Hi,

I am working in a SharePoint 2010 project and we are now planning for the deployment project which targets large farm deployment. 

Our deployment environment consists of 18 servers categorized as follows

- 2 servers for the content databases (clustered SQL)

- 2 servers for the search databases (clustered SQL)

- 2 servers for application 

- 2 servers for the crawling 

- 2 servers for the query 

- 4 servers for the web front end (for internal users)

- 4 servers for the web front end (for external users)

We are expanding in the search and crawl servers as the search is one of our core features. 

What I want to know now is, what are the SharePoint services that should be running on each server (Application, Web Front End, Query and Crawl)

And how I can I determine them during setup or shall I stop and start them after installing the farm. I wish to have an answer from experts only as this is production deployment and very important and wish to have the answer very soon. Than

Every deployment is different, so without having detailed business requirements, expected load, and so forth, it is hard to say what a 'proper' deployment will be for you.

Microsoft has some general topology guidelines outlined here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=37000

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30377

These generally also apply to SharePoint 2010.

I can only assume you're going to have in the 10s of thousands of users with many hundred, if not thousand concurrent users.

Hiya,

as Trevor states, it really depends on your requirements how the farm setup should be.

Usually you break the numbers down to X per second for the different services. Like; Number of Requests per seconds for the web service or Number of documents crawled per second for crawl service.

Based on those numbers, you got some data to work with. From there you start dividing the numbers with servers until you reach a desired performance level.

On top of that you look at the different service types and combine those that do not overlap each other. An example if you know your crawl servers are busy between 04-07 AM, but idle the most of the time outside that period. You could plan to use those servers for other tasks during the other hours. Microsoft has, for the SharePoint 2013, tried to address this in their topology references. So you might want to have a read through that also.

When all that is said, you could also "just" implement a solution as you described above, making sure that you are ready to handle changes in the infrastructure more flexible. A more agile approach to your SharePoint farm is usually recommended, as no matter what, SharePoint will evolve and so must your infrastructure design.

Actually what I am asking about is not how the whole deployment should be done, alternatively I am asking what are the mandatory services to be exists on servers based on their jobs. In other words I have 2 servers for crawling and they should be only assigned to crawling jobs so what are the mandatory SharePoint services to be existing on the these servers and the same for web front end and query servers what services must be existing on them. 

And the rest of the services will be operating on the application servers. 

The second question is, can I determine the starting and stopping services on each server during installation or shall I stop and start services after finishing the installation.

Thank You.

Alrighty;

If your just talking the raw services that you have defined:

Front End: Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web Application

Search Crawl: SharePoint Server Searc, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web Application, Search Query and Site Settings Service

Search Query: SharePoint Server Search, Search Query and Site Settings Service

Application: Every other service, which one or more service applications dependent on according to your specification.(Not SP Server Search nor SP Foundation Web Application)

Now if you need other services on your web front end, depends on your setup. You might need Document Conversion, Secure Store etc.

And reading up on your question again:

1: You install SharePoint 2010 binaries. That gives you just that. Binaries, no farm no nothing, no services running.

2: You then start to configure SharePoint. The first thing is usually to configure the farm as well as a Central Administration page.  When that is done, you can begin deploying each of the required services and service applications to the servers you want to. In most cases, SharePoint will start the appropriate services on the target servers, so as long as you control which servers to push which service application, SharePoint pushes the rest.

For search specifically you create a topology that will designate which servers will perform which roles, start the required services.

As long as you DO NOT USE the wizard, you choose which services are started where.

I prefer using separate scripts for each step, while others like the AutoSPInstaller(CodePlex project), which configures all in a bundle. Fully configurable of course.

A grand advise is to perform this installation and configuration more than one time. There will be tons of things that you need to change underway, as business tests the platform, before launching it to test.

Hopefully that is a bit more in aligned to your original inquiry.

• Proposed as answer by Jason WarrenMVP 21 hours 6 minutes ago
• Marked as answer by Ehab_Hosny 1 hour 20 minutes ago

Thank you Jesper for your help