SharePoint 2010: FAST Search Deployment

0
votes

I am trying to setup our SharePoint Server 2010 installation as per Microsoft's recommended "three-tier small farm topology" pictured here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167089.

In short, we will have:

  • 1x web server to host the Infocentral SharePoint website and web services
  • 1x application server to host the associated SharePoint service applications (e.g. the search and user profile services)
  • 1x database server to host the SharePoint and FAST Search SQL databases

My question is, where does FAST Search Server actually get installed -- do i need a seperate server? Or does it get installed to each of the servers listed above?

This page clearly states that SharePoint Server and FAST Search can not be installed on the same box: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff404323.aspx

1
sharepoint-2010fastsearch
I think ServerFault.com is the better site to ask this, as that is an IT Pro site. As far as I remember, you need 3 additional servers for FAST and quite a bit of extra configuration (Create an AD Group, Setup some additional services - it's a year since I setup my test environment, don't remember all the details). I think the FAST CD contains a 30 Page Setup document (or was it downloaded from Microsoft? Can't remember) that was pretty thorough. – Michael Stum

1 Answers

3
votes

Usually it is recommended to install FAST Search 4 SharePoint Server on a dedicated server box if you are planning to install it as a standalone environment (Because FS4SP might utilize CPU and memory heavily as a result the performance of your sharepoint site will degrade.). But it's not necessary for non-production environment. It's completely ok for to install on any server but I recommend you to install it in App Server (If you have memory and idle processing time)..