Hosting the Windows Live Messenger IM Control

It is very easy to integrate the Microsoft Live Messenger Control like I have done on this blog. Just follow the steps described in the MSDN article at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb936683.aspx.

© Copyright 2008, Tomas Elfving

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Capacity Model now shipping

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 has shipped, now with two New SharePoint deployment models!

• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Capacity Model
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Capacity Model

By supplying information such as...

• number o users
• internet vs. intranet,
• distribution between anonymous vs. authenticated users
• usage profiles (Light <-> Heavy publishing, Light <-> Heavy collaboration)

...you get planning help and high level guidance regarding topology and hardware requirements. You can analyze how your deployment may be impacted by a merger or other scenarios and variabels.

This tool simplifies the hardware acquisition and address some of the early number of server licensing type questions. Note artificial limits have been placed in the tool to limit it at 100,000 users and 3 TB. Above these limits, Microsoft recommend MCS or experienced Architects be consulted. Even up to these limits it's recommended to consult with experienced architects and consultants to validate the recommendations from the tool. Also, check out the HP capacity planning tool to validate these results.

I took the tool for a spin. For a single-site minimum topology for a light publishing/light collaboration internet site with 50% anonymous and 50% authenticated users, the following spec is recommended:

Topology
Sites with servers: 1
Sites with clients only: 0
Total number of clients: 1

Site: Mini
Number of users: 1
Number of servers: 4
Number of SAN connections: 0

Server: Index Server
Processor: 2-processor, 2,40 GHz, Opteron (2-chip x 1-core)
Minimum memory: 8,0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (File System), 144 GB RAID 5 (3 x 72,00 GB SCSI 10 000 RPM)
NIC: 1 x 1 000 Mb/s
Roles: Index

Server: SQL Server
Processor: 2-processor, 2,40 GHz, Opteron (2-chip x 1-core)
Minimum memory: 16,0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (Log Files), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146,00 GB SCSI 15 000 RPM)
DiskArray 1\Volume 2 (Data Files), 584 GB RAID 10 (8 x 146,00 GB SCSI 15 000 RPM)
NIC: 1 x 1 000 Mb/s
Roles: SQL Server

Server: Web Front End 1
Processor: 2-processor, 2,40 GHz, Opteron (2-chip x 1-core)
Minimum memory: 8,0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (File System), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146,00 GB SCSI 10 000 RPM)
DiskArray 1\Volume 2 (File System), 144 GB RAID 5 (3 x 72,00 GB SCSI 10 000 RPM)
NIC: 1 x 1 000 Mb/s
Roles: Web Front End; Query Server

Server: Web Front End 2
Processor: 2-processor, 2,40 GHz, Opteron (2-chip x 1-core)
Minimum memory: 8,0 GB
Disk: DiskArray 1\Volume 1 (File System), 146 GB RAID 1 (2 x 146,00 GB SCSI 10 000 RPM)
DiskArray 1\Volume 2 (File System), 144 GB RAID 5 (3 x 72,00 GB SCSI 10 000 RPM)
NIC: 1 x 1 000 Mb/s
Roles: Web Front End; Query Server

Personally, I think this seems a bit much... I mean isn't 4 double-processor servers as a minimum startup configuration a bit steep? It obviously depends on your availability requirements, but if You can skip the redundancy, You should be fine with 2 servers (one web and one database).

© Copyright 2008, Tomas Elfving

Massive support for OpenID

I've over the last months done a number of posts on the emerging de-facto standard for internet authentification OpenID. Now the OpenID Foundation is announcing that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! have taken seats as the organization's first corporate board members.

OpenID is appealing as it allows users to authenticate their identity through a single chosen provider instead of creating unique accounts at every website you use. Today, more than 10 000 web sites and 350 million users use OpenID.

For users, OpenID means much easier account creation, better personalization, privacy and security when trying out new web sites. It makes for a greatly improved user experience. For websites and other companies, OpenID means more and happier users and potentially greater access to information about those users.

There's a whole lot of momentum right now for OpenID. As I've previously told, in January Yahoo! increased the number of OpenID enabled user accounts by orders of magnitude, the long-awaited OpenID 2.0 spec was just recently finalized and the entire Data Portability paradigm is moving into the public consciousness quickly.

All of that said, big vendors have a lot of short term interest in controlling identity silos. It won't be easy to get their long term interests in openness to prevail. Fortunately, they are participating but are in the minority on the OpenID Foundation board.

There are many, many places you can get an OpenID and there are significant differences in advanced feature sets. To get a good look at the range of options and details beyond mere simple one-way authentication, check out the vendor comparison at SpreadOpenID.org.

© Copyright 2007, Tomas Elfving