Consideration to Improve Performance for SharePoint 2010 Servers.

Performance of SharePoint 2010 Servers.

Performance is always a big topic of Discussion in Any Organization. No matter how much CPU or RAM you add to the Servers, most of the time Users will complain that the sites are slow, or sudden fluctuations in CPU going consistently high, or Customization issues, SQL Deadlock errors etc... etc.. the list goes on.

Here are some of the very Important things to look at Configuration settings and Troubleshoot certain things, which you may face in various different SharePoint Environments.

Many of the known performance issues like UPA sync is slow from Active Directory or Search crawling has suddenly become slow can be caused due to some SQL or OS related configurations not done correctly or they are not in place at all.

Here are some of the STRONGLY recommended articles that should be followed.

SQL Maxdop setting should NOT be 0
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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh292622.aspx
Set max degree of parallelism (MAXDOP) to 1 for SQL Server instances that host SharePoint Server 2010 databases to ensure that each request is served by a single SQL Server process

Anti-Virus check.
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Certain folders may have to be excluded from antivirus scanning when you use a file-level antivirus program in SharePoint
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952167

SQL TempDB configuration and Optimization.
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http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175527.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joaquint/archive/2011/02/08/sharepoint-and-the-importance-of-tempdb.aspx

Database maintenance for SharePoint 2010 Products
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262731.aspx

Disable Certification Revocation checking.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2625048

SQL Deadlock errors. Event ID 10016 in logs.
We need to disable following settings on ALL the SharePoint Servers and also SQL Servers. If SQL Server is in Cluster, all the nodes in the cluster also needs to be changed. After making the Changes, Reboot of all the Servers including SQL servers is Mandatory.

1. TCP Chimney Offload http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951037. by Default in Wind 2008 Servers, this setting is "Automatic", we need to Disable it. "netsh int tcp set global chimney=disabled"

2. IP Task Offload. by Default in Wind 2008 Servers, this setting is "Enabled", we need to disable it. "netsh int ip set global taskoffload=disabled". This is also applicable for Fast for SharePoint Server issues. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2570111

3. NIC settings should be Disabled.

IPv4 Checksum Offload”, “Large Send Offload” and “TCP Checksum offload” [ note: this may require a hard reboot of the servers ]

Why to Disable TCP Chimney on SQL Servers?
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/psssql/archive/2008/10/01/windows-scalable-networking-pack-possible-performance-and-concurrency-impacts-to-sql-server-workloads.aspx

Other Tool you are use to Troubleshoot.

Use Developer Dashboard.
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http://blogs.technet.com/b/patrick_heyde/archive/2009/11/16/sharepoint-2010-enable-using-developer-dashboard.aspx
stsadm -o setproperty -pn developer-dashboard -pv ondemand