SharePoint Server 2013 Topology Overview
The SharePoint Server 2013 Topology describes the makeup of the Infrastructure for a SharePoint solution. The size of the environment and the workload placed on your servers will help determine the topology that best suits your environment.
SharePoint Server 2013 Topology Size
The size of a SharePoint solution can best be broken down into a category of Small, Medium, or Large.
Small
A small SharePoint farm can consist of a Web Front End (WFE) server and a database sever. These WFE servers will also act as an Application (App) server that will run the service applications and the Central Administration Web Application.
Medium
A medium SharePoint farm can consist of WFE servers, App servers, and a database sever. These WFE servers will support the traffic from the end users. The Apps servers will run the Service Applications and the Central Administration Web Application. The load from the service applications can be distributed across different App servers to balance the load from the services.
Large
A large SharePoint farm is a scaled out version of the medium server farm. Servers can be grouped by their functionality and servers can be added to the Architecture to meed the demand of the users.
SharePoint Server 2013 Topology Tiers
Topology is a logical representation of the server Architecture. Servers can be layout out by their roles and responsibilities. Topology can best be broken down into 1-tier, 2-tier, and 3-tiers.
1-Tier
A 1-tier farm host the WFE, App, and Database roles on a single server. This is best utilized by small SharePoint farms.
2-Tier
On a 2-tier farm, the SharePoint and Database roles are separated onto different servers. The Web Server is located on the first tier and the Database server is located on the second tier.
3-Tier
On a 3-tier farm, the WFE, Application, and Database roles are separated onto 3 levels of servers. The WFE server is located on the first tier, the App server is located on the second tier, and the Database server is located on the third tier. This is the recommended topology for medium and large SharePoint farms.
Notes
- You are able to start with a smaller farm and scale out in size by adding servers to the topology.
- It is recommend that as servers get added to groups based on their application roles. These servers will help balance the load of the demand.
- Performance data can help dictate what services need to be off-loaded to new application servers.
