Deploy Project Server 2010 on SharePoint 2010

By any chance if you come across the requirement of installing and configuring Microsoft Project Server 2010, technet has provided a nice and easy guide of deploying Project Server 2010.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197280.aspx

In this section:

• Deploy Project Server 2010 to a server farm environment
  This series of articles describes the steps necessary to install Microsoft Project Server 2010 in a server farm environment. This includes installing and configuring Project Server, creating a Microsoft Project Web App site, and configuring reporting.
• Deploy Project Server 2010 to a test environment
  This series of articles describes deploying a test installation of Microsoft Project Server 2010 in a virtual environment. The purpose of this series is as follows:
• Install Project Server 2010 to a stand-alone computer
  Microsoft Project Server 2010 can be installed in a stand-alone configuration that uses Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express. This configuration is useful for demonstration, but should not be used for a production environment.
• TechNet Webcast: Project Server 2010 upgrade and migration
  This Microsoft TechNet Webcast discusses Microsoft Project Server 2010 features, requirements, and deployment considerations that IT professionals need to know about.
• TechNet Webcast: Project Server 2010 - Backwards Compatibility Mode
  This Microsoft TechNet Webcast discusses the Microsoft Project Server 2010 Backwards Compatibility Mode (BCM) feature, which helps you to accelerate deployment of Microsoft Project 2010.
• In-place upgrade to Project Server 2010
  This article describes the process of doing an in-place upgrade from Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 to Project Server 2010.
• Database-attach full upgrade to Project Server 2010
  This article describes how to do a database-attach full upgrade to Project Server 2010, in which you back up the required databases in the old farm and then restore them in the new farm.
• Database-attach core upgrade to Project Server 2010
  This article describes how to do a database-attach core upgrade to Project Server 2010, in which you are basically using backup copies of your Office Project Server 2007 databases that contain your project data.
• Virtual migration environment (VME) guide for Project Server 2010
  The Project Server VME is a virtualized Office Project Server 2007 environment that contains all the necessary applications and utilities required to migrate Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 data to Office Project Server 2007. To migrate from Project Server 2003 to Project Server 2010, first you must migrate your data to Office Project Server 2007 format.
• Upgrade to Project Server 2010 from Project Server 2003
  This series of articles provides information and procedures about how to migrate from Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 to Project Server 2010.
• Deploy language packs (Project Server 2010)
  Microsoft Project Server 2010 language packs enable Project Server 2010 users to view Microsoft Project Web App and project sites in multiple languages without requiring separate installations of Project Server 2010.
• Deploy Project Server 2010 with Exchange Server
  These articles describe how to configure integration with Exchange Server, enabling Microsoft Project Server 2010 users to view Project Server tasks in Microsoft Outlook.

SharePoint 2010 Farm Topologies

Normally a SharePoint Farm topology vary on number of factors.

1) Number of users.
2) Redundancy requirements.
3) Service applications being used.

Looking back at SharePoint 2007, it was SSP (aka Shared Service Provider) we had. But with the new service applications model in SP 2010 the users have greater flexibility in deployments.

Given below are the different Farm Topologies used in SP 2010 Deployments.

Single Server Farm
This is ideal for a user base of less than 100. This farm consists of a single server catering the requirement of the Web Front End (WFE), Database Server and the Application Server.

Two Server Farm
This farm is equipped with one Database Server and one Webserver that performs all the application services. For high availability a clustered or mirrored database server is recommended. This farm can cater the requirement of 100 to 10,000 user base.

Two-Tier Small Farm
This environment is adequate for a user base of 10,000 to 20,000 with low service usage. Two Web Servers, one Web Server performing the tasks of the Application Server and the Database Server (clustered or mirrored).

Three-Tier Small Farm
Three-Tier small farm is much more similar to a Two-Tier Small Farm. A dedicated Application Server is added to cater the requirements of the Services. To improve the performance of the Search Service a the Search Database can be moved to a dedicated Database server. This Farm Topology is ideal for a solution with a Search Database containing nearly 10 million items which can be considered as a large Search Database. Though its optional, it’s a good practice to have a Database Cluster or a mirror.

Medium Farm
This is a Three-Tier Farm. The general rule in planning is to have 10,000 users for a WFE Server. In the First Tier we can utilize two or more Web Servers. In the Second Tier there are two servers dedicated to crawling contents and serving search queries and one or more servers for all other application services. In the Third Tier there are dedicated servers for Search Databases and one or more servers can be used for all other SharePoint Databases.

The middle tier can be expanded to to handle the growth by adding more servers to cater the requirement of application services.
*optional servers are in gray color.

Large Farm
A Large Farm is built on the Server Group concept as it used in the Medium Farm. Additionally a Large Farm could consist of dedicated servers for Sandboxed code.

It's always recommended to use the concept of “server groups” to group services with similar performance characteristics together onto a single server and then add servers based on the needs of those particular services.

Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Launch at SLIIT

SLIIT is one of the most popular Universities in Sri Lanka. I was invited to host two technical sessions in the month of August for the launch of VS 2010 and SP 2010.

The first session was on Visual Studio 2010. Covered most of the new and cool features of VS 2010 IDE.

My second session was all about my love SharePoint 2010. Actually this was a totally new experience for most of the participants as it was the first time they heard about SharePoint. But feedback I received made me amazed, session was a kick start for many students.

Read Uditha’s Blog for more pics.

ASP.NET Workshop at Wayamba University

This was a two day session. I was invited as a guest speaker to host a session on ASP.NET. The attendees were very enthusiastic about the session. As it was a Workshop they were managed to work on Visual Studio and to create ASP.NET applications.

Visual Studio is a product which can be used to develop applications without having a clue about basic concepts or core of it. But as a techie, that’s something I strongly refuse to do nor guide anybody. So with the chance I got, I hosted the session giving an introduction on how ASP.NET handles a client requests.

Thanks to Mr. Wellington, Microsoft Student Champs and to Wayamba Uni Team.

I was at Tech.Ed 2010 Sri Lanka

Yep I’m way too late to publish this post. But today I found few community sessions I did, which I couldn’t publish in my blog, so its always better to be late than never.

It was in February 2010, Microsoft Sri Lanka organized Tech-Ed 2010 Sri Lanka. The second day, 9th February 2010 was a remarkable day for me. I was invited to host a 1 hour Session on Microsoft Wrokflow Foundation 4.0 by the organizing committee. Though 1 hour is not enough, I gave an introduction to WF and to the new features of WF 4.0.

Bruce Schneier, the security guru was one of the guest speakers. I was lucky to sit for a pic with him