Systems and Network Administration. Proper systems and network administration is essential to the well-being of your SharePoint Server 2007 installation. Without the supporting operating system and network infrastructure, your hard work designing and implementing SharePoint Server 2007 is for naught. Your operating plan should include contacts for each of the dependent systems, to include contact numbers, backup administrators, and a disaster recovery plan.

Database and Storage Management. SQL Server forms the foundation for SharePoint Server 2007 content. All of your important user content is stored in content databases on the SQL Server instance. You should plan for a fault-tolerant solution and monitor for performance and capacity. If you are not familiar with SQL Server, but must administer your own database, seriously consider obtaining outside assistance with installing and configuring your SQL Server instance. A properly installed SQL Server instance can make management of that system much easier.

Systems Monitoring. Monitoring is vital to the long-term success of your new SharePoint Server 2007 installation. This chapter has discussed the benefits of incrementally scaling to meet changing requirements and growing user consumption. Without systems monitoring, you will be unable to adapt to these changes and tweak future system requirements. Additionally, you should monitor your systems for problems. The last chapter on performance monitoring will detail methods to monitor your SharePoint Server 2007 installation for performance and security.

Knowledge Base. A knowledge base is fairly simple to create and will save time and energy in the future. It doesn’t have to be elaborate—you could use native SharePoint Server 2007 functionality using a Wiki. While there are many online and written resources for SharePoint Products and Technologies, having a knowledge base with information tailored for your specific installation is invaluable.

Documentation Repository. You can easily build a document library in SharePoint Server 2007 and store all of your project documentation in it. Be careful that you have another copy because if you need to rebuild your SharePoint Server 2007 installation, and the documentation is on the same SharePoint Server 2007 that failed, you won’t have it. Regularly update and keep this documentation in more than one location.

Configuration and Change Management. You need to create a configuration management and change management plan. If you have a native SharePoint Server 2007 installation, creating a document library in Central Administration can assist with documenting all changes in your farm. You should encourage your site collection administrators to also document changes in their respective site collections. But change management is more than tracking changes, it is also about testing changes before they are implemented. Refer to the MOF documentation when creating a change management plan.

Incident and Problem Management. Last, you should plan for incident and problem resolution. Break down the hierarchical structure of your SharePoint Server 2007 installation and obtain agreement from the stakeholders on who will support each of the tiers. For example, SharePoint Products and Technologies administrators may support SharePoint Server 2007, while SQL Server administrators will support SQL. But who will support site collection administrators? Who will fix problems in custom Web parts? How will users report these errors? Will the Help Desk know to whom to route problems? Inform your Help Desk who to contact for each of these problems.