Many of you may think this is basic info, so don't over think what I'm saying
here. I'm sitting in Shane Young's Admin class and realizing that the services
on server and the server roles match up isn't very clean. Let me share some
thoughts on server roles and the services. The first thing to realize is that
more things in the UI contain configuration than you might think.
All
Services on Server (WFE/Query/Calc/Index) - Choose "Single Server or
Web Server for small server farms" start the things it tells you to, and click
on the things that look like links to configure them. In "Office SharePoint
Server Search" you'll be checking both boxes since you're query and index are on
this box. (Hint: Don't forget about SSP for further configration) You might not
be using the document conversions, most likely you're not. These are
optional.
WFE/Query/Calc
- Choose "Web Server for medium server farms" and run the recommended services,
and be sure to click on everything that is a link as in Office SharePoint Server
Search. Be sure to check "Use this server for serving search queries." Doc
Conversions is optional. (This role is very common in medium or high
availability farms)
WFE -
Windows SharePoint Services Web Application. Both of the document
conversion services are "nice to have" if you use them in your SharePoint
Standard or Enterprise publishing scenarios where you are converting your word
to HTML for publishing. It's not common that these are used. During install you
can choose WFE only, understand what you're doing, but this will limit the
services you'll see in services on server.
Forms
Rendering - I'm listing this here, since a lot of people think of this
as a server role. This is automatically always on the WFE. You can't offload
this.
Excel
Calculation - Choose Excel Calculation, this service should be running.
Configuration for this is in the SSP. It's a MOSS Enterprise
configuration.
Query
- In Services on Server choose "Search Indexing" then actually click, yes click
on the text (under Service) "Office SharePoint Server Search." You'll see two
options. Make sure "Use this server for indexing content" is unchecked and "Use
this server for serving search queries" is checked.
By the
way, if you ever decide to build a query server, I would nearly always recommend
considering an SSP farm. Why? Cause if you're offloading query because you have
that many search requests, then you'll need at least 2 Query servers and you'll
have already offloaded your index, so that's 3 servers that could easily be load
balanced and create a decent SSP farm.
Index
- In Services on Server choose "Search Indexing" then actually click, yes click
on the text (under Service) "Office SharePoint Server Search." You'll see two
options. Make sure "Use this server for indexing content" is checked and "Use
this server for serving search queries" is unchecked. You do need to add the
Windows SharePoint Services search you don't need to go with the "every 5
minutes" by default, daily is sufficient. You will later create your rules for
your content sources anyway. The service accounts will be configured when you
configure indexing.
This is
the first server I offload for performance. I do recommend making the index role
also a WFE, so I wouldn't usually recommend this just be an index server unless
it's in the SSP farm (a farm by itself with no content).
Index/WFE
and WFE out of load balancing (Target) - here's where you could pick
custom then start the Windows SharePoint Services Web Application and the Office
SharePoint Server Search and be sure to check only "Use this server for indexing
content." I did a whole post on this in a post called "Use
a dedicated web front end for Indexing." A target server might be a WFE
that's out of load balancing that only the index servers in your environment
know about (host file entries on the index servers). The other configurational
you'll see is index servers that have WFE components that are configured to
index themselves and hence have the WFE services (Windows SharePoint Services
Web Application) and also not in load balancing. There is an option to configure
the "use a dedicated WFE on the bottom of the Index server configuration page
(Office SharePoint Server Search Configuration page), don't use this if you have
multiple IPs or multiple NICs. It is very possible it will choose the wrong IP
and better that you configure this in hosts where you manage what is in.
WFE/index/Query
and WFE/Query - If you ever have index and query on the same server and
plan on doing another server with Query.... or are thinking about doing
something like this please refer to my post about the Index/Query
Gotcha. The Index server will NOT propegate if the Query components are
enabled on the farm. In a sense this means if both boxes are checked (Query
(search requests) and Index (crawling)) in "Office SharePoint Server Search" it
will NOT propegate the index to any other query server. It assumes there is not
another query box no matter how many you have.
Want to
force changes after a role change of a server where you need to push down the
web apps to a new box?
stsadm.exe -o
execadmsvcjobs
