SharePoint Administrator Resources for Newbies

SharePoint as a Service Offering
Was talking to a IT TDM (Technical Decision Maker) today who was looking for a way he could "manage" SharePoint (either WSS or MOSS) from a standards perspective.  His example was, today he can choose specific hardware and specific settings for his exchange or AD servers.  It's an entire configuration/release management function from a hardware and software perspective.  With SharePoint technology, he's finding out it isn't as easy to do a full end to end provisioning with it, he needs to know more about what they want to do.

SharePoint Network Considerations
In a recent conversation with a SharePoint customer we had some back and forth on how they could optimize their network traffic both in the datacenter and on the user side.  I did a post a while back on digging into SharePoint related network performance issues.  You could consider this a follow up to that as how to optimize the network traffic and understanding what you can do about it.  Not all resources are here, but hopefully you'll get some info to help you get started in optimizing your SharePoint technologies related network traffic.

Global Deployment
I was on a call the other day with a customer and they were looking for prescriptive guidance for their global company.  What was the right approach?  What's the formula?  How can I determine?  Since the Geo Whitepaper hasn't been rev'ed yet.  I figured I'd provide my thoughts on the topic in the mean time.  This is fictitious, but very real at the same time.  I hope it helps you understand how to figure out a global deployment, what matters and break down the different approaches.  There are obviously many variations, but these are the most common deployment types that I've come across in an Intranet global multi-national deployment.

Tips on Site Collection Sizing
Something that's tough to find any information on is Site Collection sizing.  Let me offer up my thoughts on the topic and share some history. The largest single site collection I've come across was 600GB all in a single SPS 2003 portal (top level site collection).  The largest web app I've come across is 3.5TB which contained 12K site collections in 70 databases across 2 named SQL instances.

Tips on Database Sizing
I think my a post or second hand PPTs in the past may have confused some people about a capacity planning recommendation I've made.  I have in the past said to plan for 50GB databases.  This is not a scalability limit. Based on a recent thread with some project managers in the product team.  I'm getting back some second hand information that people are thinking these numbers are hard coded or hard limits in the product.  This is NOT the case.  Let me give you a few examples of large databases I'm aware of.

Tips on List Scale
Microsoft performed performance testing against Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to determine the performance characteristics of large SharePoint lists under different loads and modes of operation. This white paper presents their findings.

MOSS Deployment Project Plan Sample (Project 2003 format)

MOSS Deployment Project Plan Sample (Project 2007 format)

SharePoint Editions Feature Comparisons
Included in this document is a complete breakdown of the features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and a comparison between the different 2007 server editions and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

SharePoint Editions Feature Differences
Included in this document is a complete breakdown of the features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and a comparison between the different 2007 server editions and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

Before You Begin Your Planning and Deployment
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers significant enterprise capabilities that require planning and validation to configure correctly for your needs. It is a complex product with many changes over prior versions.

Installation Resources
Before installing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, be sure you have reviewed the information in Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007. You can also find evaluation and planning guidance on the Before You Begin page on the Office SharePoint Server 2007 TechCenter (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=98564&clcid=0x409).