Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 Best Practices

Intra-Farm versus Inter-Farm Shared Services

Assuming you have a solid understanding of Shared Services in SharePoint Server 2007, and what they provide, we next investigate the differences of Inter-farm SSPs and Intra-farm SSPs. Intra-farm SSPs are multiple SSPs within the same SharePoint Server 2007 farm. Remember that farm = configuration database, so Intra-farm SSPs will all share a common configuration database. First, most installations should have a single SSP. The best practice is to have as few as possible. While it is feasible to have up to 20 SSPs in a single farm, it overcomplicates your configuration and management and is rarely needed. Index and query functions are the primary reasons to create a second SSP in a single farm. Real-world ...