Beta Hosting Scope and Results for Data Storage

The Internet Platform and Operations group designed their beta deployment of Windows SharePoint Services to both test Windows SharePoint Services and provide working sites for Individual External Partner (IEP) customers.

Disk Space Requirements

One of the goals of the Windows SharePoint Services Beta hosting program was to determine how much hard disk space an average site would require. Initially, each customer site was given a quota of 30 megabytes (MB). The sever farm was set up to support 6,000 customer sites, therefore the Windows SharePoint Services content databases were designed to hold at least 180 gigabytes (GB).

Actual usage was less than anticipated. The configuration and content databases acquired only 7.5 GB. (Other space was required for the MSSQL system databases.) These results showed that initial disk space requirements were 2.5 to 3 times greater than the actual requirements. By the end of the Beta hosting program, the server farm hosted over 14,400 English, German, and Japanese sites for external world-wide customers.

Availability Requirements

The Internet Platform and Operations group had a goal of providing high availability (at least 98 percent availability for customer sites, excluding planned downtime for maintenance) and reliability and short response time. In the course of the project, based on the configuration in this series of papers, the Internet Platform and Operations group met their goals and reached 99% availability, excluding the scheduled maintenance time – an excellent result for beta code.

Additional Configuration Goals

Further, the Internet Platform and Operations had the following scalability, reliability, and availability goals for the Windows SharePoint Services deployment. These areas will be addressed further in this white paper.

• Validate the Windows SharePoint Services scalability design and implement a huge data store. Windows SharePoint Services supports scalability through multiple servers in server farms. To prove scalability and compatibility, the server farm must contain at least two unique content databases on two servers running Microsoft SQL Server and a storage area network (SAN) repository with more than 700 GB of raw data.
• Design the backup and disaster recovery plans. Back up content and configuration information regularly and test the restoration during complete system failure situations.

Backup/Restore Design Overview

Backups are a necessary insurance for any unforeseen event or circumstances that may warrant database restore or complete disaster recovery. Developing plans and procedures for recovering from failures before they occur can also minimize damage and productivity lost. The Internet Platform and Operations group maintained regularly scheduled data and system configurations backups. Details about backing up and restoring this system are in the "Backing Up and Restoring Data" section.

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