Best Practices

• Manage content growth through site quotas and monitoring solutions such as Microsoft Operations Manager.

• Use Site Collections to scale SharePoint to varying groups with different security needs.

• Use Virtual Servers to manage varying types of web-based access to SharePoint sites, such as SSL-encryption or different host headers.

• Consider SQL Server 2000 log shipping for simple redundancy of SharePoint data, if clustering is not an option.

• If needing the full level of scalability with SQL Server 2000, use the Enterprise version of the software and the Windows Server 2003 operating system.

• Utilize SharePoint farms to provide for scalability beyond single server SharePoint environments.

• Don't deploy any more than four search or four index servers in a single SharePoint farm.

• Consider the use of network load balancing failover technology on the front-end SharePoint web servers of midsized to large SharePoint deployments.

• Deploy MSCS clustering technologies for the database servers of large SharePoint deployments.

• Use Office 2003 components at the client level for the best integration with SharePoint Technologies.

• Deploy SharePoint Portal Server 2003 with Exchange Server 2003 for the most robust messaging and collaboration environment.

• Integrate SharePoint with BizTalk Server 2002 to control, manage, and centralize access to business process data. This allows intelligent business decisions to be made more easily.

• Use SharePoint document libraries to address the problems of redundant creation of documents and inefficient document collaboration in an environment.

• Utilize SharePoint's Search and Indexing capabilities to efficiently search across different types of content.

• Use SharePoint document libraries and versioning to avoid the excessive use of email attachments during document collaboration.

• Utilize metadata in document libraries to effectively organize or classify content.

• Deploy and utilize the features of a Windows SharePoint Services Team site such as document libraries, meeting workspaces, Tasks lists, and discussions when users need to collaborate on a common project.

• Use features of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 such as content sources, search and indexing, and topics for creating a corporate intranet solution that provides centralized access to information and processes.

• Utilize the extranet features of SharePoint Portal Server to manage content directed to customers outside an organization.

• Map SharePoint's functionality with the specific user needs of the organization.