Summary

Migrating to SharePoint Portal Server yielded two key benefits, including:

More relevant and timely search results delivered to users.

• Latency, or response time, improved by 22 percent.
• Indexes updated nightly by using adaptive updates.

Improved crawling performance.

• Full update of an index nearly three times faster than Site Server 3.0
• Adaptive update of an index seven times faster than Site Server 3.0

In addition to these benefits, ITG identified the following key points:

The migration process is straightforward. Migrating to SharePoint Portal Server is not complex. SharePoint Portal Server can use the same architecture as, and similar hardware to, Site Server 3. You can begin the catalog review process while ordering hardware and learning the product. Modifying existing ASP pages is simple, and you can use the built-in user interface included with SharePoint Portal Server. You encounter few changes in day-to-day operation from administering Site Server 3.

It is recommended that you review and refine existing catalogs. The appropriate time to review existing catalogs is before implementation. Over time, your catalogs have probably lost accuracy. Start addresses do not exist anymore; your servers crawl the same content multiple times; some catalogs are redundant or unnecessary. As you review catalog definitions, you can also review your internal customer requirements. Customers now have the opportunity to redefine and refine their requirements for searching.

SharePoint Portal Server gives improved full update performance and adaptive crawling benefits. With SharePoint Portal Server, you can crawl more content in the same amount of time as Site Server 3, using similar hardware. This provides room for growth. Alternatively, you can crawl existing content with less hardware than Site Server 3. This allows you to buy less expensive hardware. In addition, you can update existing content more frequently than Site Server 3, using similar hardware. This provides more timely and relevant results to your users.

Adding memory improves performance. Adding memory provides a quicker and less expensive way to improve performance than adding servers to your infrastructure.

This chapter describes the ITG deployment plan of SharePoint Portal Server and its subsequent results. It provides detailed information and recommendations based on this deployment. It includes technical information on the existing environment, design decisions, deployment steps, and testing considerations. It concludes with a summary of recommendations based on this experience.