Alpesh Nakar's Blog

Look before you leap! Well that is what Rick Taylor has written about SharePoint 2003 deployment in an enterprise wide network.

If you are going to deploy Microsoft SharePoint Technologies, read his SharePoint Diary to know what you are going to get into! His is a 11 day program and you cannot ignore -

The 5 Commandments of SharePoint Delpoyments

An effective SharePoint deployment must be built with a solid understanding of the organization’s design needs. Here are some of the most common things you should take into account before (or as) you design your SharePoint infrastructure.

1. Thou shalt not put all documents into SharePoint. This is a common mistake. SharePoint is a good document repository, but it should not replace your file servers. Keep non-collaborative documents on your file servers and point SharePoint to the file server as a content source. Dropping all documents into SharePoint unnecessarily grows your SQL database and makes a backup and restore more cumbersome, especially for a file-level restore.
2. Thou shalt put processing power on the Web front-end. Architects often place the biggest, most powerful piece of hardware at the back-end with SQL. But if that database is dedicated to SharePoint, you are off course — the “hoss” should be placed at the front-end with the WFE. That’s the end that gets busy with crawling content and serving up user requests.
3. Thou shalt not underestimate storage requirements. Obey the Golden Rule of SharePoint — for every 1GB of data, set aside 5GB to 6GB of storage capacity. If you don’t adequately size your disk space, you’ll be forever adding space at inconvenient times.
4. Thou shalt not scrimp on user training. What if you built a killer app and no one used it? Fail to train your users, and you’ll find out. Develop an internal training program or pay for competent external training, but do not let your investment go down the drain.
5. Thou shalt respect search. If you deployed SharePoint for its search, you must invest man-hours to make it work right. Expect to budget 0.5 FTE (Full Time Employee) for every 100 content sources SharePoint server must crawl. That half-day will reflect time spent ensuring content sources are being correctly crawled, that filters are working and that quality results are being returned.

It’s a must read. “The SharePoint Diaries”