Implementation Considerations for FAST Search For SharePoint (FS4SP)

Presenter : Shyam Narayan

MOSSIG – February 2011 Meeting

b: www.dotnetbounce.com

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

Best of Microsoft

Best of SharePointBest of High-end• 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 eco-

system

Enterprise Search from

Microsoft

The Vision: A New Choice in Search

• Out-of-the-box intranet search• People Search• SharePoint platform integration• No code customization

Microsoft Enterprise Search- ProductivityProducts 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 UI Framework• Social search features and integration• SharePoint platform integration • End user and site administrator enablement

Common across the product line

• Common Connector Framework (BDC)• APIs and developer Experience• Admin & deployment capabilities• Operations advantages (SCOM, scripting)

FAST Search Extends SharePoint

Superset of capabilities; common base functionality and platform

End Users Content

Content search

People search

Common query and federation APIs

Common connectors and content APIs

Best High-End Content Search based on FAST ESP

Unique Social Search from SharePoint Server 2010

Common IT Pro and developer experience

FAST Search for SharePoint

SharePoint Server2010

Advanced Content Processing

+ Profiles

Query SSA

Content SSA

FAST Search Server 2010Summary of architectural components

Custom Front-End

OpenSearch or Other Sources

SharePoint Front-end

People Search

Qu

ery

Obje

ct M

od

el

Query and Result

Processing

Security AccessModule

SearchCore

Indexing

Federation Object Model

Query Web Service

Advanced Content

Processing

Linguistics

WebLink

AnalysisConnectors

• Web Crawler• JDBC

Connectors• SharePoint• File Traverser• Web • BDC• Exchange• Notes• Documentum

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager

Monitoring Services

Administration and Schema Object Model

Site Collection Level Admin UI• Keyword Management• User Context Management• Site Promotion/Demotion

PowerShell

• Schema configuration• Admin configuration• Deployment configuration

Central Administration UI

• Property mapping• Property extraction• Spell-checking

FAST Server(s)

SharePoint Server(s)

Other Server(s)

Content

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

FAST Server(s)

SharePoint Server(s)

Other Server(s)

Service EndpointsWeb parts and Web Services

Query and Content SSA’s

Topology - FAST Search Server 2010 and SharePoint Server Farms – Redundancy and Availability

Content SSA

FAST Farm

Query SSA

Content Distributor

FAST specific connectors

Item Processing Indexing Dispatcher

Web Analyzer

Query Processing

Search Cluster

Indexing and Query Matching

FSA

Administration Node

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

Similar to SharePoint Install

FS4SP Installation Process

Similar to SharePoint Install

FS4SP Installation Process

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