Plan for content databases in an EPM-Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 extranet environment

  • Article

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Topic Last Modified: 2010-02-24

This article describes how to plan for content databases in an Enterprise Project Management (EPM)/ Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 extranet environment. For an overview of this chapter about how to plan for EPM extranets, see Plan an EPM/Office SharePoint Server 2007 extranet environment.

Content databases

You can use the following two approaches to incorporate content databases into the design (the model incorporates both approaches):

  • Establish target sizes for content databases with appropriate size warning thresholds. Create a new database when size warning thresholds are reached. When you use this approach, site collections are automatically added to the available database or databases, based on size targets alone.

  • Associate site collections to specific content databases. This approach enables you to put one or more site collections in a dedicated database that can be managed independently from the rest.

If you decide to associate site collections to specific content databases, you can use the following methods to achieve this:

  • Use the Stsadm command-line tool to create a site collection in a specific database.

  • Dedicate a database to a single site collection by applying the following database capacity settings:

    • Number of sites before a warning event is generated = 1

    • Maximum number of sites that can be created in this database = 1

  • Add a group of site collections to a dedicated database by following these steps:

    1. Within the Web application, create the database and set the database status to Ready.

    2. Set the status of all other databases to Offline. While content databases are offline, new site collections cannot be created. However, existing site collections in offline databases are still available for both read and write operations.

    3. Create the site collections. They are automatically added to the database.

    4. Set the status of all other databases back to Ready.

Published intranet content

For published intranet content, the model incorporates a dedicated database for each department site collection.

This approach enables each department to manage their content independently.

My Sites

For My Sites, the model achieves scale efficiency by managing databases to the maximum target size. The following settings are configured to achieve this goal:

  • Limit site storage to a maximum of   This setting, which you configure on the Quota Templates page in Central Administration, limits the size of a personal site.

  • Second stage Recycle Bin   This setting, which you configure on the Web Application General Settings page, determines how much additional space is allocated to the second-stage recycle bin.

  • Maximum number of sites that can be created in this database   This setting is configured when you create a database. Calculate the total allowable size of sites by using the numbers that you specify for the previous two values. Then, based on the size goal for each database, determine how many sites will fit into the database.

The model provides the following example size settings based on a target database size of 100 gigabytes (GB) and a target My Site size of x megabytes (MB):

  • Site size limits per site = x MB

  • Target size of database = x GB

  • Maximum number of sites = 200

  • Site Level Warning = 150

When the site level warning is reached, create a new database. After you create the new database, new My Sites are added alternately to the new database and the existing database until the maximum number of sites for one of the databases is reached.

For more information about how to design database settings for My Sites, see Design My Sites architecture.

Team sites

For team sites, the model incorporates a dedicated database for each team site collection. This approach enables you to manage each team's database independently for backup, restore, and migration. Also, when a project is complete, you can easily archive the database associated with the project.

PWA

For PWA, the model uses a dedicated content database.

Project workspaces

For the Project Workspaces, we recommend that you use a dedicated content database for the site collection to create a flexible architecture that will enable moving or migrating the project workspaces if they are independent of any other Web application.

Partner Web

Similar to My Sites, Partner Web achieves scale efficiency by managing databases to the maximum target size. However, in the model, Partner Web also hosts the authoring and staging site collections for the company Internet site. Consequently, database design incorporates both approaches:

  • Authoring and staging site collections are each hosted in a dedicated database.

  • Database and size settings are configured to manage all other sites and databases.

Because Partner Web is hosted in a dedicated Web application, you can create size limits that are more appropriate to the kinds of sizes that are created. The model provides the following example size settings:

  • Target size of database = 100 GB

  • Storage quota per site = 5 GB

  • Maximum number of sites = 20

  • Authoring and Staging site collections hosted in dedicated databases