For all the IT Pro’s who have managed SharePoint farms, you know that it is difficult to set up a SharePoint test environment on premises. It takes money, time and effort to replicate a production SharePoint farm. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is a cloud replication service that provides a great way to quickly create a SharePoint test environment.
0: (optional) Create a local SP environment if you do not have one yet
1: Check the requirements for ASR replication and prepare your servers
2: Replicate your SP farm servers to Azure using ASR
3: Using the ASR replica, create the SP Test Environment in Azure
The Problem: creating a SharePoint test environment – the traditional way – takes MONTHS
In my last IT Manager post, I was responsible for a SharePoint farm. For a long time, we did not have the luxury of a test environment for SharePoint. I was finally able to procure an HP Z220 workstation and used it for creating a SharePoint test environment.
I increased the memory and hard disk space on the HPZ220 and then used it to build a SharePoint test farm. However, setting up this SharePoint test environment took2 months time. I spent time ordering and receiving the server and parts (upgrades). And I spent time setting up the server and copying the production virtual machines – DC, Sql Server and SharePoint server – to the sandbox test environment.
The Solution: Azure Site Recovery – a quick and reliable mechanism to create a SharePoint test environment
What is Azure Site Recovery (ASR)?
Azure Site Recovery is a business continuity and disaster recovery solution in the cloud. You can protect on-premises servers or virtual machines by replicating them either to Azure or to a secondary site (data center). If the primary data center location is down, you can fail over to the secondary site (Azure or the secondary data center). Then when the primary site is back up and running, you can fail back to it.
Can Azure Site Recovery be used to create a SharePoint test environment?
Yes, since ASR can protect whole servers or virtual machines running different workloads, it can certainly replicate those SharePoint servers. ASR can replicate all the components of a SharePoint farm:
Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) Domain Controller (DC)
Sql Server
SharePoint server
ASR can take images of your Production servers. From those images, you can then create application consistent replica servers – in the cloud or on the secondary site. The replica servers may then be used as test servers in a SharePoint test environment.
The whole process is fast. At home, I have a fiber optics connection. I was able to replicate a 3-server SharePoint farm to Azure within a few days. However, the speed of replication depends on your network’s speed and your network’s load.
Steps to create a SharePoint Test Environment with ASR
We will cover the steps – to create the SharePoint test environment – in three major steps.
The following steps will be covered in separate posts. Stay tuned:
1) Check the requirements for Azure Site Recovery (ASR) replication and prepare the SharePoint Farm’s servers
2) I will explain how to Set up a Recovery Services Vault in Azure and how to go through the Getting Started wizard. Subsequently, we will start Replication of the SharePoint servers
3) Once we have replicated all the SharePoint servers, we can go ahead and Create a SharePoint test farm environment in the Cloud
The combination of Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 enable you to create a test lab on your local PC or laptop! This is because most versions of Windows 10 have the Hyper-V feature available. And Windows Server 2016 has a new feature called Nested Virtualization. So you can easily create a virtual test lab consisting of one virtual machine hosting several other virtual machines!
Nested Virtualization on a Windows 10 laptop
Recently, I needed to create a SharePoint farm on my laptop. This SharePoint farm would become my pseudo “Production” environment that I will then replicate to the cloud using Azure Site Recovery (ASR). So Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 were the perfect tools for the job.
Note: The solution presented in this post can be used to create any test lab (sandbox environment) – not just a SharePoint farm.
The Problem – how to set up a SharePoint farm on a laptop?
As mentioned earlier, I will be using Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to replicate my local SharePoint farm to the Cloud. This means that I need nested virtualization. I cannot use Windows 10 Hyper-V to create the three SharePoint VM’s because Windows 10 is not supported as an ASR host. So I have to install a host server VM (Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2016) on Windows 10 Hyper-V. And subsequently, on this host server, I have to install the three SharePoint server VM’s.
Furthermore, having the SharePoint Farm VM’s hosted on Windows 10 does not represent a real production environment. The chosen architecture – 3 SP Farm VM’s hosted on Windows Server 2016 host – is more realistic and represents the architecture of a real Production SharePoint farm.
The Solution – Hyper-V and Nested Virtualization:
In order to create a SharePoint farm with 3 servers: a DC, a Sql Server, and a SharePoint server, you either need 3 physical servers or 3 virtual machines. At home, I do not have 3 physical servers. VM’s are the only way to go.
Windows Server 2016 has a wonderful new feature called Nested Virtualization!! Nested Virtualization is great for test scenarios and allows such a test lab to be created. In previous Windows Server versions you could not nest a Hyper-V environment inside another Hyper-V environment. Or at least, the nesting was was not supported by Microsoft.
And certain versions of Windows 10 have the Hyper-V feature readily available. You just need to turn it ON. This allows you to create the Windows Server 2016 host Virtual Machine (VM) without installing any new software or applications.
Set up networking for your SharePoint farm. We will use a separate subnet for each SharePoint VM and we will link them up with RRAS. You do not have to use this many subnets. You can use one subnet for all your VM’s. I chose to use 3 subnets because I wanted my environment to mimic a VNet in Azure.
The following Windows 10 versions support Hyper-V virtualization: Enterprise, Professional and Education.
Hardware requirements:
Hyper-V normally requires at least 4GB memory. However, for this SharePoint farm (1 host VM and 3 guest VM’s), at least 10 GB of RAM would be needed. I recommend 16 GB of RAM. With 16GB on your laptop or PC, you will have about 10 GB RAM left for the SharePoint farm. I assigned 1GB RAM for the DC VM and 2GB RAM each for SharePoint VM and Sql Server VM.
Remember that Windows 10 OS uses about 2 GB and there is something called the host reserve which takes about 2.5GB (depending on how much physical RAM exists on the machine).
Other hardware requirements:
64-bit Processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).
CPU support for VM Monitor Mode Extension (VT-c on Intel CPU’s).
A good way to check on all the system requirements for Hyper-V is to run the command line utility systeminfo.exe. Open a Command Prompt window and type systeminfo.exe. The output of the command will contain a section on Hyper-V Requirements. Make sure all tests return a “Yes”.
2. Turn Hyper-V Feature ON in Windows 10
In the Control Panel, start Programs and Features and click on “Turn Windows Features On or Off”. Select the Hyper-V checkbox. This includes “Hyper-V” platform and “Hyper-V Management Tools”. Finally, perform a restart.
3. Create a new Windows Server 2016 VM and Enable Nested Virtualization.
1. Install Windows Server 2016 on this VM. This Windows Server 2016 VM will host your SharePoint farm.
2. With the Windows Server 2016 VM OFF – in Windows 10 – run the following Powershell commands:
3. Under the VM settings for the Windows Server 2016 VM, turn OFF Dynamic memory for the VM
4. Give the VM enough memory. I assigned 10 GB to the VM.
4. Set up networking for your SharePoint farm
I wanted the network of my lab to resemble a real Production environment and to mimic the virtual network (VNet) that is used in Azure. So I configured Hyper-V for multiple subnets while using only one NIC.
On the Windows Server 2016 host:
Create 4 Virtual Switches. One external and 3 internal.
I chose: 10.0.0.1/24 for the DC VM, 10.0.1.0/24 for Sql Server and 10.0.2.0/24 for the SharePoint VM.
Hyper-V Switches
Configure the network adapters on the Hyper-V host
Configure Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) on the host. RRAS acts as a software router and connects the subnets.
In Server Manager, click on Manage – Add Roles and Features
The first page is informational and may be skipped
On the second page: choose Role-based or Feature-based installation
Choose the server (local server) where the RRAS feature will be added
under Remote Server Admin Tools – Role Admin Tools: select Remote Access Management Tools
On the Role Services page, select “DirectAccess and VPN (RAS)” and select Routing
You will be prompted to add features required by DirectAccess and VPN (RAS)”, click YES.
Make sure Routing is still selected
Review the information on the Web Server Role (IIS) page
Click Next on the Roles Services page
Do a final confirmation and Install
When it is done, Close the wizard
Open the Routing and Remote Access application
Right click on your server name and select “Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access”
Select Custom Configuration
Select NAT and LAN Routing. NAT allows your VM’s Intern
5. Create 3 new VM’s inside the Hyper-V Host
Install the Domain Controller (DC). You can use Desired State Configuration (DSC) to set up the ADDS Domain Controller automatically by using a script. You can see the steps in my blog post on the subject.
