SharePoint 2010 Topologies

As we all know SharePoint is exceedingly scalable but like all things in IT systems you need to start with a solid foundation and foresight of where you are going with your install to have a successful experience. Through this post I will cover Limited Deployments and then move on to Small Farm Topologies. Please do not forget that these examples are exactly that only guidelines and with all things SharePoint one size does not fit all so experiment and see what works for you but please build your SharePoint with growth in mind and do not get painted into a corner with nowhere to go.

Single Server Deployment

The illustration below covers a limited deployment and is only recommended for testing with all SharePoint roles and SQL installed on one box this is only recommended for testing with less than 100 users.

Two Server Deployments

This is a great starting point for a SharePoint farm as this will allow you to scale your deployment out by adding another front end server and application server at a later date. This scenario is recommended for up to 10,000 users.

Through this post I will cover two tier farms, three tier farms and also three tier farm optimized for search. But before I begin I thought I would go back to basics with advice for hardware required to run SharePoint 2010 effectively. So for your SharePoint servers both web front end and application server the recommendations are as follows:-  

• 64 bit, dual processor, 3GHz
• 8 GB RAM
• Minimal 100 GB disk space
• DVD Drive
• Network / Internet Connectivity

And for your database servers:-

• 64 bit environment
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise + Service Pack 2
• SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 + Cumulative Update 3
• SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 + Cumulative Update 2

Two tier small farm

A two tier farm is predicated to support between 10,000 and 20,000 users with a dedicated SQL server for all SharePoint databases.

Three tier farm

This is very much the classic SharePoint architecture with 2 web front end servers a application server and a dedicated SQL server for all databases.

Three tier farms optimized for search

This is the classic setup but with a dedicated SQL server for the search databases this topology is recommended for farms with up to 10 million items to index.