Sharepoint 2003

[Ob1]

We are looking to add a windows sharepoint portal server 2003 to our companies network, currently we have about 240 users. about 170 of them are in our HQ office, and we have 3 remote offices which are connected via a vpn connection as well. one office as a full T1 connection, our second office has a 10mb U/D pipe and our third office will have a 20mb U/D pipe setup when they move to there new office which is going to be our Hot site since our HQ is based out of FL.
I need a little help on picking the right hardware for this server? Looking for a rack server most likely going with a 1U. We have been looking at the HP Proliant DL360 G5 server This server will only be used for sharepoint, no other server functions will be added to it. It will be added as a member server to the domain running windows server 2003 either std edition or enterprise edition. The content databases for sharepoint will be running off of another SQL server we have. Will one dual core xeon be enough or should i look at getting two dual cores or possibly one or two quad core cpu. Also looking at getting 4gb of memory and 6-146gb SAS drives in a RAID 5 Configuration. We are looking at keeping this server in production for approx 5 years and are planning for future growth. currently we are expecting to add 30-40 more users this year and are expecting to grow each year. We haven't decided how in depth we are going to go with the setup & configuration of sharepoint portal server 2003.

Any recommendations or assistance would be much appreciated. If you have any questions please ask them.

Ob1

One more thing, we have a gigabit backbone/network in our HQ and all remote offices. all pcs have a gigabit card installed as well as all servers, switch's, cabling, etc

[mairving]

Personal experience is that most of the drag on Sharepoint is on the SQL Server side not on the Sharepoint server. We have Sharepoint running on 3Ghz Dual Xeon with 2GB of RAM. It is difficult to say how many users are on it. We have 500 students but not all of them hit it at once. There are also 200 or so other users. All of the users are local so we don't have to worry about a big pipe.

A dual core Xeon should be fine.

[Ob1]

would you recommend sharepoint having its own sql server installed on the sharepoint server instead of putting our content databases on an existing sql server on a different server?

[mairving]

Originally Posted by Ob1 would you recommend sharepoint having its own sql server installed on the sharepoint server instead of putting our content databases on an existing sql server on a different server?

I wouldn't start off that way. If the performance is not good then you it wouldn't be too difficult to move to another server. Ours is loaded with quite a few other databases.

[Ob1]

How much storage space do you have on your sharepont server and what would you recommend for a company with 200+ users? Our company does high end landscape architecture so we use a lot of autocad, photoshop, illustrator, along with hi res pics. we have a net app device on our network that has about 8TB of storage space which is where the majority of all our data is stored and i believe we are upgrading to more storage space i think were doubling to 16TB. we also have several NAS devices on our network as well so what would you recommend for storage space on the sharepoint server? Im going with RAID 5 and was going to just max that HP proliant server out with 6 - 146gb SAS 10,000rpm drives, but now im thinking that might be a little overkill. any thoughts?

Does Sharepoint take up a lot of space excluding all the data that users put into the document libraries, etc since that will still be stored on our NETAPP device?

[mairving]

Originally Posted by Ob1 How much storage space do you have on your sharepont server and what would you recommend for a company with 200+ users? Our company does high end landscape architecture so we use a lot of autocad, photoshop, illustrator, along with hi res pics. we have a net app device on our network that has about 8TB of storage space which is where the majority of all our data is stored and i believe we are upgrading to more storage space i think were doubling to 16TB. we also have several NAS devices on our network as well so what would you recommend for storage space on the sharepoint server? Im going with RAID 5 and was going to just max that HP proliant server out with 6 - 146gb SAS 10,000rpm drives, but now im thinking that might be a little overkill. any thoughts? Does Sharepoint take up a lot of space excluding all the data that users put into the document libraries, etc since that will still be stored on our NETAPP device?

Mostly we have stored PDF's and Office documents, not anything like you would have. Sharepoint doesn't take up a lot of space.

[Ob1]

I had another question pertaining to sharepoint. When you add documents and such to a sharepoint website, where does sharepoint put those files on the network? are the files located in there original location still and sharepoint just references that location on the sharepoint website? is there a way to do that so we wouldnt have to move all of our data around on our network again? i know when you add files it says copying xyz.doc to http://training/sites/training/share.../presentations and im trying to figure out what happens to it, where is that file(s) copied to? or does it copy those files into somewhere else ie: the content database? Im new to sharepoint if you cant tell.

What we are wanting is since the majority of our data is saved on our 8TB NET APP device we want to keep it there and have sharepoint just reference those files where they are already saved at. i hope that makes more sense of our wants/needs for sharepoint.

[mairving]

Originally Posted by Ob1 I had another question pertaining to sharepoint. When you add documents and such to a sharepoint website, where does sharepoint put those files on the network? are the files located in there original location still and sharepoint just references that location on the sharepoint website? is there a way to do that so we wouldnt have to move all of our data around on our network again? i know when you add files it says copying xyz.doc to http://training/sites/training/share.../presentations and im trying to figure out what happens to it, where is that file(s) copied to? or does it copy those files into somewhere else ie: the content database? Im new to sharepoint if you cant tell. What we are wanting is since the majority of our data is saved on our 8TB NET APP device we want to keep it there and have sharepoint just reference those files where they are already saved at. i hope that makes more sense of our wants/needs for sharepoint.

Sharepoint stores the content in the database I believe that it is in the Docs table. If you were to upload a file from your computer it would still exist on your computer. It would also exist in the Sharepoint database.

[Ob1]

gotcha, so basically we will have to create multiple content databases to hold all our information if we choose to put it all on sharepoint, since i believe we are approaching the 6terabyte mark just on our NET APP device, but now that i think about it, that device also stores our nightly, and monthly backup snapshots. so im not quite sure how much data is truly on that server that would go onto sharepoint.

i noticed that even though you upload a file to sharepoint, and you edit the file within sharepoint, save the changes, and then reopen the original file. the original file does not show the changes. so im guessing the best approach would be to upload a chunk of data into its appropriate locations in sharepoint and then delete the original files.

What is a general size limit you try and keep your sharepoint content databases at? i know if you get to large then backup and restoring becomes a time consuming process. i have heard that 50gb is a good number to keep them at. Does sql have a theoretical size limit for its databases or is the sky the limit?

[mairving]

Ours is about 30GB right now. We don't force people to use it so there are still plenty of files stored in user folders on the network instead of on Sharepoint.

[Ob1]

Mairving - alright im back with some more questions.

right now i have Windows Sharepoint services 2.0 installed with the following configuration:
Application Pool: WssAppPool with a role based domain account that has database creator and security administrator roles on my remote SQL server 2005 server, along with being a local administrator on the Share Point server.
Configuration Database: WSS_Config
Content Database: WSS_Content_db
IIS: Virtual Server SharePoint Services using a Host Header site.siteplan.com with a host (A) record in our DNS server. Portal site will use a Host Header portal.siteplan.com with a host (A) record in our DNS server.

Now when i go to install Portal Server 2003 should i use the same application Pool that i setup for WSS: "WssAppPool" or should i create a new one specifically for the portal server? Another question i have is they say you only need one Configuration database for sharepoint, but when you install the portal it will create a configuration database "sps01_config_db" default, should or can i point the portal server to use the existing configuration database WSS_Config or have sharepoint point to the portal server configuration database sps01_config_db, or does WSS and the Portal Server use seperate config databases?

We will be adding third party or enterprise applications and will most likely want to use the Single Sign On Feature (SSO) of sharepoint. I thought i heard somewhere that you can't use the SSO feature when using host headers, but i can't seem to locate that article or book stating that. Is that a true statement?

thanks for your help