HMC Resource Management - Part #5 - HMC Resource Management and SharePoint and OCS

 

In the last blog, I discussed about the HMC Resource Management for Exchange. This entry, I will discuss about the HMC Resource Management for SharePoint and OCS.

Fortunately for us, there isn't a lot of resource management required for both of this product. Let's start with SharePoint.

HMC Resource Management for SharePoint

If I have to put it simply, HMC hardly manage the resource for SharePoint. SharePoint, like Exchange, the main resource to manage is the disk, which is the SQL server disk space. The HMC product team for SharePoint decided that we leave the disk space monitoring and management back to the SharePoint product itself and did not want the complexity of resource management in HMC. As a result, from the HMC database standpoint, HMC really only manage the Organization Plan for SharePoint, which touches just the PlanManager database. ResourceManager database was not touched at all by default.

Not only does the HMC SharePoint not use the HMC databases for resource management, it also does not use the database to keep track of how many sites have been created for the organization. Instead it uses Active Directory.

The only control HMC has on the SharePoint, out of the box is the number of sites and sub sites that can be created by the organization. Here is a sample request of the Organization Plan creation for HMC SharePoint,

<request>

  <procedure>

    <execute namespace="HostedSharePoint2007" procedure="CreateOrganizationPlan" impersonate="1">

      <executeData>

        <preferredDomainController>ad01.fabrikam.com</preferredDomainController>

        <planDescription>Basic Sharepoint</planDescription>

        <planName>Basic Sharepoint plan</planName>

        <maxSites>100</maxSites>

        <maxSubsites>500</maxSubsites>

      </executeData>

    </execute>

  </procedure>

</request>

 

See that it only control the maximum number of sites and maximum number of sub sites. There is also no User Plan for SharePoint because the management of the user functions and access is through SharePoint itself instead.

So, after subscribing the appropriate SharePoint plan to an organization, the next step is to create the site itself. Here is a sample request XML for site creation,

<request>

   <procedure>
     <execute namespace="HostedSharePoint2007" procedure="CreateCustomerSite" impersonate="1">
       <executeData>
         <org>LDAP://ou=alpineskihouse,ou=consolidatedmessenger,ou=hosting,dc=fabrikam,dc=com</org>
         <preferredDomainController>ad01-wh.fabrikam.com</preferredDomainController>
         <target>https://app01-ra:22778</target>
         <site>https://app01-ra:8081/sites/testsite2</site>
         <title>Test site 2</title>
         <siteName>SharepointSite2</siteName>
           <owner>
             <userPrincipalName>Sharepoint4@alpineskihouse.com</userPrincipalName>
             <email>Sharepoint4@alpineskihouse.com</email>
             <name>Admin</name>
           </owner>
         <description>Testing create site</description>
         <lcid>1033</lcid>
         <webTemplate>sts#0</webTemplate> 
         <quota>
           <warningLevel>1000000</warningLevel>
           <maxDBSize>2000000</maxDBSize>
         </quota>
         <hhUrl>https://team.alpineskihouse.com</hhUrl>
       </executeData>
     </execute>
   </procedure>
 </request>

 When you submit that request, part of the HMC SharePoint's namespaces and procedures logic will be retrieving from Active Directory, checking the following path to see if there is any sites available under this branch, for example,

 

  • dc=fabrikam,dc=com
    • ou=hosting
      • ou=consolidatedmessenger
        • ou=alpineskihouse
          • cn=_Private
            • cn=Services
              • cn=SharePointSites

 It will then enumerate and see if the number of sites there has exceeded the maximum site or sub site as defined the Organization Plan. If it does, then it will fail. If it does not, it will proceed and execute the provider to create the appropriate SharePoint site. If you look at the request XML, we can also specify the quota but it should be noted that the quota isn't stored anywhere in the HMC database at all. It is being set at the SharePoint side. Hence, if you want to retrieve to find out the quota, the only authoritative way is to check SharePoint itself and not through HMC.

 So, that's pretty much it for SharePoint. There really isn't much to it.

 HMC Resource Management for OCS

HMC Resource Management for OCS is even less complicated. The ResourceManager database isn't used by HMC OCS at all. In fact, the Organization Plan for OCS is nothing more than just a place holder of enabling the service, having just the plan name and that's it.

The User Plan does have a little bit more value or feature that you can specify. However, other than using the PlanManager database to track which plan the Organization has subscribed to and which User Plan the users have subscribed to, there is really no specific resource management required for HMC OCS.

 It is a simple model.

 Conclusion

 So, that's it, I hope this give you a good overview of what's going on in HMC Resource Management. It may not consist of everything but if you feel that you need to know more and can't find it anywhere, leave a comment here and I will try to respond to you.