O'Reilly Media | SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide

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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, or MOSS, is a product of two factors. Both are changing the way businesses operate, in what Microsoft commonly refers to as the "new world of work."

The first factor is that teams working together are typically located in different locaions throughout the country, or even the world. This presents some interesting challenges to collaboration between teams both within and outside of an organization.

The second is that there is an explosion of content created within these organizations. Documents and content of all shapes, sizes, and types are being created every day, and companies are struggling to keep up with this content explosion and increasingly complex compliance requirements, while enabling users to collaborate and share information. Organizations must allow effective collaboration in order to stay competitive, but they also must satisfy the security and privacy issues associated with collaboration in order to keep their competitive advantage and remain compliant with corporate regulations.

Microsoft has developed SharePoint to provide organizations with a solution to these complex business problems. MOSS brings together six key functional areas of features and benefits that allow organizations to more effectively address these industry phenomena and stay competitive. These areas are Collaboration, Portal, Enterprise Search, Enterprise Content Management, Business Process and Forms, and Business Intelligence (). This chapter introduces these functional areas and explains their respective features.

The bottom line with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is that it helps organizations get more done. The Collaboration area of MOSS allows users to share information and work together.

MOSS is a critical piece to Microsoft's collaboration vision, and provides a hub where all Microsoft Office products can integrate effectively.

Figure : Six functional areas of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

The "Collaboration" functional area can be summed up with the following feature list:

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The bottom line with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is that it helps organizations get more done. The Collaboration area of MOSS allows users to share information and work together.

MOSS is a critical piece to Microsoft's collaboration vision, and provides a hub where all Microsoft Office products can integrate effectively.

Figure : Six functional areas of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

The "Collaboration" functional area can be summed up with the following feature list:

Document collaboration
Wikis
Discussions
Blogs
Contacts
Calendars
Tasks
Email integration
Outlook integration
Project management "lite"
Offline lists and documents

Document collaboration

The document collaboration feature includes the following elements:

The ability to check out documents locally.
Direct support within Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 for an offline document library. This allows users to work on documents when they do not have access to the MOSS server.
The ability to use major and minor version numbering and tracking in document management. This is a valuable feature, particularly if you have ever worked on a team where documents are being updated by multiple users simultaneously.
Direct support for multiple content types. These content types include Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and others. Other types are recognized if the corresponding application type is installed on the MOSS server. Vendors also can create add-ins to MOSS that allow native MOSS support for that content type. This makes MOSS very extensible for vendors.
Policies, auditing, and workflow are also included. This is great for managing the flow of a document's usage throughout an organization.
Tree-view support allows users to structure an organization of documents and content that is easier to interpret and act on. Similar to Windows Explorer, MOSS enables this same type of document and content organization within MOSS.

Wikis

The "wiki" template is a new site template in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Similar to the wikis throughout the Internet, and best demonstrated on

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Portal sites connect users to information, expertise, and applications, and MOSS has some very compelling portal features. It has truly become a world-class Enterprise Portal platform. MOSS provides organizations with a foundation on which they can build solutions for every aspect of their business.

The "Portals" functional area can be summed up with the following feature list:

Intranet template
News
Site directories
My Sites
People finding
Social networking
Privacy

Intranet template

Preconfigured portal site templates streamline the creation, customization, and deployment of divisional portals, organization-wide intranet portal sites, and corporate web sites.

You can easily pick the type of template you would like to use for each site you create (see ).

Figure : Different site templates

News

Creating news items has always been available with SharePoint (), but the new content syndication features take "News" to a new level. The ease with which MOSS can subscribe to content makes it that much easier to keep content relevant and up-to-date for users.

Figure : News article

The new content syndication feature allows the use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to syndicate content managed in a portal site (). You can easily post and publish internal company news or subscribe to remote RSS feeds with this feature.

Site directories

The Site Manager manages a SharePoint site's navigation, security access, and general look and feel using an easy drag-and-drop tool. Site Manager unifies site management tasks for portals and web sites, including management of areas, pages, listings, SharePoint site lists, and associated component parts (see , , and ).

Figure : Easily syndicate content

Figure : Manage the content and structure of a site collection

Figure : Easily change the settings and structure of your site content

My Sites

The My Site personal site gives each user an opportunity to aggregate information "for me," "by me," and "about me" (). The significant enhancements to this feature in MOSS 2007 include social networking, privacy controls, SharePoint Sites and Documents Aggregation Web Parts, and Colleagues and Memberships Web Parts.

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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is the new Microsoft enterprise search solution for organizations. It increases productivity and reduces information overload by providing users with the ability to find relevant content in many different locations and formats. The key is actionable search results that respect security permissions.

The "Enterprise Search" functional area can be summed up with the following feature list:

Relevance
Business data search
Metadata
Customizable user experience
Extensibility

Figure : People-finding search capabilities

Relevance

Relevance is very important when searching for data. If you have ever searched on Google, you have probably realized that the relevance of your search is the key to getting usable results. The new and improved search algorithms within MOSS 2007 are tuned for enterprise content. The use of relevance and ranking factors—such as click distance, hyperlink anchor text, URL depth, and metadata extraction—provide effective algorithms for yielding the best results for enterprise content. Microsoft has invested a great deal in fine-tuning this solution.

Another aspect of relevance is the search results are rendered more clearly. Search results are security trimmed, which keeps users from seeing content to which they do not have access. The results also include user-friendly features such as hit highlighting, duplicate collapsing, and synonym suggestion. Another cool feature allows integration with real-time communications tools, so users can easily contact content authors and experts. You can execute a search, view the results, see whether the creator is online, and then open a chat with the content developer. That kind of ease of use will be invaluable within a large enterprise.

Figure : Colleagues Web Part

Figure : Audience-targeting feature of MOSS 2007

The people search capabilities bring even more relevance. Users can now find people not only by department or job title, but also by expertise, social distance, and common interests.

Figure :

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Web content management was previously covered by Microsoft's Content Management Server 2002. With the release of MOSS 2007, the realm of web content management is now rolled into SharePoint. Organizations now have a cost-effective, enterprise-ready web content management system rolled into their corporate portal. This allows companies to cut their total cost of ownership down to supporting one technology for both their portal and their web content management. That fact alone should excite small- to medium-size businesses that maintain a web presence.

The "Enterprise Content Management" (ECM) functional area can be summed up with the following feature list:

Authoring
Workflow
Web publishing
Document management
Records management
Policies
Multiple languages

Authoring

The content authoring features of ECM allow users to create rich content for their corporate web site using a web browser. This has been a feature in web content management solutions since their inception, but it has been limited in SharePoint until now.

The "what you see is what you get" (or WYSIWYG) web content editor truly empowers users to create very compelling content without leaving their browsers (). The SharePoint user interface has also been extended with additional commands and status indicators for in-context web page authoring.

The page layouts function is another feature that allows users to quickly and easily author and publish content. The defined structures guide authors through the publishing process, which allows users to concentrate on the content and spend less time worrying about the publish-and-deploy process. The flexible page layouts also allow users to employ different Web Parts, ASP.NET applications, and authoring templates in any configuration to create compelling sites that meet the needs of the business.

Figure : WYSIWYG rich-content editor

Workflow

The business document workflow support, which did not exist in SPS 2003, allows users to automate document review, approval, signature collection, and issue tracking using workflow applications (). This feature includes the ability to perform the following basic workflow tasks:

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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides built-in workflow templates to automate approval, review, and archiving processes. You can also use MOSS 2007 to create, maintain, and analyze custom workflows, enabling you to streamline your collaborative processes. Electronic forms provided through InfoPath Forms Services are an integral part of such workflows. These InfoPath-designed electronic forms make it easy to collect and validate information that drives your business processes. Additionally, you can collect and validate this information right from the Microsoft Office client applications you use every day.

The "Business Process and Forms" functional area can be summed up with the following feature list:

Rich web forms
Self-service forms
Real-time data validation
Line-of-business actions
Pluggable Single Sign-on

Rich web forms

Rich browser-based forms provided in the Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Service make it possible to design web-capable forms in Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 and distribute them to users with MOSS 2007. InfoPath has always seemed to be a tough sell to most companies because, even though InfoPath is a great product, it's expensive for what you get. However, by allowing users to interact with InfoPath forms on the Web without an installed copy of InfoPath on the client machine, InfoPath finally is a compelling and usable tool in the enterprise setting. Users can also fill out forms in a browser or HTML-enabled mobile device without having to download InfoPath or install client components.

Self-service forms

The idea of self-service forms encompasses a few different features in MOSS 2007. The most important feature is the integrated deployment model for "no-code" forms. The publish wizard in Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 makes it easy to publish forms from the Windows SharePoint Services library. As long as your forms do not contain code, they can be made available to users as a browser-based form or accessed using an InfoPath client.

Real-time data validation

Real-time data validation is accomplished with the compatibility checker. This compatibility checker helps forms designers validate the content they are publishing. The compatibility checker makes sure the forms work across the broadest range of web browsers and target environments.

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Business Intelligence with Office SharePoint Server 2007 makes it easy for decisionmakers to access and analyze information anytime, anywhere. You can get up-to-date information wherever people work, collaborate, and make decisions, whether it's on the desktop or over the Web. Now, aligning employees' objectives with your corporate goals is as easy as creating a spreadsheet or report.

The "Business Intelligence" functional area can be summed up with the following feature list:

Excel Services
Report Center
Dashboards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Business Data Web Parts
Business data in lists
SQL Reporting Services/AS Integration

Excel Services

MOSS 2007 has introduced a new feature to SharePoint that enables spreadsheet authors to easily share their work. The web-based Business Intelligence features use Excel Services to provide new Business Intelligence functionality through the browser. These spreadsheets allow users to develop interactive, data-bound spreadsheets that include charts, tables, and PivotTable output. These views can be created and included as part of a portal, dashboard, or business scorecard, without requiring any development.

Report Center

The Report Center feature of MOSS 2007 provides users with an out-of-the-box site optimized for report access and management. The Report Center includes a report library, data connection library, and a Dashboard template, and allows users to consistently manage reports, spreadsheets, and data connections.

Dashboards and KPIs

The new key performance indicators (KPIs) in MOSS 2007 allow users to easily communicate goals and project status to stakeholders and business users. Users can harness the power of the KPI Web Part without writing a single line of code. Specifically, data from Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Excel spreadsheets, and SharePoint lists can be displayed in the KPI Web Part. Users can also manually create content to be displayed in the KPI Web Part. This is a great way to give key stakeholders actionable content that they can easily digest and act upon.

Business Data Web Parts

Business Data Web Parts allow users to view lists, entities, and related information retrieved through the Business Data Catalog. shows a list of the available Web Parts.

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Though this chapter has been able to cover only a small subset of all the new capabilities in MOSS 2007, there is a wealth of online information to satisfy your search for answers. Additionally, the rest of the chapters in this book go into more detail about the different functions and features introduced here.

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Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) contains a subset of the capabilities provided in the full Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 product. WSS provides a secure, scalable, enterprise-level portal environment for collaboration, and is comprised of a set of components and services that serve as an add-in to Windows Server 2003. WSS provides the plumbing infrastructure for the SharePoint Products and Technologies, more commonly referred to as SPT. Essentially, this term includes both Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). describes the components included in SPT.

Figure : SharePoint products and technologies

At its base, WSS is a scalable site-provisioning engine that allows companies to create and manage hundreds, if not thousands, of web sites in a highly scalable web farm environment. WSS is designed to enable an architecture where stateless frontend web servers in a web farm interact with a SQL Server database engine to provide users with the ability to perform basic CRUD (create, update, and delete) operations on the UI components. Best of all, WSS automatically coordinates where and how content is stored in the database.

WSS 3.0 is the third and latest major version of WSS. This release goes by the name of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and is often abbreviated as either WSS 3.0 or WSS v3.

The previous version of WSS, which was released with the Office 2003 system, originally did not carry a version number. However, to avoid confusion, it should now be referred to as Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 or WSS v2. When progressive SharePoint developers talk about WSS without using a version number, they are talking about the latest and coolest version, which today is WSS 3.0.

To developers, WSS is a full-fledged development platform that builds on top of ASP.NET 2.0. Essentially, it provides a solution for building business solutions using the core building blocks of ASP.NET 2.0, such as .aspx pages, ASP.NET controls, Web Parts, custom lists, document libraries, content types, event handlers, custom workflow, site definitions, site features, and site solutions.

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Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) contains a subset of the capabilities provided in the full Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 product. WSS provides a secure, scalable, enterprise-level portal environment for collaboration, and is comprised of a set of components and services that serve as an add-in to Windows Server 2003. WSS provides the plumbing infrastructure for the SharePoint Products and Technologies, more commonly referred to as SPT. Essentially, this term includes both Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). describes the components included in SPT.

Figure : SharePoint products and technologies

At its base, WSS is a scalable site-provisioning engine that allows companies to create and manage hundreds, if not thousands, of web sites in a highly scalable web farm environment. WSS is designed to enable an architecture where stateless frontend web servers in a web farm interact with a SQL Server database engine to provide users with the ability to perform basic CRUD (create, update, and delete) operations on the UI components. Best of all, WSS automatically coordinates where and how content is stored in the database.

WSS 3.0 is the third and latest major version of WSS. This release goes by the name of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and is often abbreviated as either WSS 3.0 or WSS v3.

The previous version of WSS, which was released with the Office 2003 system, originally did not carry a version number. However, to avoid confusion, it should now be referred to as Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 or WSS v2. When progressive SharePoint developers talk about WSS without using a version number, they are talking about the latest and coolest version, which today is WSS 3.0.

To developers, WSS is a full-fledged development platform that builds on top of ASP.NET 2.0. Essentially, it provides a solution for building business solutions using the core building blocks of ASP.NET 2.0, such as .aspx pages, ASP.NET controls, Web Parts, custom lists, document libraries, content types, event handlers, custom workflow, site definitions, site features, and site solutions.

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In the previous chapters, you had the opportunity to read about some of the new features available in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, as well as how it has changed from SharePoint Portal Server 2003. At this point, you are probably eager to jump right in and get started with this exciting new product. This chapter provides an in-depth look at the installation process, ensuring that you are able to get MOSS up and running quickly and easily. It defines preinstallation tasks and prerequisites and then walks you through a single-server installation. If you are interested or ready to expand your deployment to more than one server, make sure to read .

Setting up a single MOSS server is a great way to expose yourself and your organization to this powerful application, and can provide many benefits:

If you are a developer creating Web Parts or applications that you want to integrate into MOSS, a single server acts as an excellent test environment.
If you are an IT professional looking to become acquainted with MOSS, you can bring up the single server to "play around with" without the fear of blowing anything up.
If you are an executive who needs to be convinced of MOSS's value, then your IT staff can deploy a single server as a proof of concept. A representative subset of your user population can work with this proof of concept and provide feedback to you on whether MOSS brings enough value to the organization to warrant a full-blown implementation.
If you are a trainer and need to establish individual work environments for the students in your class, a single server is a great way to provide students with a hands-on experience.
If you have a limited IT budget but a strong need for MOSS, start with a single server and then expand as your budget allows.

Before you grab your MOSS 2007 CD or download and run the installer, there are a number of items you must consider:

Licensing
Standard versus Enterprise Editions
Hardware requirements
Software prerequisites

The following sections discuss each of these points in more detail, ensuring that you have the necessary knowledge to move forward and enjoy a successful installation.

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In the previous chapters, you had the opportunity to read about some of the new features available in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, as well as how it has changed from SharePoint Portal Server 2003. At this point, you are probably eager to jump right in and get started with this exciting new product. This chapter provides an in-depth look at the installation process, ensuring that you are able to get MOSS up and running quickly and easily. It defines preinstallation tasks and prerequisites and then walks you through a single-server installation. If you are interested or ready to expand your deployment to more than one server, make sure to read .

Setting up a single MOSS server is a great way to expose yourself and your organization to this powerful application, and can provide many benefits:

If you are a developer creating Web Parts or applications that you want to integrate into MOSS, a single server acts as an excellent test environment.
If you are an IT professional looking to become acquainted with MOSS, you can bring up the single server to "play around with" without the fear of blowing anything up.
If you are an executive who needs to be convinced of MOSS's value, then your IT staff can deploy a single server as a proof of concept. A representative subset of your user population can work with this proof of concept and provide feedback to you on whether MOSS brings enough value to the organization to warrant a full-blown implementation.
If you are a trainer and need to establish individual work environments for the students in your class, a single server is a great way to provide students with a hands-on experience.
If you have a limited IT budget but a strong need for MOSS, start with a single server and then expand as your budget allows.

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Before you grab your MOSS 2007 CD or download and run the installer, there are a number of items you must consider:

Licensing
Standard versus Enterprise Editions
Hardware requirements
Software prerequisites

The following sections discuss each of these points in more detail, ensuring that you have the necessary knowledge to move forward and enjoy a successful installation.

The following licensing information is for guidance only. You should consult with your local Microsoft licensing specialist to obtain the latest and most appropriate licensing information for your individual situation.

Unlike its predecessor, MOSS 2007 comes in two versions, Standard and Enterprise, which vary significantly in the feature sets offered. When you install MOSS, the only difference between the two versions during the process is the product key that you specify. You can always install the Standard version and upgrade at a later date by entering an Enterprise Edition product key (once you purchase Enterprise Edition client access licenses for all of your users), but you cannot downgrade from Enterprise Edition to Standard Edition.

It can sometimes be difficult to determine exactly which licenses you need. Currently, in order to properly license MOSS 2007 from Microsoft, you must purchase both the server licenses and the individual client access licenses, or CALs. This means that for every MOSS 2007 server you bring online, you must have a valid server license, and for each client accessing MOSS, a client access license must be purchased.

There is only one license type for each MOSS server, whereas the client access licenses come in both Standard and Enterprise Editions, and are additive. This means that you must purchase a Standard Edition license for each client utilizing MOSS, and if you would like to utilize the features included in the Enterprise Edition, you must then purchase an Enterprise CAL for each of those users as well. In the end, this means that each of your users must be licensed for both a Standard CAL and an Enterprise CAL; you cannot have a mix of users, some with just Standard CALs and others with both CALs—all users must have either Standard or Standard plus Enterprise.

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The following steps and associated screenshots will walk you through the process of getting Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 up and running within your environment, using SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as the database engine. By following these instructions, you will be able to quickly begin working with the powerful features of MOSS. While following along, you should be logged into the server as a user with local administrator privileges.

The first thing you must do is install IIS 6.0:

Click on the Start menu, select Control Panel, and then select "Add or Remove Programs."
On the lefthand side of the window, select Add/Remove Windows Components.
Click to add a checkmark next to Application Server.
Then, double-click Application Server and ensure that the following components are checked:
- Application Server Console
- Enable Network COM+ Access
- SMTP Service
- Internet Information Services (IIS)
Next, double-click Internet Information Services and make sure the following components are checked:
- Common Files
- Internet Information Services Manager
- World Wide Web Service
Make sure that FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions are not checked!
Double-click World Wide Web Service and make sure that the World Wide Web Service is checked.
Click OK three times and then click Next. The IIS components will then install. Note that you may be prompted to provide the Windows Server installation CD, so be prepared.

Next, you must install the .NET Framework 3.0:

Download the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package from the Microsoft web site at .
Rundotnetfx3setup.exe to start the installer.
Once you have reviewed and accepted the license agreement, click Install.
The installer will then need to connect to the Internet and download a number of files totaling approximately 54 megabytes. The installer will run in your taskbar and stay hidden until it is done; however, you can click on the icon at any point to check the status.
Once the necessary files have been downloaded, the installation will commence. Upon completion, you should be presented with the screen shown in .

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Now that your site is up and running, you are probably eager to start working with MOSS. However, you must now go through the process of starting and configuring some of the additional MOSS services and features. Luckily, Microsoft has streamlined and simplified this process through an Administrator's task list.

Figure : Your first MOSS Site!

Click Start, then All Programs, then Microsoft Office Server and SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.
Your browser will load, and you will be presented with the Central Administration home page, which contains the following areas:
Administrator Tasks
These tasks have been provided by Microsoft to ensure that you complete the setup of MOSS successfully. It is recommended that you follow these tasks in order. As you complete each task, you will want to delete it from the list. You can do this by clicking on the task name, and then clicking the Delete link in the task detail screen.
Farm Topology
This area shows all of the servers in your MOSS farm and what services are running on each. Since you have just completed a single server installation, you will see only one server listed, along with all of the services associated to it.
Resources
This is an area where you can add links to useful resources that assist you with the management of MOSS 2007.
Your screen should appear similar to .

Figure : Central Administration after a single-server installation
To get started with your additional MOSS configuration steps, click the first task in the Administrator Task list, entitled "READ FIRST–Click this link for deployment information."
By clicking on the title of the task, you are taken to a details page that contains additional information about the task (). Once you have read the details and the task has been completed, click the Delete button at the top of the window to remove the task from your list. For each task, you will notice an Actions field. Within this field there will typically be an associated link, which will take you to important instructions or a page associated with completing the action.

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In , we went through the steps to install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 onto a single server. In this chapter, we are going to broaden this basic installation out to numerous servers to create a multiserver farm. When we discuss multiserver farms, we are really addressing the subjects of availability and scalability. These topics are often discussed together and they mean numerous things. They can mean having a fast-responding environment (Multiple Web Front Ends [WFE] handling user requests) or it can mean having a redundant environment to provide increased uptime. In either case, we are looking at moving from a single server implementation to a multiple server environment. This chapter details the trade-offs, decisions, and processes in creating a multiserver MOSS implementation.

One of the challenges in scaling out a MOSS site is deciding which services need their own server(s). In this chapter, we will specifically look at Search, Index, Excel Services, and Shared Services. There are valid reasons why we place Excel Services on its own dedicated server or servers if it is being heavily used. Excel Services is a huge resource hog. Similarly, Index, Query, and Search are often best installed on their own server(s) for performance reasons. We want to isolate all of these services if possible, and using a multiserver farm allows for this type of architecture.

A small company may do very well with a server environment where the entire SharePoint environment resides on a single server. This is perfectly acceptable, but you should be aware that when running on a single server, you will have no redundancy. As your needs grow, you can always scale out by adding additional WFEs and Application servers, but if your core server goes down, your MOSS environment is dead until you recover.

You can also run your SQL environment from the core server. However, we are again looking at a failure point, and the performance degradation you will see may warrant the need to separate the WFE from the Database Server. Medium to large companies will, however, benefit from multiple servers in their farm, as it will allow more users to work without interruption in their portal environments.

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In , we went through the steps to install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 onto a single server. In this chapter, we are going to broaden this basic installation out to numerous servers to create a multiserver farm. When we discuss multiserver farms, we are really addressing the subjects of availability and scalability. These topics are often discussed together and they mean numerous things. They can mean having a fast-responding environment (Multiple Web Front Ends [WFE] handling user requests) or it can mean having a redundant environment to provide increased uptime. In either case, we are looking at moving from a single server implementation to a multiple server environment. This chapter details the trade-offs, decisions, and processes in creating a multiserver MOSS implementation.

One of the challenges in scaling out a MOSS site is deciding which services need their own server(s). In this chapter, we will specifically look at Search, Index, Excel Services, and Shared Services. There are valid reasons why we place Excel Services on its own dedicated server or servers if it is being heavily used. Excel Services is a huge resource hog. Similarly, Index, Query, and Search are often best installed on their own server(s) for performance reasons. We want to isolate all of these services if possible, and using a multiserver farm allows for this type of architecture.

A small company may do very well with a server environment where the entire SharePoint environment resides on a single server. This is perfectly acceptable, but you should be aware that when running on a single server, you will have no redundancy. As your needs grow, you can always scale out by adding additional WFEs and Application servers, but if your core server goes down, your MOSS environment is dead until you recover.

You can also run your SQL environment from the core server. However, we are again looking at a failure point, and the performance degradation you will see may warrant the need to separate the WFE from the Database Server. Medium to large companies will, however, benefit from multiple servers in their farm, as it will allow more users to work without interruption in their portal environments.

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In order to scale MOSS, you have to think about which parts you can scale and also the costs you incur and benefits you gain in each scaling approach. In MOSS, you can scale in several different ways:

Adding Web Front Ends (WFEs)
Adding application servers
Scaling and clustering the database

In , I have broken our environment into three tiers: Web Front Ends, Application Servers, and Database Servers. Again, as discussed earlier, this entire picture can fit onto one single server. MOSS 2007 does make it easy to scale out. Later in the chapter, we will walk through the process of adding an additional server to our farm, but first I want to explain the different tiers and help you to understand the picture in more clearly.

The Web Front End's primary role is to render web content to the end user. Optionally, when you set up your search environment, a single WFE or multiple WFEs can also be used to query the Index server. Users interact directly with the Query server, and you can run it either on a dedicated server or on all WFEs.

Application Servers are where you set your various roles, such as Central Administration, Excel Services, Search/Index and Shared Service Providers.

Database Servers are your repositories for all that is SharePoint. What I mean is that SharePoint stores everything in SQL Server. A common question that comes up from time to time is "Where are the documents stored?" Plan your database implementation properly, and you will ensure a healthy and reliable SharePoint environment.

Figure : MOSS farm components

Before we begin our installation, it is important to plan where you want to place the various roles, such as Excel Services, Shared Service Provider, Search, Index, and so on. This is critical in ensuring a successful implementation.

These application server roles can be deployed to multiple servers. The code that is deployed to each server is identical, and the application server roles do not store any data. In other words, each instance of these server roles remains identical, so if one of the server computers fails, no saved data is lost. The web servers automatically load balance all requests to these server roles across the available application server computers.

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In previous versions of SharePoint, we were provided with different size farms. Small farms () could consist of one WFE, the Application Server Role, and Database server all residing on the same box. Alternatively, it could be branched out to two servers. The frontend servers are designated as web servers and provide web content to clients, and the Application Server Role provides services such as Excel Services, Business Data Catalog, search queries, crawling, and indexing content. This model typically is fine for a small organization, but its suitability will really suffer when we start to look at fault tolerance and recoverability. This is where the medium to large farms come into play. Not only do the larger farms assist in spreading some of the load, but you can also gain some fault tolerance benefits with these models.

Figure : Small farm topology

A medium server farm () typically consists of a database server, an application server running Office SharePoint Server 2007, and one or two frontend web servers running Office SharePoint Server 2007 and IIS. In this configuration, the application server provides indexing services and Excel Calculation Services, and the frontend web servers service search queries and provide web content.

Figure : Medium farm topology

A large server farm () typically consists of two or more clustered database servers, several load-balanced frontend web servers running IIS and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and two or more application servers running Office SharePoint Server 2007. In this configuration, each of the application servers provides specific Office SharePoint Server 2007 services, such as indexing or Excel Calculation Services, and the frontend servers provide web content.

Figure : Large farm topology

All of the web servers in your server farm must have the same SharePoint Products and Technologies installed. For example, if all of the servers in your server farm are running Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you cannot add to your farm a server that is running only Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. To run Office Project Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 in your server farm, you must install Office Project Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 on each of your web servers. This also would be the case for other products, such as Knowledge Networks. To enhance the security of your farm and reduce the surface area that is exposed to a potential attack, you can turn off services on particular servers after you install SharePoint Products and Technologies.

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The following sections go through the process of implementing a multiserver farm.

Before you begin, it's important to remember the following:

The account that you select for installing Office SharePoint Server 2007 must be a member of the Administrators group on every server on which you install Office SharePoint Server 2007, and this account is automatically assigned as the SSP administrator. Therefore, by default the SSP administrator is also the local administrator on all of the farm servers. You can, however, remove this account from the Administrators group on the servers after installation.
To deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a server farm environment, you must provide credentials for several different accounts.
You must install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on the same drive on all load-balanced frontend web server computers.
You must install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a clean installation of the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later. If you uninstall a previous version of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and then install Office SharePoint Server 2007, Setup might fail to create the configuration database, and the installation will fail.
You must install the same language packs on all servers.
All the instances of Office SharePoint Server 2007 in the farm must be in the same language.
You must use the Complete installation option on all computers you want to be index servers, query servers, or servers that run Excel Calculation Services.
If you want to have more than one index server in a farm, you must use a different Shared Services Provider (SSP) for each index server.

Install the role of Application server onto each farm server. (For detailed instructions, refer to .)
Install .NET 3.0. (For detailed instructions, refer to .)
From the product disc, run Setup.exe on one of your web server computers. Alternatively, from the product download, run Officeserver.exe.
On the "Enter your Product Key" page, enter your product key, and then click Continue.
On the "Read the Microsoft Software License Terms" page, review the terms, select the "I accept the terms of this agreement" checkbox, and then click Continue.

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This chapter provides a step-by-step guide for building a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 multiserver farm implementation. Essentially, the build process is very simple and straightforward, but what happens after the build can make or break your implementation. Placement of services is critical, and there are many details that must be taken into consideration. As stated earlier in this chapter, there are times when a small farm will make more sense than a medium or large farm, and visa versa. Consider the following areas to start with your planning:

Figure : Click Retrieve Database Names

Number of users (multiple WFEs)
Number of documents (SQL storage)
Fault tolerance/allowable downtime (multiple WFEs, application servers, clusters)

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, there are a number of worksheets that Microsoft has placed on TechNet that will assist with planning your environment. Without proper planning, your implementation will fail or at the very least cause unnecessary headaches down the line. Using Microsoft's planning worksheets can alleviate some future stress and allow you to provide for your cus

Table of Contents

Document collaboration

Wikis

Intranet template

News

Site directories

My Sites

Relevance

Authoring

Workflow

Rich web forms

Self-service forms

Real-time data validation

Excel Services

Report Center

Dashboards and KPIs

Business Data Web Parts