Recommended server topology for SharePoint 2010 for mid-size companies

Typical mid size farm should have following minimum configuration. And it can be expanded to larger farm. In terms of performance, capacity & scalability, a 3-tier topology is recommended than 2-tier. A three-tier topology provides the most efficient physical and logical layout to support scaling out or scaling up, and provides better distribution of services across the member servers of the farm.  The Web Front-End servers should be Load Balanced, and the Database servers should be in an Active/Passive cluster. (which is available in SQL Server 2008).

Server Type	RAM min	Processor	Application
Web Front-End	8 Gb	64 bit-four core	SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Server – IIS Web Servers
Application	8 Gb	64 bit-four core	SharePoint Server 2010 Search and Index Services
Database	16 Gb	64 bit-eight core	Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Points to be noted:

• You can add Web servers to the Web tier (Front-end). These servers can be configured as typical front-end Web servers to handle user requests, or they can be configured to host dedicated query components or other service components.
• You can add farm servers to the application tier (Middle) and configure them as dedicated servers that will host the Central Administration Web site or other services on the farm that require dedicated resources or isolation from the Web tier;  i.e., crawl components, query components, and profile pages.
• You can add database servers to the database tier (Back-end) to implement a stand-alone instance, database mirroring, or a failover cluster. If you are configuring the farm for high availability, database mirroring or a failover cluster is required on the database tier.

Number of Servers and Product Licenses Needed for This Medium Server Farm Scenario

• Below is a breakdown of the minimum quantity of servers and product licenses needed for this example medium server farm environment.
• This Example assumes the site has content that is not publically available (i.e., an Employee Intranet/Extranet). For public web sites an additional license is required for each Web and Application server. This license is called “SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise” or “SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard”.
• This Example also assumes Enterprise version of SharePoint is being used. For the same situation and Standard only version is used then drop the Server Enterprise license and the Enterprise User CALs. 
• For every additional 10,000 users, one (1) additional Web Front-End server is required. This will affect the number of web servers required and the number of licenses needed for Windows Server, SharePoint Server, and SharePoint User CALs. 

  Servers	Count
  Web Front-End Servers	2
  Application Servers	1
  Database Servers	2

• Product Licenses	Count
  SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise	3   (1 per Web and App server)
  SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CAL	1 Per User
  SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise User CAL	1 Per User

The above product license needs are based on the calculation breakdown below: 

• Web Servers:               Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
• Application Servers:   Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
• Database Servers:      Windows Server 2008 R2 + SQL Server 2008 R2 x Number of Processors
• Users:         SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALS + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise User CALs

Note: This example is based on assumstion that, we are following 3 - tier architecture as per given above statisticts. However, through analysis with windows & network team is required bases on the client requirements. 

So for your SharePoint servers both web front end and application server the recommendations are as follows:-  

• 64 bit, dual processor, 3GHz
• 8 GB RAM
• Minimal 100 GB disk space
• DVD Drive
• Network / Internet Connectivity 

And for your database servers:-

• 64 bit environment
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise + Service Pack 2
• SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 + Cumulative Update 3
• SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 + Cumulative Update 2

Two tier small farm
 A two tier farm is predicated to support between 10,000 and 20,000 users with a dedicated SQL server for all SharePoint databases

In next article I will post some thing very interesting - Installing SPS 2010, other prerequisites & service accounts needed to set up a farm.