SharePoint also needs some user accounts in order to work, and it is your job to decide what accounts are to be used (which is discussed throughout this chapter). You should plan what WSS will be used for and who the users will be. This may affect the structure of your WSS environment.

Although WSS 3.0 is a great product, you should really think twice before making the choice to install it without MOSS. WSS has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is that it comes free with Windows 2003 Server. However, it also has its drawbacks. You should analyze what problems you are trying to solve with SharePoint. If you later decide to upgrade to MOSS, it can be done, but you will have to complete several manual steps in order to make it work. So, the best course of action is to be sure that you have the right version installed from the beginning.

Think about what needs and problems you want to address with your SharePoint installation. Most likely you cannot answer this question on your own. You must talk with your end users because they are the ones who will use SharePoint. Talk with people in your organization and ask questions like the ones in the following table.

Open table as spreadsheet

If you get one or more answers that indicate a MOSS solution is preferable, you must think carefully about what version to install. Sometimes, a requested functionality is not worth the investment that MOSS requires, and sometimes it is. You should always have a follow-up question ready when your users, especially the managers, tell you that they need a MOSS-only feature: "Is this feature worth the investment of X number of dollars?" It has happened more than once that these users then say, "No! Let's start with WSS only." If so, let them know that an upgrade later on will take time and money and it is easiest to start with MOSS if this is what they will need in the end - maybe this will change their mind again.

If the results of your investigation suggest a solution based on WSS, you have two database options: if the number of users is less than 1000, you can use a MS SQL Server 2005 Express installed on the same computer as WSS. Else you will need the full MS SQL Server - if you use MS SQL Server, you can also chose between a locally installed database or a remote database server. For example, you could use a MS SQL Server that is used for other applications but has the available resources for your WSS environment.

Types of WSS Configurations

In this section, assume that your SharePoint solution will be based on WSS alone. (To see configurations for the SharePoint solution that includes MOSS, see Chapter 4.) Now you must answer the following question: What database configuration should I use? The following table describes your options.

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Each solution has its own pros and cons:

• q The MS SQL Server 2005 Express database is free, whereas MS SQL Server is not.

• q A local database engine has the following characteristics:

  • q It requires no network communication and therefore is very fast.

  • q No extra server is necessary, so it will be easier to install and maintain.

  • q However, the hardware requirements are higher when you want to run both WSS and the database on the same server, so you may need extra hardware for this server.

If you are just building a simple test environment, you will most likely be happy with a local MS SQL Server 2005 Express database. In the previous table, the second row describes two more options that you could use with MS SQL Server: one using a local SQL server, and one using a remote SQL server. To make sure that you understand all the different options, following is a summary of each of the three configurations.

Single-Server Configuration with Local MS SQL Server 2005 Express

This is the preferred configuration for a small WSS environment where collaboration, sharing information, and document management are requested. It is free, it even has a basic search capability, and you do not have to pay any extra license for the WSS or MS SQL Server 2005 Express software. You can get this type of configuration up and running within 15 minutes, because most of the settings for getting WSS and the database to communicate with each other are automatically configured. Microsoft refers to this type of configuration as stand-alone server , because it has both SharePoint and the database engine on the same physical server.

There are no hard limitations regarding the number of users or the size of the database, although Microsoft recommends not to exceed 1000 users with this database.. It also has all the WSS functionality that you would find in a WSS and MS SQL Server environment

Single-Server Configuration with Local MS SQL 2000/2005 Server

This configuration is perfect for the small organization or department that wants a very good platform for building a basic intranet, for information sharing, and collaboration, as well as basic search capability. The cost is higher than the previous configuration because you need an MS SQL Server, which is not free. But if you already have invested in the MS SQL Server and it has free capacity available, you could install WSS on that same server. This would make a great solution.

Using this database edition, there are no limitations regarding the number of users or the size of the database,. It has the same type of search capability as when using a SQL Server Express, i.e. a user can start the search from the current site, and all its subsites. However, this search feature will not allow a global search; In other words, if you have a number of sites, you must know exactly in what site collection the information is stored to be able to find it.

A Small Farm: WSS with a Separate MS SQL Server

The last configuration is where you install WSS on one server and MS SQL Server on another server. This is something Microsoft refers to as a small farm . This increases the number of users supported, and you have all the functionality of the previously described configuration. Once again, this would not be a free installation because you need the MS SQL Server, but if you have such an installation already somewhere in your IT environment, there may be no extra cost. This depends on the type of license you have for this existing MS SQL Server, as described previously.

There is no added WSS functionality with this solution, aside from the increased number of users supported. However, you could use this configuration with a clustered MS SQL 2005 Server environment, with up to eight nodes, thus giving you both fault tolerance and higher availability.

Hardware Requirements

SharePoint is an application that works best when it gets lots of memory and CPU resources. Version 3.0 of WSS requires about twice as much memory as its predecessor. The reason for this is, of course, that the new WSS version has a lot more features and advanced functionality. A server with 1 GB of memory may support about 100 WSS users, as long as you have the disk capacity to store all the data needed. See the next section for more details.

There are several things you must understand when planning your WSS server:

• q SharePoint is a web application! There is no permanent connection between the client browser and the SharePoint server. Every time you open a link or a document, the browser connects, gets what you requested, and closes the connection immediately after that, regardless of how long the user looks at that information.

• q The number of users in the organization is not the same as the number of simultaneous users.

• q Different activities in SharePoint require different resources. For example, displaying a project site normally generates a very light load on the server, whereas indexing the database generates a much higher load.

Calculating the Number of NOPS Required

There is a general, well-proven formula that you can use for calculating the load, or the normalized operations per second (NOPS), on the SharePoint server. From that you can estimate the number of supported users, given a certain hardware configuration. The formula requires you to find out or estimate a number of values: Given the following estimated data that you must supply:

Given the following estimated data that you must supply:

• q A = The number of users.

• q B = The percentage of active users on a typical day.

• q C = The number of operations per active user per day.

• q D = The peak factor.

• q E = The number of working hours per day.

Two of these estimated parameters need to be explained in more detail. The peak factor is a value between 1 and 10, which is used to indicate the peak hours during the work hours. For example, if the organization works from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., it is a safe bet that most workers start their day by opening their SharePoint environment, because that is where all their information can be found. After that you will probably have an even load. Then directly after lunch , you would get another peak again. A peak factor of 1 means "no peak load at all." A factor of 10 means "a peak load all day." A typical organization would have a peak factor value of 5. If you want to be on the safe side, use the higher value of 7.

The other estimated parameter is the number of operations per active user per day, which has to do with how much your SharePoint environment will be utilized per day. This is also a value between 1 and 10, where 1 means that your users access SharePoint for almost no time at all and 10 means your users work all day with SharePoint. For a typical organization you would get something close to 10 for this value.

Example 1: An Organization with 200 Very Active Users

Your organization has 200 employees (A). The percentage of active users in a typical day is 80 (B). The number of operations per active user is 10 (C). The number of working hours for the organization as a whole is 12 hours (E). You estimate the peak factor (D) to be 10, to be on the safe side. The formula for this organization will look like this:

Example 2: An Organization with 4,500 Normal Users

Your organization has 4,500 employees (A). The percentage of active users in a typical day is 50 (B). The number of operations per active user is 10 (C). The number of working hours for the organization as a whole is 12 hours (E). You estimate the peak factor (D) to be 5. The formula for this organization will look like this:

Now you have a good idea of the load your system will generate. The next step is to use this information to calculate the hardware you need. In the following table are some typical configurations and the estimated normalized operations per second they support.

Open table as spreadsheet

From this table you can learn three important things:

1. You don't need a very large server to run WSS for most installations.

2. Separating the WSS server and the MS SQL server improves the NOPS throughput.

3. The CPU is the most important resource; it should have at least 2 GB of memory. Notice the difference between 2.8- and 3.06-GHz CPUs.

The important fact to remember here is that when a server has at least 2 GB of memory, it will support thousands of users, if it is appropriately configured!

Calculating the Disk Space Needed

The disk space that WSS itself requires is less than 50 MB, so the important part is the database where SharePoint will store all its information. The database application requires about 100 MB for its binary files. It does not matter if you are using the SQL Server 2005 Express engine or the MS SQL Server; you still need to follow this simple but important rule:

If you don't have at least 50 percent free space on your database disk, you will not be able to perform database maintenance and troubleshooting, since these activities may need to make a copy of the database in order to perform their tasks . So what will require the most space in the database? The answer is simply: Your documents! They will not be compressed, in fact, they will require up to 20% more space in the SQL Server, so a 1-MB Word file will require 1.2 MB of database disk space. The other things you store will, of course, also take some space, but they will most likely not take anywhere near as much space as the files you store. And a SharePoint site itself will require less than 200 KB of database space.

So to estimate the disk space needed for your database, start by estimating the number of files it will contain. For example, assume that you estimate that it will contain about 50,000 files and documents, with an average size of 500 KB. In total this will require at least 25 GB. Add to that 5 GB for the other types of information you will store, and you get 30 GB in total. Following the preceding rule, you must have at least a 60-GB disk for the database alone.

Remember that if you implement a small farm configuration (one WSS server and one MS SQL server), you only require the 60 GB of disk space on the database server. The WSS server itself requires very little disk space.

Software Requirements

As you may recall from the previous chapter, SharePoint is a web application, and it requires Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6), which in turn requires you to run MS Windows 2003 Server. SharePoint also requires that ASP.NET and its supporting components be installed. The easiest way to get this configuration right for a SharePoint server, with nothing more and nothing less than is needed, is to follow these steps:

1. Log on to your Windows 2003 server as the administrator.

2. Click Start Control Panel.

3. Click the Add or Remove Programs Windows Component button.

4. Select the Application Server and click on Details.

5. Make sure that everything is cleared, including Internet Information Service (IIS).

6. Check the ASP.NET box, and it will automatically check all the components it needs.

7. Click Next, then Finish to save this configuration.

Remember that you can use any edition of Windows 2003 Server for the WSS installation. However, if you choose the Web Edition of Windows 2003 Server, it must be connected to a separate MS SQL Server, since that edition of Windows Server does not support local databases.

The IIS Virtual Server

In the good old days, each web application required its own physical web server, clearly not the most economical solution. Microsoft solved this by allowing its IIS to create and manage virtual web servers (for example, the default web site). In this approach, each web application running on top of IIS 6 needs its own virtual server. This will make it possible to run several web applications on the same physical server. In order to make it possible to separate each virtual server, they must differ in at least one of the following: the IP number, the port number, or the host header name .

But that solution created a new problem: If one web application crashed, it also killed all other web applications running on the same IIS. Microsoft's solution was to invent the application pool , which gives a private virtual address space and security context for each web application. One virtual web server is linked to one application pool. However, each application pool can be linked to more than one virtual server, thus sharing address space and security context.

When installing SharePoint, you need to be sure about these two things:

1. What virtual IIS server SharePoint will be installed on.

2. What user account the linked application pool will use.

The application pool security context can be either a built-in account, typically the network service, or a standard user account. Whatever account you choose, it must have permissions to read and write to and from the SQL database. Make sure that the user account is granted permission as a database creator and security administrator in MS SQL Server.

Besides the application pool used by the virtual IIS web server for the WSS sites, there will also be a separate application pool for the web-based Central Administration tool that comes with SharePoint. This must be a separate application pool. It cannot share the same application pool as the WSS virtual server.

Before SharePoint can use a virtual web server in IIS, it must be extended with new functionality. This is known as a "web application" in SharePoint 2007. The SharePoint administrator creates the web application when needed, using the SharePoint Central Administration tool by either selecting an existing virtual web server in IIS or creating a new virtual web server, which will then be extended. Each web application can then be used to host one or more site collections, as described in more detail later in this chapter.

Minimum and Recommended Configurations

To summarize the previous hardware and software requirement sections, you can use the following table, which lists Microsoft's minimum and recommended configurations. Remember that for a pilot installation you will actually get away with slightly less than the given minimum memory size in the following table.

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