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Approach and design goals for an EPM/Office SharePoint Server 2007 extranet environment

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Topic Last Modified: 2010-02-17

This article describes approach and design goals for planning an Enterprise Project Management (EPM)/Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 extranet environment. For more information about how to plan and deploy, see Plan and deploy an EPM and SharePoint Server 2007 extranet environment.

Approach and design goals

This paper relies on the information already published in the EPM and Office SharePoint Server 2007 Coexistence: Intranet Scenario (white paper) and will repeat only necessary information from that document when it is useful for reading.

This set of articles is about the content required to plan and deploy an EPM-focused Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment in an extranet scenario. The content developed as part of this effort provides a very detailed description of the steps that are required to deploy the Enterprise Project Management (EPM)/ Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 solution in the three supported extranet topologies, but also provides a broader and more practical guidance to help you understand the pros and cons of each configuration. This content also discusses the best practices and recommendations provided by Microsoft for a successful and secure deployment.

A second step will address the testing of the three extranet scenarios proposed as described later in this white paper.

Several test environments shall be set up and configured to allow for the execution of the test cases and focus areas of the coexistence of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. Baseline physical and logical solution architecture for each scenario is developed in this document and will be used to build the test environments.

The following tools and software will be used to perform all required testing and to monitor the results and execution of the test scripts:

  • Microsoft Office Professional 2007 SP1

  • Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 client SP1, IU, December CU

  • Microsoft Office Project Web Access SP1, IU, December CU

  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SP1, IU, December CU

  • Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 SP1, IU, December CU

  • Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1, IU, December CU

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3

  • Microsoft ISA Server 2006 SP1

  • Office Project Server 2007 Resource Kit

The EPM-focused Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm model shows a practical implementation of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office Project Server 2007 features within several common kinds of applications.

The key design goals for the model include the following:

  • Use the single common farm to host the most common kinds of Web sites typically required by a corporation: extranet and EPM sites.

  • Create a framework for designing an extranet environment that can grow. Design decisions for individual applications should not prevent the addition of other applications. For example, an initial deployment might include only the four applications that compose an extranet (Team Sites, My Sites, Partner Extranet Sites and Published Intranet content). By using a similar logical architecture design, you can add applications such as Office Project Server 2007 to the solution without affecting the design of the initial applications. In other words, the design does not limit the use of the environment or the coexistence of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office Project Server 2007 components.

  • Provide access for several classes of users without compromising the security of the content within the various applications. Users from different network zones (both internal and external) with different authentication providers can participate in the collaboration. Also, users can only access the content they are intended to access, including search results. By following a similar logical architecture design, one can create an architecture providing access to users in multiple locations and with different objectives.

  • Ensure that the intranet design can be extended and secured to an extranet environment.