Implementation Considerations for FAST
Search For SharePoint (FS4SP)
Presenter : Shyam Narayan
b: www.dotnetbounce.com
MOSSIG – February 2011 Meeting
t: @dotnetbounce
Introduction
Solutions Architect at Pitcher Partners Consulting in Melbourne
vTSP – Business Collaboration Platform at Microsoft
Primarily focused on SharePoint and .NET Technologies
Agile advocate
Other interests
Agenda
FAST Search Architecture
Deployment Planning
FS4SP Deployment
Post Installation Configurations - Content Feeding, Connectors, SSA
Tips and Tricks
Q&A
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Dynamic user experiences
Advanced content processing
Broad repository connectivity
Extreme scale and performance
Open and Extensible Platform
• Simplicity and low TCO
• Familiar, integrated
developer tools
• Windows 7 Integration
• Robust partner and platform ecosystem
Out-of-the-box intranet search
People Search
SharePoint platform integration
No code customization
Microsoft Enterprise Search- Productivity
Products for Every Customer Need
OOB General Productivity Search
with light customization
Heavily customizable OOB General Productivity
Search and easy to build Search-Driven
Applications
Common across the product line
• Common UI Framework
• Social search features and integration
• SharePoint platform integration
• End user and site administrator enablement
• Common Connector Framework (BDC)
• APIs and developer Experience
• Admin & deployment capabilities
• Operations advantages (SCOM, scripting)
FAST Search Extends SharePoint
Query
SSA
Content
SSA
FAST Search Server 2010
Summary of architectural components
Getting ready for deployment …
Planning that needs to be done
• Search Solution Planning
• FAST Server Farm Topology
• Redundancy and Availability
• System Requirements
Search Solution Planning
• Plan content collection and Crawl Schedules
• Design the Index Schema
• Crawled to Managed Properties
• Rank Profiles and Relevancy tuning
• Query Refinement
• Security Considerations
• Plan for monitoring and recovery
Topology - FAST Search Server 2010 and SharePoint
Server Farms
Web parts and Web Services
Service Endpoints
Query and Content SSA’s
Topology - FAST Search Server 2010 and SharePoint
Server Farms – Redundancy and Availability
Administration Node
FSA
System Requirements
• x64 Servers running Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2
• Memory - 4GB (min) – 16GB (recommended)
• CPU – 4 Cores @ 2.0Ghz (min) – 8 cores @ 2.0GHz (recommended)
• Disk – 50 GB (minimum) – 1 TB in a RAID configuration
• Other Requirements
• Windows Firewalls are turned on
• Static IP Addressing scheme
• Windows updates are turned off
• DST and Anti –Virus
Deployment
• Installation
• Stand-alone deployment
• Multi-server deployment
FS4SP Installation Process
Similar to SharePoint Install
FS4SP Installation Process
Similar to SharePoint Install
Stand-alone server configuration
• Easy to setup and can handle 15 million indexed items
• Used for development environments, test and small scale production environment
• All FS4SP components deployed on a single server
• No scalability or failover capabilities
• Can be changed to a multiple server deployment
Multi-server configuration
• More complex to setup and has no theoretical upper bounds for scale
• Recommended for most production environments
• FS4SP components deployed on a specialised server to provide scalability and
failover capabilities
• Additional operational overheads
Post deployment configurations
• Content Search Service Application
• Query Search Service Application
Content Search Service Application
• Create SSA to associate FAST Farm with SharePoint farm and enable crawling
• Enable content feeding
• Content sources managed through SharePoint Central Administration
• Deploy additional connectors specific to FAST
Query Search Service Application
• Create Query SSA to enable queries from the SharePoint WFE’s
• Contains the query and crawl component for people search
• Configure FAST Specific service endpoints – Query, Administration and Resource
Store.
• Add Query SSA to the default group for your web applications
• Enable Claims Based Authentication
Backup , Recovery and Monitoring
Backup, Restore and Monitoring
• Plan backup and restore strategies early in your FAST deployment process
• Configuration backup and restore
• Full backup and restore
• Pair with SharePoint Backups
• No UI all backups and restores administered via PowerShell
• SMO is required
• Monitor FS4SP
• SCOM SP1 or R2
• WMI
• Perfmon and SP Logs
Questions and Answers