Chapter Planning the Logical Architecture 1 TOPICS COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER AL SharePoint Editions and Features RI Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture CO PY RI GH TE D MA TE Designing a Logical Taxonomy
Implementing a SharePoint Server 2010 solution begins with understanding the features and services offered by the product line and the way in which SharePoint structures information. In addition, you should understand how you can impact the structure of this information. In this chapter, your journey will begin with an explanation of these important topics. First, you will explore the different editions of SharePoint 2010 and the features offered by these editions.
SharePoint Editions and Features 3 SharePoint Defined SharePoint 2010 is a collection of products that serve as a business collaboration platform for organizations. SharePoint is a multitier application that relies on several other Microsoft technologies. For example, SharePoint requires a database and uses SQL Server for that database. SharePoint requires a web server and uses Internet Information Services (IIS) for that web server. SharePoint has often been called a content management system (CMS).
Chapter 1 4 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture Team collaboration: The collaboration features of SharePoint include discussion forums, task lists, document libraries, and workflows. Each of these features adds to the collaboration capabilities of SharePoint and can be customized for the needs of the organization. ■ As you can see, SharePoint is a flexible application offering many different uses for the modern information-based organization. Exercise 1.
SharePoint Editions and Features 5 SharePoint 2010 is not an entirely new product. SharePoint has existed as a product in previous versions, and the SharePoint 2010 release adds new features. One of the primary new features is a major interface overhaul. The result is a look-and-feel similar to Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 with the use of the Ribbon. Exercise 1.2 will help you explore the new interface using Microsoft’s website. E X E R C I S E 1.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture SharePoint Editions When planning a SharePoint implementation, you must understand the four different editions so that you can select the right one for your needs. The four editions are ■ SharePoint Foundation 2010 ■ SharePoint Server 2010 Standard ■ SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise ■ SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites In implementation, the SharePoint Server 2010 editions are really just different licenses.
SharePoint Editions and Features TA B L E 1 .1 SharePoint 2010 Core Editions and Important Facts SharePoint 2010 Edition Licensing Important Facts Foundation Windows Server must be licensed; SQL Server Standard Edition is recommended (SQL Server Express Edition may be used for smallscale deployments); Foundation Edition license is free. Provides a collaboration and content-management platform.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture ■ Accessibility ■ Blogs ■ Browser-based Customizations ■ Business Connectivity Services ■ Business Data Connectivity Service ■ Claims-Based Authentication ■ Client Object Model (OM) ■ Configuration Wizards ■ Connections to Microsoft Office Clients ■ Connections to Office Communication Server and Exchange ■ Cross-Browser Support ■ Developer Dashboard ■ Discussions ■ Event Receivers ■ External Data Column ■ External Lists ■ H
SharePoint Editions and Features ■ Sandboxed Solutions ■ SharePoint Designer ■ SharePoint Health Analyzer ■ SharePoint Lists ■ SharePoint Ribbon ■ SharePoint Service Architecture ■ SharePoint Timer Jobs ■ SharePoint Workspace ■ Silverlight Web Part ■ Site Search ■ Solution Packages ■ Streamlined Central Administration ■ Support for Office Web Apps ■ Unattached Content Database Recovery ■ Usage Reporting and Logging ■ Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools ■ Visual Up
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture ■ Content Organizer ■ Document Sets ■ Duplicate Detection ■ Enterprise Scale Search ■ Enterprise Wikis ■ Federated Search ■ Improved Governance ■ Keyword Suggestions ■ Managed Metadata Service ■ Memberships ■ Metadata-driven Navigation ■ Metadata-driven Refi nement ■ Mobile Search Experience ■ Multistage Disposition ■ My Content ■ My Newsfeed ■ My Profi le ■ Note Board ■ Organization Browser ■ People and Expertise Se
SharePoint Editions and Features ■ Tags ■ Tags and Notes Tool ■ Unique Document IDs ■ Web Analytics ■ Windows 7 Search ■ Word Automation Services ■ Workflow Templates Finally, SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition includes all of the features of Foundation and Standard, but adds the following features: ■ Access Services ■ Advanced Content Processing ■ Advanced Sorting ■ Business Data Integration with the Office Client ■ Business Data Web Parts ■ Business Intelligence Center ■
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture As a planning exercise, you can go through the preceding three lists and highlight or in some way mark the features you will need for your implementation. If no Enterprise Edition features are marked, the Standard Edition may suffice for your implementation. If no Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition features are marked, the SharePoint Foundation 2010 free license may suffice. Be sure to consider future plans when making this decision.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 13 me that we can take our existing Access databases, upgrade them to Access 2010, and then publish them into the SharePoint site so that other users can access them and manage the data in them?” I asked him if he would like a demonstration and he said that he would. I booted up my SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition virtual machine, took a copy of one of their Access 2007 databases, and opened it in Access 2010.
Chapter 1 14 F I G U R E 1 .1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture The SharePoint 2010 logical architecture Server Farm (Databases, Application Servers, Web Front Ends) Site Collection Site Site Site Collection Site The logical architecture includes three elements in a SharePoint 2010 deployment including: ■ Server farms ■ Sites ■ Site collections All three components are explained in the following sections.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture ■ 15 Extremely large organizations that demand better performance than can be achieved through single-server farms in such large-scale installations It is important to understand that all three server types (database, application, and web frontend) can exist as a single physical server or as three or more separate servers. Additional complexity is added in that three or more servers can be used, through virtualization, on a single physical server.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture Content The Content databases are among the most important databases in your SharePoint 2010 deployments. They contain all of the site content. This includes files and documents in document libraries, list data, properties of web parts, audit logs, usernames and rights, and sandboxed solutions. The complete data set for a single site is contained in a single Content database; however, more than one site can be contained in a single content database.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 17 When deploying SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Edition, the SharePoint Foundation 2010 databases must all be considered, and several additional databases must be considered as well. The following databases are added when Standard Edition is used instead of Foundation: Search Administration The Search Administration database is used by the search service application.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture database when compared to other SharePoint 2010 databases. The size of the database will depend on the number of users and groups and the ratio of users to groups. This is a balanced read/write database. Social Tagging The Social Tagging database is used by the User Profile and Metadata Management service applications. The database stores social tags and notes created by users along with the associated URLs.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 19 The WFE servers run Internet Information Services (IIS) as the web server software. IIS serves up the ASP .NET web pages that comprise the SharePoint sites. It also drives the engine used for uploading and downloading documents to and from document libraries. In the end, IIS does most of the actual processing work that delivers content to users. In Chapter 2, the WFE server is discussed more from a physical implementation standpoint.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture Site Collections and Sites As shown in Figure 1.1, the next layer under the server farm in the SharePoint logical architecture is the site collection. A single farm may provide more than one site collection. Site collections are really just administration boundaries that provide trickle down or inherited management for the sites contained within the site collection.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 21 Site collections may include several different kinds of sites, and within sites, subsites may also be used. Going further, within sites are pages, lists, libraries, folders, and documents. Each site and component is further described in the following sections. Collaboration Sites At the heart of SharePoint 2010 is the concept of collaboration. Collaboration is defi ned as the ability to share information and ideas and to make decisions as a team.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture My Sites My Sites provide a place each user can customize for himself or herself. A My Site allows you to list the colleagues with whom you work, your interests, and personal newsfeeds customized to your liking. Figure 1.4 shows the My Site page as it looks by default when fi rst visited by a user. F I G U R E 1.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture F I G U R E 1. 5 A customized My Site page in SharePoint 2010 F I G U R E 1.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture The most important thing to remember is that My Sites provide two primary information purposes: providing information about the users and providing customized information to the users. Each SharePoint user can search the profiles to get publicly available information about others users. Additionally, each SharePoint user may customize her My Site so that she sees information on the site that is most useful to her.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 25 Folders Within libraries, folders can be created for organizational purposes. For each library, you can choose whether folders should be enabled or not. Figure 1.8 shows a document library with folders used for organization.
Chapter 1 26 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture It is very important that you know how to enable document sets. Exercise 1.3 provides instructions for enabling document sets. After working through the exercise, you can spend more time working with the document set configurations if you like. E X E R C I S E 1. 3 Enabling Document Sets In this exercise, you will enable document sets at the site - collection level.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 5. 27 When the process completes, the Site Collection Features page will reload and the status for the Document Sets feature will change to Active. Once the document sets feature is enabled, you can create document sets in your SharePoint 2010 sites. Document sets are created from within the document library Documents tab view. You must enable content type management for the document library. Exercise 1.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture E X E R C I S E 1. 4 (continued) 5. In the General Settings category, click the Advanced Settings link. 6. Choose Yes for the Content Types Allow Management Of Content Types option. 7. Scroll down and click the OK button to save your changes.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 29 After completing Exercises 1.3 and 1.4, you will be ready to associate the Document Set content type with the document library. This action will enable the creation of document sets in the document library in question. Exercise 1.5 shows you how to add the Document Set content type to the document library. E X E R C I S E 1.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture E X E R C I S E 1. 5 (continued) 6. On the Add Content Types screen, click the Document Set content type and then click the Add button. 7. Click OK to add the content type to the document library. You can also create new content types based on the Document Set content type. This allows you to customize the content type and limit the types of documents included in the document set.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture conference rooms at your facility. This list will be stored in the Content database for the site. Exercise 1.6 provides instructions for creating such a list. E X E R C I S E 1.6 Creating a Custom Tracking List In this exercise, you will create a list for tracking projectors used in conference rooms in your facility. You will track the projector name, current location, and the person using the projector, if applicable. 1.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture E X E R C I S E 1. 6 (continued) 6. You will be taken to the Project Tracking - All Items page. When this page loads, click the List Settings button on the List tab in the Ribbon. 7. Scroll down the page until you see the Columns section. In this section, click the Title link to edit the column. 8. Change the Column Name value to Projector ID and click OK.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 9. 33 You will return to the List Settings page. Scroll down to the Columns section again and click the Create Column link to create a new column. 10. Enter Current Location for the Column Name, scroll down the page, select Yes for Require That This Column Contains Information, and then click OK. 11.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture E X E R C I S E 1. 6 (continued) 13. Within the Lists category in the left sidebar, click the Project Tracking link to view the custom list. 14. Click the Add New Item link to add an entry to the list. 15. In the Project Tracking - New Item screen, enter the following values for the item: Projector ID: Sony 01 Current Location: Storage Person Requesting: {leave empty} 16. Click Save to save the new item into the list in the database.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture F I G U R E 1. 9 35 Viewing the custom list within SQL Server Management Studio Typically, you would not use SQL Server Management Studio to directly access data in SharePoint lists; however, it is useful here to actually see the data in the backend database. Directly accessing data, particularly with INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE T-SQL commands, can cause severe problems for your SharePoint sites and could result in the loss of support from Microsoft.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture name that is never accessed from the Internet. That is not Microsoft’s intention, but it could be done. The names are simply there to help you remember why you are using the zone. Therefore, you should use the appropriate name with the most logical source. You may use the extranet zone when you are building a zone to be accessed only by partnering organizations.
Understanding the SharePoint Logical Architecture 37 5. In the Name field, change the name to SharePoint - Custom Zone so that you can easily identify the site at a later time. 6. Accept the default Port settings and scroll down the page to the Security Configuration section. In this section, change the Allow Anonymous setting to Yes. 7. Scroll further down the page, change the Zone setting to Custom, and then click OK.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture After you complete Exercise 1.7, the default site will be accessible to anonymous users and this authentication structure will be applied as the custom zone. In some scenarios, you might want to unextend a web application so that a particular zone is no longer supported. This action is accomplished in the Web Applications Management page of Central Administration using the Delete Remove SharePoint from IIS Web Site option.
Designing a Logical Taxonomy 39 In most organizations, the following questions must be answered in order to properly design a logical taxonomy: ■ Which departments will use the SharePoint server? ■ What features of SharePoint will they utilize? ■ What security policies may impact the administration or use of the SharePoint infrastructure? ■ What, if any, custom development will be performed on the SharePoint servers? ■ What is the budget for the project? Sadly, that last item is often overlooked
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture Building a Business Team The fi rst and most important step in planning a SharePoint 2010 logical design and deployment is the formation of a planning team. The team should include members from several areas of business.
Designing a Logical Taxonomy 41 In the smallest implementations, the SharePoint administrator is likely to be the AD administrator as well. In smaller companies, one or two IT professionals will perform the roles of several dozen professionals in larger companies. As you can see, the SharePoint administrator has more responsibilities in smaller organizations than in larger organizations.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture During the team meeting, you will want to develop the survey for the organization’s employees. This survey is a primary reason for having business users on the team. They can help you make sure the survey is understandable for the business users. Using Video for Simplification While working with a company in central Ohio, my company came up with a very creative method for performing surveys like those discussed in this section.
Designing a Logical Taxonomy 43 Requirements analysis is a complex topic by itself, which could occupy hundreds of pages. For more information on requirements analysis, consider reading the book How to Cheat at IT Project Management by Susan Snedaker (Syngress Press, 2005). Requirements analysis can be defi ned as the process of discovering a project’s requirements.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture ■ Scalability ■ Interoperability ■ Business continuity The major difference between functional and nonfunctional requirements is that functional requirements specify the “what ” and nonfunctional requirements specify the “how.” While some crossover may exist, this is the primary point of separation. Defining the Budget The budget will be based on hardware purchases, software licenses, and man hours.
Summary 45 creating documentation. If you are doing so, you will have a head start when you get to the end and are ready to fi nalize the documentation. After designing the logical architecture for your SharePoint 2010 deployment, you should have at least three sets of documents: ■ Logical architecture diagrams ■ Business requirements ■ A budget sheet The logical architecture diagrams will visually describe your SharePoint implementation from a logical view.
Chapter 1 ■ Planning the Logical Architecture Exam Essentials Knowing SharePoint editions and features. Understand the different editions of SharePoint 2010 so that you can choose the right edition when given a scenario. Know the features that are not available in the SharePoint Foundation 2010 server. Understanding the SharePoint logical architecture. Know the logical hierarchy of a SharePoint deployment and the purpose of each level in the hierarchy.
