SharePoint world of ECM and Information Management

Resources for Planning and Developing Taxonomies

The following references may prove useful in planning and developing your Web site taxonomy:

• http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/developing_and_creatively_leveraging_hierarchical_metadata_and_taxonomy
• http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tm-vs-thesauri.html

• http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/card_sorting_a_definitive_guide

How SharePoint Farm size impacts on planning and support

When you start new SharePoint project it's very important to understand the size of a farm you are planning to end up, because it impacts on :

• SharePoint farm topology
• SQL Server hardware 
• Staff needs
• Capacity planning

SharePoint Farm Topology size

There are 3 farms topologies, you choose between - Small, Medium and Large. Your farm topology choice is usually dictated by the number of users and content your plan to use inside SharePoint.

They recommend the following values. (I would delete them on 10, actually)

• Small farm: Typically < 50,000 users      
• Medium f   : Typically < 100,000 users
• Large farm: Typically < 500,000 users

The number of users varies depending on usage profiles, type of data being saved, and the type of hardware and network the system is deployed on.

SQL Server hardware

Determine your deployment size by using the following table:

• If your deployment parameters are generally <  than the listed values, your deployment can be considered small  - 4 GB is the minimum required memory (SQL 2005)
• If your deployment parameters are approximately =  to the listed values, your deployment can be considered medium - 8 GB is recommended for medium size deployments
• If your deployment parameters are generally > than the upper limits of most of the listed values, your deployment can be considered large - 16 GB and greater above is recommended for large deployments

 Staff needs

One commonly overlooked component of a successful implementation is staffing. Architects and administrators usually do a good job creating a bill of goods for hardware and software, but they often forget to secure funding for personnel to adequately develop and maintain a new system. SharePoint Server 2007 can consume a large amount of human resources if used to its full potential. Understand what types of dedicated personnel are required in the beginning, and start getting stakeholders' support immediately.

(Note: F = One full time person and P = One part time person.)

 Capacity Planning

The general rule is to plan for 1 RPS (requests per second) per 1000 users (on the minimum recommended hardware)

• Small Farm (single WFE) can serve about 100 RPS
• Medium Farm (2 WFE)  can serve about 200 RPS

 Sources: 1, 2 

 Mirror: http://sharepoint.devs-sandbox.com/index.php?/Practices/Recommendations/how-sharepoint-farm-size-impacts-on-planning-and-support.html?directory=14

SharePoint Checklists

Last year I published the list of documents I use to start SharePoint projects, and I got number of questions regarding checklists and guidance after that.

There are few resources, describing checklists that are really good:

• Capability Checklist for Successful SharePoint http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/pages/capability-checklist-for-successful-sharepoint.aspx
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment guide and checklists http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108286&clcid=0x409 
• My checklist for optimizing SharePoint sites http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2009/06/my-checklist-for-optimizing-sharepoint.html

The Services of the 2007 Microsoft Office System

In these days I'm working with OBA for SharePoint, and was looking through different materials, trying to find the necessary information. In one of the OBA books I stumble over the very interesting diagram, that I decided to post here. I found it really useful, because it categorize the services by logical view.

This diagram can help you  when create the vision/scope of your project and operate with the logical keywords, that are translated to the specific services of SharePoint.

This diagram represents a logical view of the service architecture for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. At the bottom of the diagram are the more fundamental services. Each succeeding layer then uses the services below it to build more specific services to support business operations. At the top level are specific business services that can be used independently or organized to support business applications and processes.