Measurable gains from implementing FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint
Applies to: Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
This is the seventh of 12 articles that compose How Microsoft IT deployed FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (white paper).
The new FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint search solution immediately provided measurable gains in many areas, such as those shown in tables 1, 2, and 3.
Table 1 shows how the scale of the Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution is much greater than the scale of the search solution that the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Redmond SSP provided.
Table 1. Scale comparison
| Characteristic | SharePoint Server 2007 solution (approximate, 2009) | FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution (approximate, August 2011) |
|---|---|---|
Amount of content crawled on sites hosted by MSIT |
13 terabytes |
34.5 terabytes |
Number of sites and subsites crawled |
350,000 |
683,050 |
Number of items in content index |
43 million |
90 million |
Size of content index |
300 gigabytes (GB) |
6 terabytes |
Database sizes |
|
|
Query volume per month |
500,000 |
5.45 million |
Query volume per second |
.1929 |
2.033 |
Table 2 shows how much SharePoint content MSIT hosted for each region, and that the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution crawled, as of August 2011.
Table 2. SharePoint content crawled by region
| Region | Number of sites and subsites crawled | Corpus size (terabytes) |
|---|---|---|
Americas (content hosted in Redmond data center) |
128,435 sites together with 333,831 subsites |
23.34 |
EMEA (content hosted in Dublin data center) |
35,932 sites together with 89,591 subsites |
6.6 |
Asia (content hosted in Singapore data center) |
33,360 sites together with 61,901 subsites |
4.53 |
Total |
197,727 sites together with 485,323 subsites |
34.47 |
In addition to the 34.47 terabytes of hosted SharePoint content, the search service crawls a large amount of other content, which includes the following:
Sites that are not hosted by MSIT
File shares
Structured data sources
Table 3 shows average incremental crawl times for some content sources with the SharePoint Server 2007 search solution compared to average incremental crawl times with the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution.
Table 3. Crawl performance comparison
| Content source | Average incremental crawl time with SharePoint Server 2007 solution (late 2009) | Average incremental crawl time with FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution |
|---|---|---|
MSW |
21 hours |
40 minutes |
SharePoint sites, excluding My Sites |
145 hours |
9 hours |
My Sites |
18 hours |
2 hours |
Redmond portals |
35 hours |
4 hours |
User profiles |
7 hours |
10 minutes |
Host headers |
19 hours |
1 hour |
Team |
Deleted in 2009 to reduce crawl load |
2 hours |
Office |
Deleted in 2009 to reduce crawl load |
4 hours |
Other articles in this white paper
How Microsoft IT deployed FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (white paper)
Executive summary (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)
FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution: environment and topology
Collaboration with site owners (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)
Enterprise search center (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)
Lessons learned and MSIT best practices (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)
To view the white paper as a single article on TechNet, or to download it, see Improving enterprise search at Microsoft: How FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Powers Worldwide Intranet Search at Microsoft (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735129.aspx).