Making Hardware Design Decisions
| An important part of the design process is determining the appropriate hardware to allocate for the SharePoint 2003 servers. This is both an art and a science and requires an understanding of the immediate and future needs of the company: How much data will be managed and how it will be accessed, who will support the environment, and what redundancy and service levels are expected by the user community. Understanding the budget before spending a lot of time crafting the ideal configuration can be a good idea. Designing the ideal load-balanced web farm with clustered SQL 2000 servers may be a waste of time if the budget can only afford a single server. Some key questions to answer before the specifics are addressed include
TIP If possible, budget for a development Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server. This provides a safe place to experiment with different configurations, templates, Web Parts, and third-party add-ons. The production portal or site collections can be restored to the development server as needed for a "poor man's" fault tolerant solution as well. The basic hardware recommendations from Microsoft for Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server 2003 are as follows:
Of course, this recommendation does not meet the needs of most environments for production implementations. The following recommendations reflect the hardware configurations used for different levels of implementations: from prototype and testing to medium-sized server farms. Recommended Single Server ConfigurationA single server configuration can meet the needs of an organization for testing purposes and in some cases for production purposes as well. Many factors affect the decision of whether to use a single server or multiple servers, including budget, number of users, total number of files and size of the database or databases, and predicted growth of the database(s). For example, a 100-user company may require a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm configuration because the company has 100GB of data to manage and users who expect the highest level of performance, whereas a 500-user company may only need a single server configuration with Windows SharePoint Services used for document workspaces and intranet functionality. The section "Calculating the Number of Users a Server Can Support" later in this chapter discusses the number of users that different configurations can support based on level of usage. A single server configuration typically uses Windows Server 2003 Standard and Windows SharePoint Services with WMSDE or SharePoint Portal Server 2003 with MSDE. In a proof of concept or prototype configuration, the server should offer enough processing power and RAM to provide the level of performance the end users consider acceptable in a production environment. The recommendation for a single server configuration for testing purposes is as follows:
The recommendation for a single server configuration for production purposes follows:
If the server is being used for testing purposes only, a single processor, 1GB of RAM, and a four-drive configuration will generally suffice. If the budget is available, consider upgrading the system by adding an additional processor, more RAM, and more drives, and use RAID5 for the database rather than RAID1 for more fault tolerance. CAUTION Existing test machines can certainly be used for testing SharePoint 2003 sites, for smaller organizations and tight budgets. Due to the relatively low cost of a new machine, however, it is recommended to purchase a new system for performance and reliability purposes. Using a two-, three-, or four-year old server system with a slow processor; slower or insufficient RAM; and slower, smaller hard drives can detract from the success of the testing process by providing slower performance to the testing community. Older systems are more prone to hard drive failures, power supply failures, and controller failures, which tend to happen at inopportune times, such as in the middle of a key demonstration. Recommended Small Server Farm ConfigurationsServer farms for Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 were examined briefly in Chapter 3, and some commonly encountered configurations were summarized. Windows SharePoint Services server farms can scale by adding more front-end servers (running Windows SharePoint Services) and back-end servers running SQL Server 2000. The front-end servers contain only the files and settings needed to direct users to the appropriate database. Windows SharePoint Services should be configured identically on all front-end servers to ensure best performance. The SharePoint Central Administration virtual server on each front-end server keeps the configuration data synchronized. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farms are more flexible, due to SharePoint Portal Server 2003's more complex design. With SharePoint Portal Server 2003, the web component, index component, search component, job server, and database functionalities can be distributed for much more complex configurations. This provides the design team with more flexibility when designing the implementation and ability to grow the farm based on requirements. In a server farm environment, the front-end web servers contain only the files and settings required to route requests from clients to the appropriate sites in the database. All site content and all configuration data are shared on all front-end web servers in a server farm. To get the best performance and to facilitate recovery in the event of hardware failure, Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server 2003 should be configured identically on all the front-end web servers in the server farm. This configuration assumes that a higher level of performance is required by the user community, that the budget will cover the additional hardware and software required, and that the server farm may grow in the future. The recommendation for a web server/front-end configuration in a two-server farm is as follows:
The database server would be similar, but with more hard drive expansion capability and a RAID controller, with room for two more hard drives. The following is the recommended configuration for a SQL Server 2000 database server:
Medium and Large Server Farm Configuration OptionsThe minimal server farm configuration consisting of two servers outlined in the preceding section can be expanded to form a medium or large server farm with SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Table 4.3 provides an overview of the recommended configurations for medium and large server farms. Note that a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm can include one or more Windows SharePoint Services server farms, adding additional flexibility to the farm environment.
A medium server farm is considered to have two dedicated front-end web servers, one index and job server, one or more SQL 2000 servers, and can include one or more Windows SharePoint Services farms. A server farm is considered large when the search and indexing functions are broken out to dedicated servers, with a recommended maximum of four index servers and four search servers. Medium and Large Server Farm Load Balancing OptionsWith multiple front-end servers, a method of balancing the client requests across these servers is required. Windows SharePoint Services works with most of the standard load-balancing methods available, but discussion and planning are required to determine which method best meets the needs of the organization and can be supported by the existing resources. Some options are
Designing Multiple Portal Sites and Using Shared ServicesSharePoint Portal Server 2003 allows for the creation of more than one portal site. Larger organizations may determine that multiple portal sites are required for security reasons, management purposes, or based on the number of sites and amount of data that will need to be managed. Administrators can be set up for each portal who will oversee the usage of the areas the portal manages; the personal sites; and the top-level websites, subsites, and workspaces created within that portal. Deciding on a Single Portal or Multiple PortalsA fundamental decision to make is whether there will be one or more portals in the SharePoint 2003 design. Geographically diverse organizations may require a separate portal at each location and allow searching between the different portals. Or these organizations may simply create one central location, upgrade their WAN connections and Internet connections, and maintain a single SharePoint 2003 configuration at the company headquarters or data center. Multiple portals can be implemented for a number of additional reasons. Many companies choose to create multiple portals for security reasons. Even though SharePoint 2003 technologies offer advanced security features, it may be a good business decision to create separate portals with different management resources, different users, audiences, search and index scopes, and structures for different divisions, or components of the company. This minimizes the chance that human error might accidentally give access to classified information. Having separate portals can make sense from a fault tolerance standpoint because a portal structure can be backed up and restored using the standard SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Backup and Restore utility. When databases get beyond a certain size, the amount of time it takes to restore a portal site may exceed the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) offered to the user community, so multiple portals each with its own set of databases may be required. Security is a major concern to many organizations, and separating data from different departments or divisions by providing separate databases may be a requirement. This can also be accomplished by configuring a virtual server to connect to different content databases. Organizations may decide to create one or more portals for internal users, and one or more portals for customers or external partners to use. This design can enhance the level of security by locating the "exposed" portal(s) in a DMZ (demilitarized zone). If Account Creation mode is used, a dedicated portal must be set up for this purpose. A point to clarify is that each portal requires its own virtual server in IIS but does not necessarily require its own dedicated server system. In addition, each server farm can support up to 15 portal sites, if it is not part of a shared services environment. If the server farm provides or uses shared services, up to 64 portal sites can be configured by default, or up to 100 portal sites with registry changes. Using Shared Services to Manage Server FarmsSharePoint Portal Server 2003 provides a feature called Shared Services, which enables a group of portals to share the following services:
When a server farm is configured to provide shared services, all other portal sites on that server farm become child portal sites. The parent server farm and the child server farm must be running the same version of SharePoint Portal Server in the same language, and the parent server farm and child server farm must belong to the same domain or trusted domain. In addition, the parent and child server farms cannot have a firewall between them, so both need to be on the intranet, on the extranet, or in a DMZ. CAUTION After you configure the server farm to provide or use shared services, you cannot undo the operation. Some services and scheduled tasks in the child server farm need to be turned off before you configure the server farm to use shared services. These services and tasks include the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server Search service (SharePointPSSearch), search schedules, profile import, and the audience compilation schedule. Internet Information Services (IIS) limits the number of websites (referred to as virtual servers in SharePoint parlance) running on one server to 64. To create more than 64 websites on a front-end web server in a server farm that provides or uses shared services, the registry needs to be modified, which can be a risky process and is not recommended. This process is outlined in the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide. Backward-Compatible Library Design ConsiderationsThe backward-compatible document library server component of SharePoint Portal Server cannot run on servers on which the following are installed:
For small, medium, and large server farm deployments, the component for backward-compatible document libraries and SQL Server 2000 cannot be installed on the same computer. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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