Chapter 12
Scalable ECM Architecture
What's in this chapter?
- Building a storage architecture
- Scaling the topology
- Architecting a scalable taxonomy
- Tuning SharePoint performance
As the Microsoft SharePoint platform has grown in functionality and popularity in recent years, organizations are often caught off guard when they discover that a rogue SharePoint installation, running on a workstation-class computer under the desk of a random employee, has become a mission-critical system. While this is a testament to the usability of SharePoint, an implementation running in this environment has little chance of performing reliably for any reasonable length of time.
This chapter provides guidance for architecting a SharePoint farm that will meet an enterprise's needs for years to come. Architectural considerations are presented from the ground up, starting with storage. Then farm topology and taxonomy concepts are related to various sizing requirements. Finally, techniques for managing and tuning farm resources are presented.
Storage Architecture, the Key to Performance
A poorly performing database can undermine the performance of any application. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to optimize database architecture for best possible performance while maintaining the necessary flexibility to support the feature-rich SharePoint platform. However, even the best possible database design can be undermined by poor disk performance.
SharePoint is unique in that it serves a broad range of use ...
