Manage servers in the farm
Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007
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Topic Last Modified: 2008-08-04
You can manage servers in a farm to improve the site performance and to manage services efficiently by distributing them across the servers. There are several different kinds of servers you can deploy depending on your needs. These include:
Web servers Web servers in a server farm environment contain files and settings required to respond to user requests for Web pages. You can install additional Web servers to help with load balancing of processing and communications tasks during peak demand, and to provide needed redundancy if there is an equipment failure.
Application servers Application servers can be used to run many specialized application processes such as indexing, search, and Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Additional application servers can help with load balancing and failover protection. Individual servers can be dedicated to specific applications such as indexing or search. In general, Web applications are load balanced dynamically across all unassigned application servers by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Index server The index server manages the crawling and indexing of Office SharePoint Server content and maintains the index file. The index service works with the query service to let you search Office SharePoint Server content. Every Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment must have at least one index server. Additional index servers may be necessary as the deployment grows. There can only be one index server per server farm.
Query servers The query service works with the indexing service to let users search Office SharePoint Server content. Query services can be concentrated in one or more dedicated query servers or distributed across all of the Web servers. By using a dedicated query server, you can free the Web servers to service user requests. In most cases, a dedicated query server is the more robust solution and is called for if user demand for other resources is increasing while the number of content resources remains relatively constant.
If necessary, the indexing service and the query service can be combined on the same server. Combining the two services can save on hardware costs, but maintaining the two services on separate servers provides more flexibility and ability to cope with increasing demand. Also, if you want high availability, you should keep the indexing service and the query service on different servers. For more information about availability, see Plan for redundancy (Office SharePoint Server).
Database servers Database servers store all of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 configuration and content data. As the Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment grows, the databases grow. The three main factors driving the need for additional database servers are storage capacity, load balancing, and failover capability.
After you have completed installation of server farm, you can use the SharePoint Central Administration Web site to reconfigure or repurpose servers for specialized tasks and improved performance as needs change. Central Administration enables you to assign specific tasks and data to individual servers. This gives you flexibility and control.
Note
You can add a server to the farm only if all servers in the farm run the same build version of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and service packs.
Background information
Deployment for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Task Requirements
The following are required to perform the procedures for this task:
Run the Product & Technologies Configuration Wizard to add a server to a farm.
Restart the computer, if required.
To deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a server farm environment, you must provide credentials for several different accounts. For more information, see Plan for administrative and service accounts (Office SharePoint Server).
If Office SharePoint Server 2007 uses languages other than the default, you must install the same language packs on all servers in the farm. For more information about how to install language packs, see Deploy language packs (Office SharePoint Server).
To manage servers in farm, you can perform the following procedures in any order:
See Also
Concepts
Manage servers and services in a farm
Add servers to a server farm environment
Manage services on each server in a farm
Add, split, and merge content databases (Office SharePoint Server 2007)