Scaling SharePoint 2007: Storage Architecture

By Russ Houberg, KnowledgeLake

The purpose of this whitepaper is three fold. First, this document is intended to provide prescriptive guidance targeted at the storage subsystem for a highly scalable SharePoint implementation in order to facilitate architectural planning. Second, it is intended to provide techniques for monitoring scalability metrics for existing SharePoint implementations. Finally, it provides techniques for modifying storage architecture of SharePoint systems that are suffering from poor performance due to the fact that the I/O burden on the storage subsystem has exceeded its capability.

It is important to review the databases that will most directly impact the functional performance characteristics of SharePoint. The sections immediately below attempt to provide prescriptive guidance for implementing databases in the order of impact to SharePoint performance.