SharePoint one of the widely accepted product by Microsoft which is an excellent collaboration platform. However, application performance is very vital for deploying SharePoint successfully.
This blog post highlights the best practices to boost performance of the SharePoint application.
Distinct internet network for front-end and SQL servers:
There is a common myth, if a server is has a high internet connectivity, there will be abundant supply of bandwidth for all required operations. Conversely, SharePoint system gives priority to SQL server for service jobs, search indexing and others. Thus to avoid conflict, it is essential to have a separate network connection for front-end and SQL server via physical network or virtual LAN.
Quarantine search indexing:
A usual farm server is combined of web front end servers, application server and SQL database server. Search traffic generated by index server must be processed by servers delivering content. Another way to avoid clash is adding a separate server to the farm which is dedicated to index search queries. The administrator can later configure search service to perform crawls for dedicated server.
Regulated SQL parameters:
In order to avoid the glitches in managing SharePoint databases, one can provision databases on different physical disks such as one disk for search, one for temporary database and another for content. Furthermore, isolating log files must be considered accordingly. Another way to manage the database is by pre-defining database size up to a maximum recommended size and setting the auto growth to a fixed size.
Index defragmentation:
The indexes can become fragmented if regular maintenance operations are not carried out. Hence, it is vital to conduct maintenance operations regularly to avoid data from being written or read from the indexes.
Mapping user data across multiple content databases:
SharePoint data in lists format are stored in a single table in content database associated with its site collection. Each of the site collection has only one content database having bulk of data into it. This bulk of data can cause overload to the site collections of content database. Hence, grouping the site collections logically based on the size or priority can be done to avoid the excessive load on site collections.
Reducing page size for faster loading:
If SharePoint users are connected via LAN then accessing the portal can be an easy job. But think about the users connected via WAN. The heavy page can lead to low performance of application and the WAN users will not be able to access the portal. Hence, having a master page with less content or optimized content can help. Also, most of the third party links such as JavaScript or CSS files can be altered and loaded on the background to enable the fast page rendering.
Compressing IIS to increase the page rendering:
SharePoint content is mostly combined of static and dynamic files. During runtime, SharePoint combines all these files which results in slow performance of page. IIS (Internet Information Server) has some mechanism to reduce page load by adjusting the size of data.
Leveraging caching:
To improve the page delivery time site administrators can configure the cache profiles to satisfy user requirements. The content requested by user is stored in the cached memory can be accessed directly without sending multiple request to the server.
Planned customizations:
Whenever a customization is required in SharePoint portal, entire content and code stored in the database are retrieved each time page is requested. This causes an overload on the database by reducing its performance. To avoid this kind of condition administrators must adopt policies to restrict the customizations on extreme basis.
Precise navigation:
Having the site navigation very deep or way to hierarchical can lead the visitor to lose its purpose. However to dodge this situation, administrators can limit the depth of navigation so they remain manageable without hampering the performance of the application.