Chapter 5: Planning for Performance and Scalability
In This Chapter
Planning SharePoint 2010 physical architecture
Sizing SharePoint 2010
Planning for high availability
Earlier SharePoint implementations emphasized the physical architecture of the computer system and how best to manage its performance and capacity. Although that concern stays constant, more recent SharePoint versions shifted the emphasis (slowly but surely) from physical to logical. These days you design your logical topology first — guided by a short list of goals that benefit the whole enterprise — and then figure out the physical infrastructure needed to support your SharePoint implementation.
Naturally, physical and logical have to work together — and here’s where they start: SharePoint 2010 uses a 64-bit code base exclusively (that’s “x64 architecture” if you want to sound hip). x64 offers better memory management — which for SharePoint and SQL databases means more in-memory caching to speed up processing.
The time was right for SharePoint 2010 to move to 64-bit. Since the old days of SharePoint 2007, more hardware is available in 64-bit designs. CPU processing power has grown exponentially, improved multicore chips proliferate, and SharePoint 2010 (a multithreaded software architecture) can take full advantage of it all. SharePoint 2010 offers x64-friendly features to improve the delivery of some ambitious goals that the physical infrastructure must also meet:
♦ High system availability.
♦ Reliability ...
