Editor’s Note: Get SharePoint and Exchange Firing on All Cylinders

Getting the most out of SharePoint and Exchange means exploring all the components, features and variables that make up the systems, then optimizing them for your enterprise.

By Mitch Irsfeld

If you’ve deployed SharePoint and Exchange throughout your enterprise, congratulations, you have the premier messaging and collaboration environment at your disposal. But don’t stop there. Like any good tool, the power of these enterprise applications is in the training and customization that happens once you have it. This TechNet feature package is dedicated to helping you get the most out of your SharePoint and Exchange environments.

Tuning a system for optimal performance requires an investment in time to understand the system. That may seem obvious, but there are many variables that affect a system, and getting it to sing all the right notes at the right time requires deep understanding of those variables.

Exchange at Its Best

One of the first things that can affect the efficiency of your Exchange Server infrastructure is how you manage and configure the server roles, and Exchange 2010 expands on these roles. Japp Wesselius published “Exchange 2010 – A Practical Approach” and the current edition of TechNet Magazine excerpts from that title with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010: Server Roles. Check it out for a rundown of these server roles and best practices for configuring each role.

What’s the most-uttered complaint about email servers? “Boy, email is sure slow today!” And then the search begins for the bottleneck. The key is to eliminate the bottlenecks before they happen. Check out Understanding Exchange Performance for several resources to help you optimize your Exchange environment for high performance.

Speaking of preventing problems before they happen (even before you deploy Exchange), download the free Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer to perform an overall readiness scan of your environment.  Also use the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant to get customized instructions to upgrade to Exchange 2010 on-premises or in the cloud.

And as we pointed out in a previous TechNet feature package Email in the Cloud, email is often one of the first workloads to migrate to the cloud. That is often accomplished by starting out with a combination of on-premises and cloud-based servers. This hybrid approach can be very beneficial and still provide the administrative control of an on-premises environment. Read Understanding Hybrid Deployment in the TechNet library to see if that approach is right for your organization.

Delighting your users in today’s enterprise environments means giving them the most flexibility and mobility that you can. And that is especially true when it comes to email access. If you haven’t already, download Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1. You’ll notice enhancements in security, administration and remote access from virtually any platform or device.

SharePoint on All Cyinders

It seems like the more time you spend with SharePoint, the more tricks it reveals.  Just ask Microsoft MVP Chris O’Brien, who revels in customizing SharePoint on his Fun and Games with the Nuts and Bolts of SharePoint blog. Another Microsoft MVP, Brien Posey, has written several articles for TechNet Magazine on the subject, including his just-published Customizing SharePoint Document Libraries. In it he shows why SharePoint document libraries are so popular for document storage due to SharePoint’s indexing capabilities and how you can improve your search results by appending metadata to the documents.

In another TechNet Magazine article, Posey shows how to Optimize SharePoint Workspace Storage to let you work with SharePoint data even when you’re working offline by synchronizing a SharePoint document library to a SharePoint workspace on your local computer.

SharePoint can even consume services from other server farms. To find out how to get services to communicate across SharePoint farm boundaries, read Shannon Bray’s Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Configure Cross-Farm Servicesfrom last month’s TechNet Magazine.

Finally, don’t miss the sections in the feature package on SharePoint Tools and Best Practices and Training for resources to help you get the most out of SharePoint 2010.

Thanks for reading,

Mitch

Mitch Irsfeld*, Editor of TechNet, is a veteran computer industry journalist and content developer who managed editorial staffs at several leading publications, includingInformationWeek, InternetWeek andCommunicationsWeek. He is also an editor for* TechNet Magazine and managing editor of the TechNet Flash newsletter.