Thursday, December 10, 2009

Sharepoint 2010 Top 10 : Security & Monitoring

Security
  1. The security model in SharePoint Server 2010 has been expanded to allow administrators more control over the management of service applications. In Office SharePoint Server 2007, farm administrators had the ability to manage services on the server. Farm administrators can now click a service application and be presented with several options for managing the service, including specifying administrators for the service and setting permissions.
  2. Everything is based on Claims based authentication
  3. Intra server communications is based on WCF communications
  4. Supports SSL
  5. Each application uses its own database, and optionally own application pool
  6. Multi-Tennancy - Application level security protects the information in one Service Application from another. So it adds an application security boundary within a database and within an application pool.
  7. This model uses claims-based authentication and Geneva.
  8. Claims-based authentication is built around the concept of an identity and is based on standards — WS-Federation, WS-Trust — and protocols like the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). An identity is a set of information about a user, such as name, e-mail address, department, and so on.
  9. “Geneva” is actually three related technologies: Active Directory Federation Services (formerly known as Geneva Server), Windows Cardspace™ (formerly known as Cardspace Geneva), and Windows Identity Foundation (formerly known as the Geneva Framework).
  10. Claims-based identity provides a common way for applications to acquire identity information from users inside their organization, in other organizations, and on the Internet. Identity information is contained in a security token, often simply called a token. A token contains one or more claims about the user.


Health and Monitoring
  1. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 includes an integrated health analysis tool called SharePoint Maintenance Manager that allows SharePoint Server to automatically check for potential configuration, performance, and usage problems.
  2. Logging - New concept of co-relation guids have been introduced which log each message for a call in logs with a guid that can be used to correlate the messagge with the error. The corelation guid is shown on page when error occurs. This can be used to find the related messages.
  3. SharePoint Server 2010 logs feature usage and performance information into the usage database. This logging is done by the usage service application, and is enabled by default. Administrators can read, query, and build reports directly from the usage database because the schema is public. As such, third-party applications can also write their data to the usage database.
  4. Diagnostics - Unified Logging Service (ULS)
    • ULS includes improvements to manageability, log file improvements, correlation ID tracing, and Windows PowerShell™ scripting.
    • Event Log Flood Protection (EVFP) can also be enabled on the same Web page. When EVFP is enabled, repeating events are detected and suppressed until conditions return to normal. The ULS now contains all application log events, and third-party logging software can be integrated into the ULS.
    • The trace log can also be located in a specified location, and the storage duration and amount of storage can also be configured. Correlation IDs that are associated with each request help troubleshoot errors related to the request. SQL Profiler traces will also show correlation IDs to further assist in the troubleshooting. SharePoint Server 2010 includes several Windows PowerShell cmdlets for retrieving information and configuring the ULS.
  5. Diagnostics – Developer dashboard - A new addition to server diagnostics is the developer dashboard. This dashboard displays detailed information for each page load and therefore helps troubleshoot performance issues. This dashboard is disabled by default and can be enabled for each Web application independently through the use of Windows PowerShell.
  6. Diagnostics - Event throttling controls the severity of events that are captured in the Windows® event log and the trace logs. Events are categorized, and the administrator can change the settings for any single category or for all categories.
  7. Reliability and Monitoring – SPME - A new addition includes the SharePoint Maintenance Engine (SPME). It periodically, or on an on-demand basis, checks the administrative configuration, performance, best practices, and security issues, and makes recommendations to resolve potential issues.
  8. Reliability and Monitoring - SCOM
    • System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) monitoring
    • Available only to users who have farm administrator credentials, the results are accessible through Central Administration via the Review Problems and Solutions link in the Monitoring section and the Health Status section, and they are also available in SCOM. The SPME maintains a list of rules called Health Rule Definitions. This list is created by the system to help ensure that the SharePoint environment is properly configured and healthy.
    • SharePoint Server 2010 will ship a management pack for SCOM. It provides real-time alerts and troubleshooting in the context of larger infrastructure. It watches events, monitors performance counters, and takes corrective action where necessary. The management pack for SharePoint Server 2010 understands and discovers topology; grabs events from ULS, the Windows Event Log, usage database, and SPME; and is integrated with ULS.
  9. Reporting - Out-of-box usage reports
  10. Reporting - SCOM reports
More - SharePoint 2010 Top 10 Features Source - SharePoint 2010 Resources

No comments: