1. SINGLE SERVER DEPLOYMENT
The single server deployment architecture consists of one server that is running SharePoint Server 2013 and a supported version of SQL Server. This architecture might be appropriate for evaluation purposes, developers or for an isolated non-mission-critical departmental implementation with only a few users. However, we do not recommend its use for a production environment.
2. SMALL FARM DEPLOYMENT
A small farm deployment consists of a single database server or cluster and one or two SharePoint Server 2013–based computers. The major architecture characteristics include limited redundancy and failover, and a minimal set of SharePoint Server 2013 capabilities enabled.
A small farm is useful to serve only limited deployments, with a minimal set of service applications enabled, a relatively small user base, a relatively low usage load (a few requests per minute up to very few requests per second), and a relatively small volume of data (10 or more gigabytes).
3. MEDIUM FARM DEPLOYMENT
This architecture introduces the breakdown of the topology into three tiers: dedicated Web servers, dedicated application servers, and one or more database servers or clusters. Separating the front end server tier from the application server tier allows greater flexibility in service isolation and helps balancing the load across the system.
This is the most common architecture, and includes a wide spectrum of service topologies and farm sizes. A medium farm deployment is useful to serve environments that have the following:
- Several service applications distributed across multiple servers. A typical set of features might include the Office Web Apps Service, User Profile Service, Managed Metadata Service, and Excel Calculation Service.
- A user base of tens of thousands of users and a load of 10 to 50 requests per second.
- A data store of one or two terabytes.
4. LARGE FARM DEPLOYMENT
Large farm deployments introduce the breakdown of services and solutions across multiple farms, and additional scaling out the tiers on a single farm. Several SharePoint Server 2013 services can be deployed on a dedicated services farm that serves requests from multiple consuming farms. In these large architectures, there are typically Web servers, multiple application servers, depending on the usage characteristic of each of the local (non-shared) services, and multiple SQL Server–based servers or SQL Server clusters, depending on the content size and the application services databases that are enabled on the farm. Large farm architectures are expected to serve deployments that have the following:
- Several service applications federated and consumed from dedicated services farm, typically the User Profile Service, Search, Managed Metadata service, and Web Analytics.
- Most other service applications are enabled locally.
- A user base in the range of hundreds of thousands of users.
- A usage load in the range of hundreds of requests per second.
- A dataset in the range of ten or more terabytes