RapPort uses three different servers to deploy SharePoint Portal Server to multiple sites. By using these servers, RapPort automates the process of creating and maintaining intranet portals within an organization. The following list describes the specific function of each of the servers:
You can further classify a destination server into one of two types: shared or dedicated. A shared server hosts many workspaces. You can control the creation of workspaces on the server by specifying capacity limitations in the configuration files. A dedicated server is used only for the creation of specific workspaces. The user must explicitly specify the name of the server when requesting a workspace. RapPort provides this option so that you can isolate large portals from other workspaces when deploying SharePoint Portal Server. You can locate destination servers anywhere in the organization from a corporate or regional data center to a departmental server in an individual office.
You can use a single server as the RapPort server and the template server. In this case, this server runs the portal provisioning process from the RapPort server and copies all work-space templates from the RapPort server. However, you must deploy at least one destination server. The destination server cannot serve as a RapPort server or a template server.
Figure 14.1 shows a RapPort deployment that uses multiple destination servers:
Figure 14.1 also shows these portals connected to another SharePoint Portal Server computer dedicated to providing enterprise searching. The workspace templates contain a Web Part on the search dashboard that provides results from the corporate search located on the enterprise search server. This optional deployment configuration illustrates how you can integrate individual sites deployed by using RapPort within an existing SharePoint Portal Server infrastructure.
Figure 14.1. RapPort deployment with multiple destination servers