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Cooper Industries Shines Light On SharePoint Server-Side Performance Data

A lot of times, we already knew there was a problem, but we didn’t know where it was; we are now able to drill down and figure out where the problem is located. Previously, when an outage did occur overnight, we wouldn’t know about it until the next day unless someone from England or China would call. Now, it lets us know immediately when there is a problem, so we can get it resolved right away.

Ben Adams, SharePoint Systems Administrator

THE CHALLENGE

As a global organization, Cooper Industries has data centers in Soest, Germany; Shanghai, China; Houston, Texas; and Peachtree City, Georgia. Cooper Industries uses SharePoint Globally for document collaboration, Business Process management, workflow management, document management, as well as a global Knowledge Base. While in the process of migrating 200 GB of data in 2,500 sites from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010, Cooper Industries was looking for a tool that could deliver detailed information as to why their current SharePoint 2007 environment was constantly crashing.

THE METALOGIX SOLUTION

Metalogix Diagnostic Manager is helping Cooper Industries ensure SharePoint performance and availability for their SharePoint environment. They are now able to obtain granular, server-side performance data analysis for IIS and load statistics, as well as pages, controls, web parts and much more. As he began migrating data from a single 2007 server to the six servers now running SharePoint 2010, Ben Adams, SharePoint Systems Administrator for Cooper Industries, sought a third-party SharePoint performance monitoring tool. Initially, he found Metalogix through a Google search. Excited by the critical performance counters but eager to get even more SharePoint monitoring data, Adams went on to purchase Metalogix Diagnostic Manager.

With all internal-facing sites, Adams reports that Cooper Industries’ SharePoint environment has about 8,000 registered users and at least 4,000 unique users monthly. At Cooper Industries, users are leveraging SharePoint for collaboration, document management, as well as maintaining their knowledge base. They are also currently in the process of rolling out its CRM (customer relationship management) program.

PINPOINTING PERFORMANCE ISSUES

Needing more detailed information to prevent their old server from crashing so frequently while they migrated from 2007 to 2010, Metalogix Diagnostic Manager immediately helped Adams to identify problems. “Our old server was crashing and having issues because it was so overloaded. Now, we can more easily look at IIS statistics and load statistics to know what is using the majority of resources, when it went down and for how long.”

Metalogix Diagnostic Manager is providing Cooper Industries with a powerful and intuitive monitoring solution. Adams leverages its automated alerting to quickly know whenever configurable performance thresholds are not met. In addition, he can set individual thresholds for each monitored page or server for continuous 24/7 monitoring of SharePoint performance.

ALERTS ON POORLY PERFORMING PAGES

One of the key features that Adams is leveraging from Metalogix Diagnostic Manager is the worst performing page control for HTML control, web parts, and web controls. The automated alerting lets him know about everything from poorly performing pages to major server problems.

Metalogix Diagnostic Manager delivers reliable, real-time information on the status and health of Cooper Industries’ complete SharePoint environment, enabling Adams to quickly pinpoint and resolve performance issues or perform additional analysis to determine the root cause of performance problems. “A lot of times, we already knew there was a problem, but we didn’t know where it was; we are now able to drill down and figure out where the problem is located,” Adams said.

While Adams can use Metalogix Diagnostic Manager to determine the location of bottlenecks, he is looking forward to more fully using its capacity planning capabilities once the migration to the 2010 is complete. “It’s hard to plan when you are in-between rounds. We can see where our bottlenecks are while we migrate over,” he said. Once the migration is complete, he can begin to more effectively store historical performance data, enabling rich graphical analysis of performance and behavior over time to identify patterns and trends.

RESOLVING PROBLEMS FASTER

The biggest improvement is the ability to resolve problems more quickly with the continuous 24/7 monitoring of SharePoint performance data. “For 2007, it doesn’t go down as often. I’m sure our end users are very happy about that. For 2010, we are creating an environment that shouldn’t go down,” Adams said. He adds: “This helps us. Previously, when an outage did occur overnight, we wouldn’t know about it until the next day unless someone from England or China would call. Now, it lets us know immediately when there is a problem, so we can get it resolved right away.”

DASHBOARDS DELIVER CRITICAL DATA

For Adams, Metalogix Diagnostic Manager has helped to ensure he is more effective as a SharePoint administrator. “I can report to the storage team much more easily,” he said. With the dashboard view, Adams can easily glance at it and determine whether there is anything critical that requires his attention. The interface is both powerful and easy to use, enabling complex analyses to be displayed and understood in seconds.