How Microsoft IT deployed FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (white paper)

Summary: Learn how MSIT planned and deployed enterprise search to improve index capacity, crawl speed, query response, relevance, and availability.

Applies to: Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Situation

To perform their day-to-day responsibilities, Microsoft employees frequently use enterprise search to find information on the corporate intranet. Microsoft IT used Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to provide enterprise search for employees until 2009, when the content index for the enterprise Search Center approached the software capacity of 50 million items and crawl and query performance decreased. To improve performance, MSIT configured the search system so that it no longer crawled certain content repositories, but then employees were no longer able to get complete search results from the enterprise Search Center.

Solution

Microsoft IT migrated to Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint to provide a more powerful enterprise search solution. This provided the following benefits:

• Centralized search management

• Content index completeness

• Huge content index capacity

• Faster crawls for fresher search results

• Faster query responses

• More customizable search experiences

• More relevant search results

• High availability

• Increased user satisfaction

Organization of this white paper

• Executive summary (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

• Background on the use of enterprise search at Microsoft

• Microsoft enterprise search teams

• Migration to FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

• FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution: environment and topology

• Measurable gains from implementing FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

• Administration at the search service application level

• Collaboration with site owners (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

• Enterprise search center (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

• Lessons learned and MSIT best practices (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

• Conclusion (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

To view the white paper as a single article on TechNet, or to download it, see Improving enterprise search at Microsoft: How FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Powers Worldwide Intranet Search at Microsoft (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735129.aspx).