SharePoint Health Checklist

This is something I receive this all too often. Clients are requesting to have a "Health Check" performed on their SharePoint 2007 or 2010 environment. Most of the time, they are concerned that an internal resource who setup SharePoint did something wrong or they notice the performance has just gone downhill over several months.

So without being able to find anything helpful online that could act as a checklist for this sort of task, I've used my experience to create a checklist on common issues and to determine where they may have screwed up.

If you're working with a client, I recommend documenting everything for them. Most of the time they dont have this, or if they do, it is very outdated.

  1. Determine what servers play a role in the Farm
    1. Document all servers in the farm.
    2. Check the patch level for each server.
    3. Check the SQL server version and if possible the DB size growth in the last 6-12 months from the DBA.
    4. Is there an identical Stage/Development environment in place? Is it at the same patch level?
  2. Determine the hardware or virtual resources the servers reside on
    1. You want to make sure they meet the minimum standard requirements for their farm size.
    2. Check includes, CPU's, Memory, Disk Space used/available, 32 or 64-bit.
    3. How many end users have access to SharePoint? Is there amount of resources enough to handle the max capacity and growth in the future?
  3. Security / Service Accounts
    1. Check what security methods they use and that they are properly configured
    2. This is my favorite one: Check that the sharepoint services are properly configured with the correct/recommended accounts as specified here:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662513.aspx
  4. Server Maintenance
    1. How often do they apply Windows Updates or SharePoint updates? (Windows updates should be performed monthly and tested on Stage before applying to Production)
    2. Is  there a Change Control Procedure involved?
    3. Are they making modifications to the Stage/Development server before going to Production?
  5. Search Service
    1. Is search configured correctly?
    2. Are there any crawl errors?
    3. How often are Incremental and Full crawls scheduled to run?
  6. Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan
    1. Is there a plan currently in place? If yes, how often is this tested. (twice a year is good)
    2. How do they perform SharePoint backups? (SQL backups are fine if they do not need granular backups)
  7. Customization's and 3rd Party Tools
    1. Are there any customization's that exist?
    2. Is there custom branding or custom Master Pages?
    3. Is there any custom written code or web parts?
  8. External Access
    1. Is SharePoint accessible externally?
    2. If yes, check the SSL cert status.
    3. Are AAM's (Alternate Access Mappings) configured properly?
    4. Is SharePoint securely behind a firewall?
    5. Is HTTP access available externally?
  9. User Profiles
    1. Are user profiles being crawled properly?
    2. Are disabled Active Directory accounts being removed properly?
This list is a great start to a good health check for SharePoint, and you can definitely add a few more items as you go through it. This will ensure a solid foundation to your SharePoint Farm and allow you to make the needed recommendations for improvements.

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