Best Practices Reports

SharePoint Best Practices Reports

SharePoint farms contain hundreds of different settings for Web Applications, Site Collections, Service
Applications and other components that make SharePoint such an amazing collaboration platform. However
maintaining all these settings is a difficult job especially when there is more than one in-house administrator or
when a partner company is providing SharePoint services.

SPDocKit brings two options:

built-in Best Practices reports that we ship with the product and
custom Best practices reports you can create on your own.

Best Practices reports can be exported into a single Word document and with each new release Best Practices
are extended with new reports. In this document you will find a full list of Best Practices reports with
descriptions that SPDocKit provides.
Configuration

App Configuration

Apps Configured SharePoint 2013 App Domain and App Prefix should both be set, with the App Domain being different from the SharePoint domain. Read more

App Services Configured SharePoint 2013 In order to use SharePoint Apps, SharePoint needs be properly configured to run Apps. Read more

Distributed Cache
SharePoint 2013
App Fabric Patched Check if the current AppFabric version should be updated. Read more

Cache Cluster State SharePoint 2013 Cache cluster should be in a healthy state. Read more
Distributed Cache service should be up and running in a farm. This is necessary to get the maximum performance out of
Distributed Cache Running SharePoint 2013 Read more
SharePoint 2013.
Microsoft recommends that cache size of Distributed cache is set per this formula: (total physical memory on server - 2 GB
Cache Size SharePoint 2013 for other processes and services that are running on the cache host)/2. Deviation of 10% is acceptable. Maximum cache Read more
size is 16 GB.
Security
Farm Account is not Local SharePoint 2010, The Farm account should not be in the Local Administrators group on any of the servers in the farm. This presents a
Read more
Admin 2013 security vulnerability.
HTTP is generally recommended only for test environments. In production environments, the more secure HTTPS protocol
Office Web Apps Https SharePoint 2013 Read more
is the better choice.
Servers
SharePoint 2007,
Loopback Disabled Loopback check should be disabled on SharePoint servers. Please follow the instructions and use the preferred method. Read more...
2010, 2013
Solutions
Solution Assembly SharePoint 2007, Assemblies deployed on SharePoint should match the ones in the solution file. Manually updating the files on the hard
-
Deployment Valid 2010, 2013 drive is not recommended.
Databases

ModelDB
SharePoint 2007, The modeldb's autogrowth should be in megabytes, and set to a value larger than default. You should not use the default
ModelDB Files Autogrowth -
2010, 2013 settings, these values should be set in accordance with your environment.
SharePoint 2007, The modeldb's Initial Size should be set to a value larger than the default. You should not use the default settings, these
ModelDB Files Initial Size -
2010, 2013 values should be set in accordance with your environment.
ModelDB Recovery Model SharePoint 2007,
The modeldb's recovery model should be set to FULL. Read more
2010, 2013
TempDB
SharePoint 2007,
TempDB Files Each tempdb file should be on a separate drive. Read more
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007, The number of tempdb files should be the same number of processor cores present on SQL server and no larger than 8.
TempDB Files Configuration Read more
2010, 2013 Additionally all file sizes should be equal.0
SharePoint 2007,
TempDB Recovery Model 2010, 2013 The tempdb's recovery model should be set to SIMPLE. Read more

SharePoint 2007,
TempDB Response Times 2010, 2013 Response times for tempdb should be less than 20 ms. Read more

SharePoint 2007,
TempDB Size 2010, 2013 The size of tempdb should be at least 10% of the largest content database in farm. Read more

SharePoint 2007,
Content Database Capacity We recommend that you proactively manage the growth of data and log files. Read more
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
Database Files These log and database files should not be on the primary drive. -
2010, 2013
Checks if Block Size equals 64 and if the following calculation (Partition Offset / Block Size) results in an integer value. In
SharePoint 2007,
Disk Allocation Size most cases this is best practice for storage, but please refer to your storage documentation and check if this rule applies Read more
2010, 2013
to your storage.
 SharePoint 2007, To ensure optimal performance, we strongly recommend that you set max degree of parallelism (MAXDOP) to 1 SQL
Max Degree of Parallelism Read more
2010, 2013 Server instances that host SharePoint Server databases.
We recommend that you proactively manage the growth of data and log files by considering the following
SharePoint Database SharePoint 2007,
recommendations: As much as possible, pre-grow all data and log files to their anticipated final size. We recommend that Read more
Autogrowth 2010, 2013
you enable autogrowth for safety reasons. Do not rely on the default autogrowth settings.
SharePoint 2007,
SQL Alias To improve ease of maintenance, configure SQL Server connection aliases for each database server in your farm. Read more
2010, 2013
Hardware Requirenments
SharePoint 2007,
Free Disk Space -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
RAM The minimum and recommended amount of RAM for production use in a single server or multiple server farm. Read more
2010, 2013
Maintainance

Backup
Farm Backup Configured SharePoint 2007, Check if the farm has been backed up via SharePoint backups. Read more
2010, 2013
Farm Backup History SharePoint 2007, Check if the farm has been backed up recently. -
2010, 2013
Content Database Backups SharePoint 2007, Check if content databases have been backed up recently. -
2010, 2013
Misc

Farm Accounts Used SharePoint 2007, These accounts should only be used to run services and application pools and not for interactive logon. -
Interactively 2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
Pdf iFilter Installed iFilter is required to index contents of PDF files. Make sure it is installed. -
2010
Before you can upgrade your environment to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Office SharePoint Server 2007 must be
Upgrade Ready SharePoint 2007 Read more
updated to Service Pack 2.
Upgrade Ready SharePoint 2010 Before you upgrade your environment to SharePoint 2013, make sure you are running SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1. Read more
Monitoring and Logging
SharePoint 2007,
Diagnostic Log Path These log and database files should not be on the primary drive. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
Search Index Path These log and database files should not be on the primary drive. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
ULS Active Check if ULS is working correctly. -
2010, 2013
Read more
Enable Usage and Health Data SharePoint 2010, Web Analytics tracking will log events whenever the selected events occur on your SharePoint system. Use the Web
Collection 2013 Analytics Reports once the collected data has been processed to better understand how your system is being used.

Restrict Trace Log Disk Space SharePoint 2010,

Check if the maximum amount of storage used for logging is restricted. -
Usage 2013
SharePoint 2010,
Usage and Health Log Path These log and database files should not be on the primary drive. -
2013
SharePoint 2010, Turning Verbose Logging on for one or more event categories can result in large log files, and the increased disk I/O
Verbose Logging Enabled Read more
2013 could negatively impact performance.
Service Application

Search
Crawl Account Search SharePoint 2007,
Search Crawl Account needs to have Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers permission. Read more
Permission 2010, 2013
To achieve the best results you should run your incremental crawl every 30-60 minutes. More frequent than that could
Incremental Search
SharePoint 2010 cause a tremendous load on the server, less frequent and documents will require a long time to be shown as a search -
Configuration
result.
PDF Extension Added to SharePoint 2007,
The .pdf exension has to be added to Search Applications in order to crawl PDF files. -
Search Application 2010
SharePoint 2007, Content Source Start Address must be in the default zone of a Web application. If it is in any other zone the contextual Read more
Search Content Sources
2010, 2013 scopes ('This Site' and 'This list') will not work.
UPA
SharePoint 2010,
My Site Configured Checks if My Site has been configured in the User Profile Service Application service settings. -
2013

UPA Up and Running
Web Analytics
Event Collection Configured
Web Analytics Services
Started
Application Proxies
Authentication Providers
Multiple Service Application
Sandboxed Code Service
Secure Store Service
Configured
State Service
Exchange Task Sync
SharePoint Software
Boundaries and Limits
Limits by Feature
Search Limits
Authoritative Pages
Content Sources
SharePoint 2007,
Checks if User Profile Service Application services are up and running. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2010 -
A properly configured Web Analytics service application allows you to collect, report, and analyze the usage and
SharePoint 2010 Read more
effectiveness of your SharePoint sites.
SharePoint 2007,
Checks if all the installed Service Applications Proxies are started. -
2010, 2013
In SharePoint 2013, claims-based authentication is the default and preferred method of user authentication. If you are Read more
SharePoint 2010
planning to upgrade to 2013 you should upgrade to claims.
SharePoint 2007,
Checks if you have installed multiple service applications of the same type in the same proxy group.
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2010,
Sandboxed Code Service is required to run Sandboxed Solutions with custom code. Read more
2013
SharePoint 2010,
If created, the Secure Store Service Application needs to be properly configured before use by defining a key. -
2013
SharePoint 2010,
Make sure the State Service is up and running. A number of other service apps require this app to run. -
2013
To enable task sync between Exchange Server 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013 make sure you have configured all
SharePoint 2013 Read more
services correctly.
SharePoint 2007, The recommended limit is one top-level authoritative page, and as few second -and third-level pages as possible to
Read more
2010, 2013 achieve the desired relevance.
SharePoint 2007, The recommended limit of 50 can be exceeded up to the boundary of 500 per search service application. However, fewer
Read more
2010, 2013 start addresses should be used, and the concurrent crawl limit must be followed.

Crawl Components
Crawl Databases
Crawl Rules
Index Partitions
Managed Properties
Property Databases
Scope Rules Count per Search
Scope
Scope Rules Count per Search
Service Application
SharePoint Search Service
Applications
Start Addresses
User Profile Limits
User Profile Count
Visio Services Limits
File Size of Visio Web
Drawings
The recommended limit per application is 16 total crawl components; with two per crawl database, and two per server,
SharePoint 2010 Read more
assuming the server has at least eight processors (cores).
SharePoint 2010, The crawl database stores the crawl data (time/status, etc.) about all items that have been crawled. The supported limit is
Read more
2013 10 crawl databases per SharePoint Search service application.
SharePoint 2007, 20 per search application. This value can be exceeded; however, display of the crawl rules in the search administration
Read more
2010, 2013 interface is degraded.
The index partition holds a subset of the search service application index. The recommended limit is 20. Increasing the
SharePoint 2013 number of index partitions results in each partition holding a smaller subset of the index, reducing the RAM and disk Read more
space that is needed on the query server hosting the query component assigned to the index partition.
SharePoint 2007, 100,000 per search service application. These are properties used by the search system in queries. Crawled properties are
Read more
2010, 2013 mapped to managed properties.
SharePoint 2007, The property database stores the metadata for items in each index partition associated with it. An index partition can only
Read more
2010, 2013 be associated with one property store. The recommended limit is 10 property databases per search service application.
SharePoint 2007, 100 scope rules per scope. Exceeding this limit will reduce crawl freshness, and delay potential results from scoped
Read more
2010, 2013 queries.
SharePoint 2007, 600 total per search service application. Exceeding this limit will reduce crawl freshness, and delay potential results from
Read more
2010, 2013 scoped queries.
SharePoint 2007, Multiple SharePoint search service applications can be deployed on the same farm, because you can assign search
Read more
2010, 2013 components and databases to separate servers. The recommended limit of 20 is less than the maximum limit for all service
applications in a farm.
SharePoint 2007, The recommended limit can be exceeded up to the boundary of 500 per content source. However, the more start
Read more
2010, 2013 addresses you have, the fewer content sources should be used. When you have many start address, we recommend that
you put them as links on an html page, and have the HTTP crawler crawl the page, following the links.
A user profile service application can support up to 2 million user profiles with full social features functionality. This
SharePoint 2010, number represents the number of profiles that can be imported into the people profile store from a directory service, and
Read more
2013 also the number of profiles a user profile service application can support without leading to performance decreases in
social features.
SharePoint 2010, Up to 50 MB. Visio Services has a configuration setting that enables the administrator to change the maximum size of
Read more
2013 Web drawings that Visio processes but this can affect performance.
Visio Web Drawing
Recalculation Time-out
Word Automation Services
Conversion Job Size
Conversion Start Frequency
Limits by Hierarchy
Content Database Limits
Content Database Size
Site Collections per Content
Database
Site Collection Limits
Site Collection Size
Web Site
Web Application Limits
Content Databases
Managed Paths
SharePoint 2010, 120 seconds. Visio Services has a configuration setting that enables the administrator to change the maximum time that it
Read more
2013 can spend recalculating a drawing after a data refresh.
SharePoint 2010, Up to 100,000 conversion items. Please note: A large number of conversion items will increase both the execution time of
Read more
2013 the Start method and the number of bytes transmitted to the application server.
SharePoint 2010, 1 minute (recommended), 15 minutes (default), 59 minutes (boundary). This setting determines how often the Word
Read more
2013 Automation Services timer job executes. A lower number leads to the timer job running faster.
SharePoint 2007, We strongly recommended limiting the size of content databases to 200 GB. If you are using Remote BLOB Storage (RBS),
Read more
2010, 2013 the total volume of remote BLOB storage and metadata in the content database must not exceed this limit.
SharePoint 2007, We strongly recommended limiting the number of site collections in a content database to 2,000. However, up to 5,000
Read more
2010, 2013 site collections in a database are supported.
A site collection can be as large as the content database size limit for the applicable usage scenario. For more information
SharePoint 2007,
about the different content database size limits for specific usage scenarios, see the Content database limits table in this Read more
2010, 2013
article.
SharePoint 2007,
The maximum recommended number of sites and subsites is 250,000 sites. Read more
2010, 2013
With 300 content databases per Web application, end user operations such as opening the site or site collections are not
SharePoint 2007, affected. But administrative operations such as creating a new site collection will experience decrease in performance. We
Read more
2010, 2013 recommend that you use Windows PowerShell to manage the Web application when a large number of content databases
are present, because the management interface becomes slow and difficult to navigate.
Managed paths are cached on the Web server, and CPU resources are used to process incoming requests against the
SharePoint 2007, managed path list. Exceeding 20 managed paths per Web application adds more load to the Web server for each request.
Read more
2010, 2013 If you plan to exceed twenty managed paths in a given Web application, we recommend that you test for acceptable
system performance.
 The maximum recommended number of site collections per Web application is 250,000. Note that this limit is affected by
SharePoint 2007, other factors that might reduce the effective number of site collections that can be supported by a given Web application.
Site Collections Read more
2010, 2013 Care must be exercised to avoid exceeding supported limits when a container object, such as a content database, contains
a large number of other objects.
Site Collection Health
SharePoint 2007,
Farm Features Duplicate Ids - -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
Features Duplicate Ids - -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2010,
Site Collection Upgrade Checks if your site collections are using the current version of SharePoint UI. -
2013
SharePoint 2007,
Site Collections Duplicate Ids - -
2010, 2013
Web Application Features SharePoint 2007,
- -
Duplicate Ids 2010, 2013
Updates

Servers

Hotfixes per Server Role

SharePoint 2007,
Application Servers Hotfixes It is recommended that all servers with the same role have the same hotfixes installed. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
DB Servers Hotfixes It is recommended that all servers with the same role have the same hotfixes installed. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
Failover Servers Hotfixes It is recommended that all servers with the same role have the same hotfixes installed. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
Query Servers Hotfixes It is recommended that all servers with the same role have the same hotfixes installed. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
WFE Servers Hotfixes It is recommended that all servers with the same role have the same hotfixes installed. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint Server Upgrade SharePoint 2010,
Checks if SharePoint needs to be upgraded and if Configuration Wizard has been started after patching SharePoint files. Read more
Required 2013
SharePoint
Build Revoked
Is SharePoint Up to Date
Language Packs Up to Date
Office Web Apps Up-to-Date
Product Supported
Product Supported
Web Applications
Caching
Blob Caching Enabled
Publishing Cache
Object Cache User Accounts
AppPool User in Performance
Log Group
Batch Compilation Disabled
Web Application in Debug
Mode
SharePoint 2007,
Checks if the currently installed build has been revoked.
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007, Check if SharePoint is up-to-date. SharePoint cumulative updates are released every two months. Check SharePoint
Read more
2010, 2013 Updates Center for latest updates.
SharePoint 2010,
Checks if your Language Packs are at the same patch level as the rest of the product. -
2013
SharePoint 2010 Office Web Apps should be on a similar patch level as your SharePoint. -
SharePoint 2007,
Checks if the product support lifecycle for the installed build of SharePoint has ended. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
Checks if the product support lifecycle for the installed build of SharePoint has ended. Read more
2010, 2013
The disk-based BLOB cache controls the caching for various image, audio, and video files, together with .css and .js files.
The BLOB cache is enabled on a front-end web server and improves performance by retrieving BLOB files from the
SharePoint 2007,
database and storing them in a directory on the front-end web end server where they are served to users. This reduces the Read more
2010, 2013
network traffic to and load on the database server. Before you enable the BLOB cache, carefully consider the scenario in
which you plan to use it.
SharePoint 2010, Caching can provide big benefits to a publishing site. When caching is used correctly, it can significantly improve
Read more
2013 throughput and user response time.
SharePoint 2010,
Portal Super User and Portal Super Reader must be properly configured to ensure that the object cache works correctly. Read more
2013
SharePoint 2007, To be able to gather required performance counter metrics, an app pool account needs to be a member of the local
-
2010, 2013 Performance Log Users group.
SharePoint 2007,
SharePoint does not support batch compilation of pages in SharePoint document libraries. -
2010, 2013
SharePoint 2007,
Check if the web.config files are in ASP.NET debug mode. -
2010, 2013
 SharePoint 2007, A server machine name should not be used as a URL for your SharePoint Web Application. This can cause problems if a
Web Application URL Check -
2010, 2013 second machine is added to this farm.

Web Applications Without SharePoint 2007,

Check if your Web Applications have any Site Collections. -
Sites 2010, 2013

SharePoint 2007,
Web.config Files Equity
2010, 2013 Check if the web.config files are the same for each web application across all servers and zones. -
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