will contact you shortly to answer your questions.

For more about key SharePoint issues and trends you should consider, check out The Growing Importance of Microsoft SharePoint whitepaper. Or, find out more about our Managed SharePoint Services.

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