Case Study: AMD Deployment on Windows Server 2008 and SharePoint Server 2007 is Faster and More Manageable
Case Study: AMD Deployment on Windows Server 2008 and SharePoint Server 2007 is Faster and More Manageable
I recently had the opportunity to talk to AMD Developer Outreach and B & R Solutions, who helped AMD migrate and deploy http://developer.amd.com on Windows Server 2008 and SharePoint Server 2007. I was anxious to hear their experience. Here's a quick overview of our discussion with some background.
AMD Finds Deploying AMD Developer Central Internet Site with Office SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 is Faster and Easier to Manage
When AMD Developer Outreach evaluated the benefits of SharePoint to manage their AMD Developer Central Internet site (http://developer.amd.com), they thought it made both technical and business sense. In their evaluation they determined that Windows Server 2008 would better take advantage of their goals for built in security, performance, manageability and reliability.
After evaluating a number of options in the context of their business needs, AMD Developer Outreach decided on SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 with IIS7 to host their portal that serves the software development community looking to leverage the underlying hardware platform for performance improvement and feature enhancement. Also, what better way to showcase their new Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processors than building a platform using Windows Server 2008, the most secure and reliable Windows Server and with the flexibility and manageability of Office SharePoint Server 2007 web content management features.
Background
The previous design took about 9 months to complete. Designed with a now antiquated software infrastructure, kept operable with significant amounts of custom code, it required authors go through a process which took up to 8 hours and manual processes to make updates and changes. The existing deployment handles 40,000 named accounts with hundreds of thousands of anonymous users.
The redesign and redeployment on Windows Server 2008 with SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition took about 12 weeks done in parallel with the day jobs of the couple AMD folks that headed the migration, Paul Nolte and JK Velu. AMD partnered with B & R Solutions, a SharePoint solutions integration company that specializes in SharePoint Server deployments experienced in Windows Server 2008 and made up of top SharePoint MVPs focused on infrastructure. In an interview with the deployment team I gathered this feedback…
Deployment Experience
Paul Nolte and JK Velu of AMD Developer Outreach and Bob Fox (SharePoint MVP), Chris Reagan and Josh Carlisle of B & R Solutions, shared their experience deploying on Windows Server 2008. Bob explained that the biggest thing he noticed was the performance. He explained, “The IISresets were quicker, the administrative interfaces loaded very quickly, and the SharePoint Server pages themselves seemed very snappy. The event viewer had what I was looking for and the new customized views made it very easy to troubleshoot.”
Chris explained that usually one would expect to run into issues running pre release code. He was pleasantly surprised he didn’t run into any. He said “We had no issues. Ramp up on the IIS 7 user interface took some getting used to, but now that I’m using it, it’s easier to manage. Bindings and headers are the same thing, that’s one thing that stumped me for a minute.”
As far as the SharePoint deployment went they both explained it was very familiar, getting the necessary prerequisites was very straight forward and the installation if anything was easier. They found it was the Windows Server 2008 experience itself was familiar, yet it now had more options and seemed to be less clicks to get the views and administrative interfaces, such as the improved event viewer, to do what they wanted.
We expect to hear more about this deployment and others at AMD as they move to faster chips with more RAM as they scale up to handle heavier loads.
Beyond the deployment and IT infrastructure teams, the authors will be making changes that can be rolled out in minutes not days due to efficiencies in workflows and approval routing in Office SharePoint Server 2007. Search is working great and customer feedback has been very positive.
More with less... Quicker deployment, optimized reuse of hardware, secure deployment and end user efficiencies sum up the AMD developer site deployment on Windows Server 2008 with SharePoint Server 2007.
