Collabshow.com

There is so much unnecessary confusion over server roles in SharePoint.  Let me take the opportunity to simplify these roles, so you can see it is much much simpler than it is made out to be or even that original design.

SharePoint roles are really a description of what services are running on the server, and because of the past we’ve overcomplicated the way we think about servers roles, app servers, tiers, topologies, and farms.

The SharePoint Roles you’ve heard

• Web Front End – Every farm has one of these.  It’s where IIS is
• Query
• Index
• Calc
• App server – another name for all the goo that isn’t the WFE
• Central Admin/SSP Admin
• Infopath – NOT A ROLE (This can NEVER be taken off the web front end)
• SQL – Not a SharePoint role and should not contain SharePoint code unless it’s an all in one.

There are 2 server roles for 97% of the SharePoint World.

WFE – WFE/Query/Calc/Central Admin/SSP Admin

Index (the most common offloaded server role) (Note: Don’t get carried away with what I’m saying. There is a Query/Index Gotcha.)

(Another 3% should know the all in one where WFE and all that jazz are combined with the Index.)

Why would I say you really only need to know about 2 roles? 

First the Query role is the lightest role and doesn’t really need to be offloaded.  If it does you really are better off with an SSP farm which is focused on Search which would turn that Query server back into a WFE/Query box.

The Calc role is oversold.  Excel services is cool, but no one is really able to stress it to the part where it needs separate servers.  If you find a case, it’s a .01% case, completely uncommon. MS IT had to reallocate and they

Infopath – not a server role, there was a license for forms server, that was never really used.  Forget you ever heard about it.  It’s a dead end.

Central Admin/SSP Admin – I’ve heard people putting this on it’s own server, totally unnecessary you don’t have to put it on every server in the farm, but you don’t have to buy a server for this purpose either.

Target – you can use existing roles for doing that.

What about MASSIVE farms?

In massive farms you have two choices.  You put WFE/Query together and have a bunch of em, or you specialize search into it’s own farm, maybe even two search farms, but you don’t ever really need to offload query.  Don’t let an architect push you into having 2 WFE, 2 Query, 1 Index, 2 SQL.  You are better off with 4 WFE/Query and 1 Index and 2 SQL or a Content farm of 2 WFE/Query and 2 SQL and a separate Search farm 2 WFE/Query 1 Index box and Shared SQL backend.  Make sense?

Does this turn your world upside down or is it game changing?

Need an Exception?

A special customer that has a requirement for no data of any type in their public DMZ.  They HAVE to have their data in the 2nd tier.  Hence they put the WFE ONLY (remember that option no one uses) box in the pub DMZ and the 2 Query and Index boxes and SQL in their APP DMZ.  They likely could have configured ISA publishing rules or used IAGin the pub DMZ and put the 3 SharePoint boxes in the App DMZ, but that’s a design decision.

I recently put out a few posts on the job market and may have sounded negative.  The market is depressing, but I don’t want those of you who just got ousted due to no part of your own to get depressed.  IT is still hot, while salaries may be frozen.  SharePoint practices are definitely still being built and those with skills are finding work.  Here are a few recent samples that have come to me via linkedin that with a bit of research you can find these people.  I’ve abstracted their contact information, cause I don’t want them to get spammed from screen scrapers that hit my blog.

SharePoint talk is still very up beat.  The SharePoint team has missed layoffs at Microsoft.

Someone really smart mentioned the layoffs don’t reduce the amount of SharePoint work.  That work just shifts hands to outsourcing to higher paid consultants (ironically), so the consulting market is actually expanding!

LinkedIn

INMAIL: YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE

From: XXXX XXXX

Date: 2/11/2009

Subject: Production Engineer (SharePoint) Opportunity with Microsoft

Joel,
Hello!
My name is XXX XXXX and I am a Staffing Consultant with Microsoft. I am currently working on a search for a Production Engineer (SharePoint) based in Redmond, WA. Based on your profile, it appears that you are an authority on SharePoint and may know someone with the skill set we are looking for. A synopsis of the job description is below (as well as a link to the full job posting).
The Production Engineer will be responsible for designing and creating the content authoring and publishing pipeline to streamline internal processes, integrating workflow scenarios into the portal, and supporting all tools, production, and technology-related aspects of LCAWeb. Additional responsibilities include designing, building, and implementing the infrastructure for a scalable and robust Self Help system. The ideal candidate is someone who has strong experience and expertise using SharePoint, possesses strong technical skills, is a strategic thinker, and can build strong relationships and collaborate well with others. This person will work closely with a broad community of content owners, key stakeholders, external vendors, and IT partners to evolve LCAWeb as the portal for an enterprise-level content management solution to meet growing business needs, with opportunities to expand into the broader strategic Information Management space.
http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=6D6924E9-D099-4625-B612-5F9516BDD39B&start=1&interval=10&SortCol=DatePosted&SortOrder=Desc
I look forward to speaking with you soon!
XXXX XXXX

EMC Lotus Notes Applications to Microsoft SharePoint Migration Opportunity…

Date:January 28, 2009

To:Joel Oleson

Category: Career opportunity

Dear Joel,
Dear Candidate,
I have an immediate fulltime permanent position for a SharePoint Architect working directly for EMC ( www.emc.com ) in our Microsoft Application Consulting Practice. The project is 1 year in duration and based in the Philadelphia, PA area; you must be located with in a commutable distance of Philadelphia for the duration of this project. Upon project completion you can relocate yourself to anywhere in the US and be available to travel approximately 50% of the time to other consulting engagements if desired.
This project is with a major Pharmaceutical company, they’ve contracted with EMC to migrate their existing Lotus Notes Applications (1000’s) into a SharePoint MOSS environment.
If you’re interested in pursuing this direct employment opportunity please answer the following questions for our hiring manager; the responses are required with each candidate submission.
***Please include a Word version of your resume with your responses***
How many years of Microsoft SharePoint development / architecture experience do you have overall? (Please specify the versions you worked with)
Do you have experience specifically with the Quest Notes Migrator Tools or similar? (If so how many years of experience)

Do you have full lifecycle software development experience including software architecture, software development, software testing and deployment / delivery?
Have you managed or lead a development team of software engineers? (Please explain)
What is your current availability, how soon can you actually start a new assignment?
What are you looking for in terms of compensation, please provide an annual salary or salary range?
Thanks,

EMC Recruiter

Hi NAME,

I was reading your blog – getting up to speed on Sharepoint.
I am recruiting for an amazing new startup – Topaz Bridge. We are just getting started.
I would love to network with you and connect with candidates that have .Net, Sharepoint, InfoPath, C#, SAP skills. We are looking for multiple developers, testers, biz dez, marketing – this is a big ramp-up and we have aggressive deadlines. The company is moving to brand new offices in Bellevue, WA and our goal is to make offers within 48 hours of the interview process.
This is great news in this economy. If you know of foks that would be interested in this opportunity, I would love to hear from them!
I’d love to hear from you – any ideas are helpful!
Thanks so much!
Best regards,
Topaz Bridge Recruiting Team

NAME,
I represent a specialized SharePoint resourcing organization called SharePoint Global. Please visit our niche website at www.SharePointGlobal.com . I have noticed a rapid increase in activity in the SharePoint over the past 6 months and expect this to continue with the release of MOSS 2009. I saw your organization could also be involved in this. I am interested in linking up with companies that have a vested interest in the SharePoint market. The purpose of the connection would be to develop mutually beneficial working arrangements. Feel free to contact me.
Regards,
Microsoft Practice Director
www.SharePointGlobal.com

One thing I haven’t posted about is the small deployments.  Yesterday I talked to someone deploying SharePoint for 15 users.  Now that’s a different set of challenges.  I ran into them after going through my Governance deck, which I’m sure overwhelmed them a bit.  By default I think in terms of enterprise scale and perspective.  That’s actually one reason I have enjoyed co-presenting with Shane Young (who’s moved on to presenting with other people lately, but he is an early founding member of my fan club.) for that reason.  Shane deals with the small businesses all the time.  I enjoyed getting his perspective as it applied to the SMB.  A question was asked yesterday about a default preconfigured installation of SharePoint for small business.  I had no idea.  If there is such a thing I would be interested in it.  I hope they aren’t running basic mode, otherwise I would have a hard time suggesting it’s usage.

Issues with the small deployments

So I was in this session in Rochester yesterday and I couldn’t shut up.  It was hard to sit in the audience hearing someone suggest small farms by default.  In all my years I’d never heard of *Real* production environments in the small mode with the exception of those shadow apps we hear about (those under the radar some small department doing something without IT’s approval or knowledge).  I have heard of Small Business Server, but rarely did I run into people at conferences in this config.  To my surprise 5 people raised their hands as currently running in that config (in a crowd of 35)!  Whoa, it did shock me just a bit.  Going to these smaller more local events has given me a bit of a different perspective. 

Later in the session the instructor was talking about how .DOCX isn’t indexed by default.  What!!! I’ve never heard of that.  I had to think about this for a while.  Of course WSS and MOSS both index the Office 2007 file formats by default for the most common apps like DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX.  Is there something in a SQL express or Basic Windows Internal Database Engine deployment where search is off?  Obviously the 2003 or WSS 2.0 doesn’t have those extensions and there’s a KB on that one http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=944445  This KB tells you to install Office on the Server.  Don’t do that!!! Install this… The Microsoft Ifilter pack which does includes docx, .pptx, .xlsx, Office 2007 extensions plus many you DON’T get out of the box with WSS 3.0 and MOSS like .zip, .one, .vdx, .vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx, and .vtx.  I see this as an important step.  You want Visio and One note indexed right?

What can a small farm do?

It is not unreasonable to suggest that a small farm could handle 5000 unique users over a months time with a few hundred concurrent connections (essentially thousands of .NET requests per minute) and millions of page views per month.

While a small farm with one web front end and a back end full SQL server deployment could service up to 5000 users with periodic access for a departmental publishing site, but I haven’t encouraged it.  Why?  It’s the time to setup and reconfigure and having to mess with database connections and so on that discourages me.  With Virtual Images with VMWare or HyperV, I’m much more encouraged from a hardware perspective that you can do a lot with 2 physical boxes, but I still avoid the single image SharePoint deployment.  Those that do will find things run perfectly ok, until they have an outage and then they are down, and they are down HARD.  That first farm restore will be a nightmare, and you WILL curse SharePoint.  Not just for failed search index, but trying to get your databases back to the way they were, all sorts of decisions you won’t know how to weigh out.  Disaster Recovery on SharePoint is not easy and having one SharePoint server actually DOES make it harder, not easier.  Those of us doing this longer realize that.  We realize failures will happen, and the way to mitigate failures is to make sure we are fault tolerant.  Not only accounts and services, but all the things you don’t learn about timer services, deployment packages, and maintainability.  These things won’t come up with your single box deployment, and you’ll be missing out on many best practices.  I would suggest that you will spend more time in supporting your single box than you would 2 or 3 SharePoint boxes.  Crazy?

Check out this TechNet article on HyperV that compares performance of a small farm that’s physical verses virtual.  How did that sneak out?

Thanks Ben, Mark, Bill, and crew.  I had an awesome time. 

Here’s all my Best Practice decks:

• Best Practices Conference Spring 09 Avoiding Failed Deployments and Newbie Mistakes 10 Steps to Success
• Avoiding Failed Deployments Part 2 Interactive Discussion and Talking Points
• Getting Rid Of Legacy platforms (File Shares, Public Folders, Notes, etc…), And SharePoint Migration

By Wed afternoon as the sessions were wrapping up I felt so fulfilled.  I think this conference had all the key elements for me…

Here’s my list for what I find makes a conference “socially” successful (the more the better)…

• Kick off social event – Ben’s Super Bowl Party + It’s always good to start off on the right foot.
• MVP/Influencer Social – Melding of the minds over food/drink – Experts Dinner – Tues night MVP+ influencer invitation event by Quest
• Excursion – Going to something culturally significant NON Conference related – Mexico horse riding and La Bufadora (More on that below)
• SharePint – Now we have a name for it, but this is the broader SharePoint Fans Non political gathering and drinks.  This is where I happen to always find folks who held back during the conference, but were super excited to chat over a drink
• Karaoke or Dancing – Not always a requirement, and not to be found at the event (that would be wierd) but I like to do something a bit more hard core than the usual pub crawl that happens.  As a non drinker I get bored after a couple or 4 hours in the same place, but at the same time very interested in the social aspects

Session Highlight 

Wed, last session of the event I was taken by JQuery session.  It was an excellent session by Peter Serzo.  It was impressive to see how JQuery “plugins” which are essentially Javascript objects could quite easily be used to build assembliless web parts, navigation, and let’s call it flashiness, integration, charting and all sorts of things that developers are doing now with server side code which requires admin access and supportability.  I see this as the big thing for the summer for SharePoint.  A great breakthrough.  I’ve asked peter to give me a write up as a guest post on the blog.  Hilarious session, lots of Bush analogies too.  LOL! (IW367, Shape up the bloated Content Editor Web Part – Peter Serzo … the holidays CEWP bloat by covering JQuery (Microsoft supported open-source JavaScript.)  His career just took a huge boost.  Kudos.  I hope to see him presenting more on this with even more demos and guidance on how to leverage this in CQWP and DVWP.

The IT panel made me realize how broad things have become with the various hosting and cloud options.  No black and white on what companies will be doing in the future and what clients will look like.  Mobile, Web Client, Rich (or FAT) client.  Compliance requirements and necessary evolution in Content Types and tagging definitely are important, but the requirements are diverse and divergent.

PREDICTION

I was thinking about what we consider a document and how it has and will continue to evolve.  Makes me wonder if we will continue to even call it document when it’s assembling content to build something.  I don’t like the name briefcase or assembled document or thicket.  I was thinking in 10 years we will prefer and favor the wiki UI doc information design concepts like OneNote and %whatever% Wiki to a Word UI.  Will be interesting to see the battles in organizations over the social assembly to information over the classic single user interfaces.  More convergence is necessary and the path is sure.

VIVA Mexico

I had been talking about doing a Mexico excursion even before the conference began.  I had planned an extra evening to guarantee it.  What I was finding was Tuesday was my light day and Wed was getting packed with a session and panel with my comrades being involved up to the end of day and then flying out.  So, Tuesday during lunch at the MVP/Speaker/Experts table I brought up a Mexico excursion idea and a discussion ensued around our ability to make it back.  Good news was Mike had his passport.  Others had various commitments, but Todd was willing to take the risk if he knew he could get back.  The messages across our top results from search were a mixed bag.  Some said we needed proof of citizenship while other said a license was good enough.  After enough doubt on reliable sites, we decided to take the chance.  I had suggested La Bufadora one of my favorite places in Baja Mexico.  Tijuana is the old standby and wasn’t necessarily my first pick, I’m not the type to go for Tequilas and prescription drugs.  I was looking for the Non border town experiences. 

My experience drove us to the Mexico Car insurance drive up window and in minutes we were on our way.  As we got onto the toll road heading south out of Tijuana Todd got a bit underwhelmed by the 100 KM to Ensenada, but I tried to ensure him it was worth it and in my mind we had plenty of time before SharePint that evening.  (Little did I know he was expecting a 2 hour excursion, while I was planning 6-8 hours of pure play best of Baja.)  We were ready for a potty break and the beach was looking very inviting.  I told the guys I bet we could get these horses for less than $10 each.  Sure enough I got them down to $5 each.  Mike the generous guy he is gave him $20 and told him to keep the change.  Later he was trying to give us change and we assured him the money was his. 

The three amigos rode off into the sunset.

It was fun to watch Todd’s face on his first ride.  He learns fast.

La Bufadora while clearly not the peak tide, was not in it’s full glory, but was still fun to watch.

Mike (The SharePointMadScientist) and Todd Klindt were both quite trusting as they put the wheel in my hands in Mike’s Mercedes C class (thanks guys how could I confuse).  It was a nice drive and I was able to use the power a couple of times.

On our way back to the car, I bought a couple of illusion art (O’Campo) with frames for $11 total and Mike and Todd bought El Luchador.  Getting through the border in minutes (like maybe 30 incredibly) with NO Hassle was extremely pleasing to us all and brought the mood to a much more relaxed note. 

SharePint by Night (More pics by Ruven: http://bit.ly/b2vQ)

We arrived at SharePint and felt like kings, or at least Wrestling Champs.

After we shut down the SharePint, we encouraged a contingent to follow us to Gaslamp area and landed in a couple of places with hiphop DJ, and Rock a Billy Swing/Jitterbug Dancing.  You can follow the tweets from dance partners with sore necks, thanks for the dance Laura & Tiffany, and sorry random guy that I took out.  Ouch, an elbow to the head never feels nice.  Is it just me or are there simply more and more smart SharePoint female speakers? Not that it’s some kind of competition, but it has changed the social dynamics.

Back to the hotel bar, where we found Bob Fox and his crew and a lot more.  What an incredible day that was.  It was easy to feel like I’d completed my goals.  We all have memories that will last.  Multiple times throughout the conference I was treated like a celebrity/rockstar despite my attempts to downplay it.

Follow up

The morning was a blur, I was going to meet up with Brett Lonsdale for breakfast before I left, but I don’t know if I told him 8 or 9 (I got there at 9:10 and missed him).  Sorry Brett.  I do still want to meet up and do the podshow interview.  Brett coming to Summit?  UK BP?  See you soon.

The SharePoint team has finally shared their plans for the official SharePoint Conference with plans on the revealing of SharePoint “14.”  Exciting stuff.  Registration is already open.  The first 500 to sign up will get in for $899 (WOW CHEAP!).  I don’t know how long that will last, but I’m telling you now this going to be the must see SharePoint conference of the year.  (Nice of them to wait to announce this right after SPTechConn and during the Best practices conference.)

Here’s quotes from the http://www.mssharepointconference.com site:

“There’s an exciting mix in the plans for this year. This year’s conference will be looking towards the future with a broad array of deep content centered on the next version of SharePoint, codenamed SharePoint “14” and at the same time be firmly planted in the present, sharing real world experience and guidance to help you maximize your investment in SharePoint Server 2007.
SharePoint Conference 2009 will be the conference to learn about SharePoint “14”. Be the first to learn about the improvements we’ve made to the platform and how many of those investments can be quickly implemented to add value to your organization and businesses.“

I’ll definitely be there if I have anything to do about it.