SharePoint : Farm

A Farm or Server Farm is a group of servers that share the same administrative tools and are part of the same organization or group.

It can be done (web/datababase/index etc) on a single server in “Simple Installation” mode in which case you don’t need a NLB. For many small businesses this is plenty enough.

Medium sized businesses usually start with at least 2 Web Front Ends (WFE’s) and a database server.

Multinationals can have some very complex setups involving dozens of components.

See Also

• Web Front End Server (WFE)
• Database Server
• Application Server
• Index and Search Server
• Internet Information Server (IIS)
• Network Load Balancer (NLB)

References

• SharePoint Terminology – Farms, Web Front Ends, Web Application and Sites
• SharePoint Server 2010 - Plan for server farms and environments