Posts

Understanding Site Collections

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First and foremost, a site collection is a (hierarchically arranged) logical container for grouping sites. From there, you need to know that the top-level site in a site collection is often a portal site that aggregates content from subsites - although this isn’t required - and that a Web application can host multiple site collections. The number of site collections you create depends on many factors. Every site in a collection shares navigation, security and permissions, templates, and content types. You should plan to group together sites that need to share these items and make them a site collection. Before you create a site collection, gather several pieces of information - including these: Path: You can determine the path to your site collection before you create it. The servername in the URL is determined by the Web application. Your two default options are to create the site collection at the root of the URL or at the sites path. Subsites are created below th...
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Setting up Web Applications

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You can create as many Web applications as you feel are necessary, but the big thing about creating different Web applications is that you can isolate site collections from each other. And why is isolation a good thing? Well, if each Web application has its own configuration, that means that you can then do the following: Use different authentication. Giving each Web application its own authentication scheme means you can have one Web application for internal use and another for external access. Use separate application pools. If you set it up so that each Web application uses its own application pool in Internet Information Services, you can keep the applications separate from each other on the server so they can’t corrupt each other. Use separate databases. By using different databases for each Web application, you can isolate content for backup and restore operations. To create a new Web application, follow these steps: 1. Click the Application Management t...
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Performing Administrative Tasks

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One feature of SharePoint is that you can use it to collaborate with members of a team to accomplish a project. I can’t think of a better project that requires collaboration among many parties than installing and configuring SharePoint. Apparently Microsoft agrees; it added an Administrator Tasks list to the Central Administration Web site. By using the Administrator Tasks list, you get a feel for how you can use SharePoint to manage tasks. Viewing administrative tasks When you install SharePoint, SharePoint creates a list of administrative tasks that you need to complete if you want to configure SharePoint. You may not need to complete every single task, and you may need to complete additional tasks that aren’t listed. The list of administrative tasks is just a list that Microsoft believes most installations need to complete. MOSS 2007 includes additional tasks that don’t apply to Windows SharePoint Services such as configured shared services. To view the Administrator ...
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Creating a Shared Services Provider

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MOSS 2007 requires that you create and configure a Shared Services Provider (SSP). SSP enables the servers in your server farm to share services with each other. Most of the great features that you want to use in MOSS 2007, such as personalization, Excel Services, and the Business Data Catalog, are hosted by the Shared Services Provider. You usually only need one SSP per server farm, but it is possible to have more than one. Before you can create the SSP, you must create a Web application for the SSP administration site in Internet Information Services (IIS). To create the new Web application for the SSP administration site, follow these steps: Browse to the Central Administration Web site. Click the Application Management tab on the Central Administration home page. Click the Create or Extend Web Application link in the SharePoint Web Application Management section. Click the Create a New Web Application link. The Create a New Web Application page appears. Acce...
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Configuring SharePoint Services

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The SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard creates the database and gets your servers ready for serving SharePoint. Before you can actually start using SharePoint, however, you have to configure which services you want to run on hardware in your server farm. The following two services must be configured first for MOSS 2007: Office SharePoint Server Search: This service provides search and indexing features to your SharePoint implementation. You must implement the service on at least one front-end server. Windows SharePoint Services Web Application: This service must run on any front-end server that you intend to use as a Web server that would serve up the Web pages for your SharePoint server. For Windows SharePoint Server version 3 installations, you need only to start the Windows SharePoint Services Search service. To start a new service, follow these steps: Browse to the Central Administration Web site. The Central Administration site is ...
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Creating the Server Farm

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When you create a server farm, you usually build your back-end servers before you build your front-end servers. For example, you install your databases on your database server before you install your front-end servers. Regardless of how you divvy up the servers, the first step in any server farm installation is planning. You need to plan how many servers you need and what services are going to be installed on each. Here’s the general procedure for creating a SharePoint server farm: Plan your server farm. You must determine your server topology before you start installing software. (A topology is a fancy word that defines how many servers you’re planning to deploy.) If you’re unsure, you could start with the minimum two servers and scale up as needs require. Procure all the hardware and software required based on your plan. Prepare each of your servers for installation. You want to start with clean servers running Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1. Create se...
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Installing SharePoint for the Real World

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Unless your organization is especially small, you can’t get away with running SharePoint on a single server. Instead, you have to use multiple servers. When you use multiple servers to run an application, it’s called a server farm. You don’t have to start with a large farm because you can scale up by adding more servers as your needs require. A server farm consists of multiple servers that work together to provide the SharePoint experience. Companies often find it necessary to span services across multiple servers to provide the performance and availability their organization requires. Server farms are made up of physical servers that run logical services. The physical servers are the computer hardware that you can touch. The logical services are the applications that run on the physical servers. In many cases, your physical servers pull double and triple duty by running multiple logical services. A minimum SharePoint installation usually has the following two physical s...
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