Chapter overview: Install Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a server farm environment

  • Article

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

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Topic Last Modified: 2016-11-14

In this article:

  • Suggested topologies

  • Before you begin deployment

  • Overview of the deployment process

    Important

    This article discusses how to do a clean installation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a server farm environment. It does not cover upgrading from previous releases of Office SharePoint Server 2007 or how to upgrade from Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. For more information about upgrading from SharePoint Portal Server 2003, see Upgrading to Office SharePoint Server 2007.

    Note

    This article does not cover installing Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a single computer as a stand-alone installation. For more information, see Install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a stand-alone computer.

You can deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a server farm environment if you are hosting a large number of sites, if you want the best possible performance, or if you want the scalability of a multi-tier topology. A server farm consists of one or more servers dedicated to running the Office SharePoint Server 2007 application.

Note

There is no direct upgrade from a stand-alone installation to a farm installation.

Because a server farm deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007 is more complex than a stand-alone deployment, we recommend that you plan your deployment. Planning your deployment can help you to gather the information you need and to make important decisions before beginning to deploy. For information about planning, see Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Suggested topologies

Server farm environments can encompass a wide range of topologies, and can include many servers or as few as two servers.

A small server farm typically consists of a database server running either Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with the most recent service pack, and one or more servers running Internet Information Services (IIS) and Office SharePoint Server 2007. In this configuration, the front-end servers are configured as Web servers and application servers. The Web server role provides Web content to clients. The application server role provides Office SharePoint Server 2007 services such as servicing search queries, and crawling and indexing content.

A medium server farm typically consists of a database server, an application server running Office SharePoint Server 2007, and one or two front-end Web servers running Office SharePoint Server 2007 and IIS. In this configuration, the application server provides indexing services and Excel Calculation Services, and the front-end Web servers service search queries and provide Web content.

A large server farm typically consists of two or more clustered database servers, several load-balanced front-end Web servers running Office SharePoint Server 2007, and two or more application servers running Office SharePoint Server 2007. In this configuration, each of the application servers provides specific Office SharePoint Server 2007 services such as indexing or Excel Calculation Services, and the front-end servers provide Web content.

Note

All of the Web servers in your server farm must have the same SharePoint Products and Technologies installed. For example, if all of the servers in your server farm are running Office SharePoint Server 2007, you cannot add to your farm a server that is running only Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. To run Office Project Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 in your server farm, you must install Office Project Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 on each of your Web servers. To enhance the security of your farm and reduce the surface area that is exposed to a potential attack, you can turn off services on particular servers after you install SharePoint Products and Technologies.

Before you begin deployment

This section provides information about actions that you must perform before you begin deployment.

Important

The account that you select for installing Office SharePoint Server 2007 needs to be a member of the Administrators group on every server on which you install Office SharePoint Server 2007. However, you can remove this account from the Administrators group on the servers after installation.
For information about assigning users to be SSP administrators, see "Shared Services Providers" in Plan for security roles (Office SharePoint Server).

  • To deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a server farm environment, you must provide credentials for several different accounts. For information about these accounts, see Plan for administrative and service accounts (Office SharePoint Server) in the Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007 guide.

  • You must install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on the same drive on all load-balanced front-end Web servers.

  • You must install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a clean installation of the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system with the most recent service pack. If you uninstall a previous version of Office SharePoint Server 2007, and then install Office SharePoint Server 2007, Setup might fail to create the configuration database and the installation will fail.

    Note

    We recommend that you read the Known Issues/Readme documentation before you install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a domain controller. Installing Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a domain controller requires additional configuration steps that are not discussed in this article.

  • You must install the same language packs on all servers in the farm. For more information about installing language packs, see Deploy language packs (Office SharePoint Server).

  • All the instances of Office SharePoint Server 2007 in the farm must be in the same language. For example, you cannot have both an English version of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and a Japanese version of Office SharePoint Server 2007 in the same farm.

  • You must use the Complete installation option on all computers you want to be index servers, query servers, or servers that run Excel Calculation Services.

  • If you place a query server beyond a firewall from its index server, you must open the NetBIOS ports (TCP/User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ports 137, 138, and 139) on all firewalls that separate these servers. If your environment does not use NetBIOS, you must use direct-hosted server message block (SMB); this requires that you open the TCP/UDP 445 port.

  • If you want to have more than one index server in a farm, you must use a different Shared Services Provider (SSP) for each index server.

Overview of the deployment process

The deployment process consists of three phases: deploying and configuring the server infrastructure, creating and configuring one or more Shared Services Providers (SSPs), and deploying and configuring SharePoint site collections and sites.

Phase 1: Deploy and configure the server infrastructure

Deploying and configuring the server infrastructure consists of the following steps:

  • Preparing the database server.

  • Preinstalling the databases (optional).

  • Verifying that the servers meet hardware and software requirements.

  • Running Setup on all servers you want to be in the farm.

  • Installing available language template packs on front-end Web servers (optional). For more information about installing language template packs, see Deploy language packs (Office SharePoint Server).

  • Running the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard.

  • If you want to search over the Help content for Office SharePoint Server 2007, starting the Windows SharePoint Services Search service.

Phase 2: Create and configure a Shared Services Provider

Creating and configuring an SSP consists of the following steps:

  • Creating a Web application to host the SSP.

  • Creating the SSP.

  • Configuring the Web application and the SSP.

  • Configuring services on the servers.

For more information about creating and configuring SSPs, see Create and configure Shared Services Providers.

Phase 3: Deploy and configure SharePoint site collections and sites

Deploying and configuring SharePoint site collections and sites consists of the following steps:

  • Creating a Web Application to host the site collections and sites.

  • Creating the site collections.

  • Creating the sites.

For more information about creating site collections and sites, see Deploy and configure SharePoint sites.

Download this book

This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

See the full list of available books at Office SharePoint Server technical library.