What steps do you take to increase performance of a Sharepoint site?

Question

Sharepoint isn't the speediest of server applications, and I've read about a few tips to speed it up. What steps do you think are necessary to increase performance so it can be used to host a high traffic site?

Answer 1

At the end of the day SharePoint is just a complicated web site with all the standard components.

In order to optimize performance you need to analyze each component and determine which one is a problem, and then adjust it accordingly.

We're in the process of implementing a 1000 concurrent user sharepoint website, which may or may not be large, however some steps we are taking are:

1. Implementing a detailed caching strategy, to cache webpart content intelligently.
2. Use load balanced servers to ensure all our hardware is utilised rather then lying idle.
3. We've undertaken capacity planning given the existing solution, so we have a good idea which component is the bottleneck for us. (The SQL Server), so we will ensure the server can cope with expected load and future growth of the site.
4. We're also using hardware load balancers which will ensure our network and the related servers operate as expected, and again this is something to investigate before you implement a sharepoint website.
5. We're also ensuring our webparts don't generate unnecessary html, and don't return unnecesary data, as this will slow down loading times.

Something which I definately think is a good idea is to have a goal to work towards, as you can spend a huge amount of money and time optimizing SharePoint, which may prove unnecessary.

Answer 2

In addition to caching and hardware, try to make sure that your masterpages and page layouts are not ghosted in the database (requiring a database call to retrieve).

Do this by ensuring the files get released to the 12 hive in your solution.

Answer 3

My additional best bets are:

• use x64 to allow more RAM on your server
• Make the best use of your application pool recycling http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/10/29/sharepoint-app-pool-settings.aspx
• Make sure all custom code properly disposes SPWeb and SPSite objects using this http://blogs.msdn.com/rogerla/archive/2008/02/12/sharepoint-2007-and-wss-3-0-dispose-patterns-by-example.aspx
• utilize MS Capacity Planning Tool http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb961988.aspx
• Plan your site collection and database sizes. Keeping your databases and site collections under control will be key
• GOVERNANCE GOVERNANCE GOVERNANCE - Plan for site size limits and expiration strategy. Old data should be deleted or archived for better performance. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb507202.aspx

I cannot emphasize enough that proper early planning is essential for a successful SharePoint implementation.

Answer 4

Don't forget careful selection of the built-in cache settings (choose the right one for your situation). Use the BLOBCache. Use IIS Compression/caching (the defaults are not enough BTW).

Ensure your SQL box can keep up, especially during indexing/crawling. Splitting the Application roles (indexing vs search query and dedicated WFE for indexing/crawling) helps.

BTW if you're running VMWare VMs for your WFEs, Windows NLB breaks (though not consistently), so use hardware NLBs or DNS round-robin, etc.

If you don't need > 2gig RAM for the IIS Application Pool on a WFE, don't bother with 64bit on the WFE.

Just my 2c.