| Role |
Purpose |
Fault Tolerance |
Typical Servers |
notes |
| WFE |
serves HTML and routing requests |
YES, can exist on multiple servers |
2 or more servers in a farm |
NLB for load balancing & host headers |
| Query Server role |
executes search queries against locally stored copy of the index |
yes |
on each WFE |
needs disk space |
| Index Server Role |
indexes all configured content sources, creates index and propagates to query servers |
NO, one index per SSP per farm |
Dedicated server |
possible to run index and query on the same but this will disable propagation. recommendation is to keep them separate |
| WSS Search |
slimmed down version of MOSS Search |
No |
runs on the same server as index |
In MOSS setting, this is used for Help |
| Excel Calculation Service |
performing calculations on excel workbooks that are stored in content databases |
Yes |
placed on WFE, recommended is to put them on dedicated pair of servers as it is resource intensive |
Fault tolerant but session state is not, so users stay on the same server during the session duration |
| Document Conversions Load Balancer Service |
balances document conversion requests from across the server farm |
No, app server can have only one balancer service |
typically placed on Index server |
|
| Document Conversions Launcher Service |
schedules and initiates the document conversions on a server |
yes, multiple launchers can exist |
each WFE |
each WFE must have the set of document conversion applications installed |
| WSS Incoming Email |
receiving mails and placing them in email enabled lists |
yes |
each WFE |
SharePoint Directory service configuration |
| WSS Outgoing Email |
sends outbound email to SMTP |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
| Central Administration |
farm wide administration |
can be made fault tolerant |
index or one of the web servers |
web app runs on all web application servers but service runs on only one |
Turlaps 