FAST Search for sharepoint 2010

1. FAST Search for sharepoint 2010 Presented by Jacob Wilson http://sharepoint.jacobtwilson.com

2. About Myself • Jacob Wilson • Principal Consultant @ Neudesic • MCTS SharePoint, MCITP SharePoint, MCTS PerformancePoint • Have worked with SharePoint for the past 4 years with field related work in Architecture, Installation, Configuration, Administration, Custom Development, Branding, and User Experience (UX). • Have also been doing Planning and Architecture work with FAST Search for SharePoint 2010.

3. Fast search for SharePoint 2010

4. Agenda • About FAST Search for SharePoint • FAST Search for SharePoint Services • Planning and Architecture (Demo) • Visual Search and User Context (Demo) • SharePoint Search Comparisons • Extending Search • Lesson Learned

5. About fast search for SharePoint

6. About fast search for SharePoint • April 2008 • Microsoft acquires Norwegian Enterprise Search Solution Fast Search & Transfer • Overall Vision • To provide a market leading enterprise search platform that integrates with your existing infrastructure • SharePoint Vision • Best-in-class search, with the simplicity and low TCO of SharePoint • Build upon a social computing platform for a more robust search experience

7. How does fast work • Processes each item by extracting the searchable text, detecting the written language, and extracting the known properties, such as company names, people names, locations, and dates. • The system indexes the extracted text in an inverted index so that it can handle search requests later. • Uses the search index to return items that match a user query. The items are returned in a query hit list that is sorted by the relevancy to the specified query.

8. How does fast work – contd. • The system interacts with the Active Directory and claims infrastructure to resolve permissions and group memberships. It then only returns items the current user is allowed to see, according to the settings of the content source.

9. What can be crawled • SharePoint Sites • Indexing Connector: FAST Search Connector • Configuration: Central Administration • File Shares • Indexing Connector: FAST Search Connector • Configuration: Central Administration • Web Sites • Indexing Connector: FAST Search Connector • Configuration: Central Administration • Line of Business Data • Indexing Connector: FAST Search Connector • Configuration: Central Administration • Database • Indexing Connector: Indexing Connector for JDBC • Configuration: XML File • Lotus Notes • Indexing Connector: Indexing Connector for Lotus Notes • Configuration: XML Files

10. Fast search for SharePoint services

11. Fast services • FAST Search Web Crawler • The FAST Search Web crawler is an indexing connector that can be used for complex Web crawl scenarios involving a mix of Internet and Intranet sites. • Fast Search Connector • Retrieves content for indexing from SharePoint farms, Exchange folders, internal/external Web sites, line of business data and file shares. This is an indexing connector that crawls the content repositories and retrieves content that can be indexed by FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.

12. Fast services – contd. • Web Link Analysis (Web Analyzer, Scalable) • It analyzes search click through logs and hyperlink structures. • Items that show many clicks in the search click through log are popular and therefore receive better rank scores than less-viewed items. • Items that are linked to from many other items are also perceived to be more relevant for the user and therefore receive better rank scores.

13. Fast services – contd. • Item Processing (Scalable) • Receives items to be indexed from indexing connectors. • Extracts content from source documents in various formats • Discovers and sets managed properties • Performs linguistic processing on the content • Sends the processed items to the indexing service • Key Features • Mapping from crawled properties to managed properties • Parsing of document formats such as Word, Excel and PDF • Extracting properties from crawled content • Linguistic processing of items before indexing (Stemming and word breaking)

14. Fast services – contd. • Query Matching (Scalable) • The query matching service uses the inverted indexes created by the indexing service to retrieve the items that match a query and then return these items as a query hit list • The number of columns in the query matching service always equals the number of columns in the indexer service. The reason is that the index columns represent a partitioning of the index, and each query matching node can handle only one such partition of the index.

15. Fast services – contd. • FAST Search Authorization • The FAST Search Authorization (FSA) manager is a part of the administration service that manages user authorization for indexed content • Ensures that only items that a user is entitled to read appear in the query results • The FSA manager communicates with Active Directory services or other LDAP based directory services to manage the authorization process

16. Planning and architecture

17. System requirements • CPU • Quad 2.0 GHz or faster • Memory • 4GB or more is recommended for all configurations. For multi-core servers, at least 2GB per core is recommended. • Swap Space • Should be twice the machine’s physical memory • Disk Space • 50GB initial available disk space • RAID 5 recommended • Plan for 1TB of disk space per 5 million indexed documents

18. Feature performance summary

19. Server roles • Admin Server • Administration Services • Non-Admin Server • Query Matching (Search) Service • Indexing Service • Document/Item Processing Service

20. Single server deployment • Admin and Non-Admin Services on single server

21. Multi-server deployment • Admin Server and 1+ Non-Admin Server(s)

22. Office web apps services • PowerPoint Service Application • Viewing/Editing PPT documents in the browser • Generating PPT thumbnails in FAST Search Results • Word Viewing Service • Viewing/Editing Word documents in the browser • Generating Word thumbnails in FAST Search Results

23. SharePoint search service applications • FAST Search Connector (SSA, App Server) • Is a Search Service Application that retrieves content for indexing from SharePoint farms and other content repositories. • FAST Query (SSA, WFE) • Is a Search Service Application that provides query results from the content that is crawled by the Content SSA.

24. Partitioned index • Oh yeah, let’s not forget about the partitioned index. • Spread the load for queries across multiple query servers • Propagate index subsets to different query servers • Hash of document ID’s to determine which partition the index entries for a specific document should be stored • Query results can come from different servers

25. demo

26. Visual search and user context

27. Visual, conversational search • Refiners with Detailed Counts • Counts are specific to FAST Search • Thumbnails and Scrolling PPT Previews • Specific to FAST Search • Provided by Office Web Apps 2010 • Similarity Search • Specific to FAST Search • Sorting on any Property • Visual Best Bets • Specific to FAST Search

28. Visual, conversational search Sorting on any property Scrolling PowerPoint Previews Visual Best Bets Thumbnails Refinement with counts on any property Similarity Search

29. Fast search User context • Keyword • Best Bets • Visual Best Bets • Document Promotion • Document Demotion • Site Promotion • Site Demotion

30. demo

31. SharePoint search comparison

32. Sharepoint search comparison End User perspective

33. Sharepoint search comparison

34. Sharepoint search comparison

35. Sharepoint search comparison - OOB

36. Sharepoint search comparison – FAST

37. Extending search

38. Extending search • Extend OOB Web Parts – or Create New Ones • Location Awareness • Geo-Search using SortFormula() with FQL (Fast Query Language) • Query Language Expressiveness • Soft boost (relevance control) using Xrank operator in FQL • EX: Boost all documents that contain a selected persons name or phrase

39. Lessons learned

40. Lessons learned • FAST Query Service Location Port • Use 13287 instead of the suggested 13285 for HTTP communication. Use 13286 for HTTPS. • FAST Search User Context Permissions • Need to have User Profile Service Application Permissions • FAST Search Server Local Admin Group • FAST Service Accounts need to be manually added to the FAST Server local group FASTSearchAdministrators • Service Account Access to FAST Search SQL DB’s • Need to manually grant service accounts access to SQL DB’s • Office Web Applications Install and Post Configuration • Install on the SharePoint server before installing SharePoint 2010 • Run PowerShell scripts for post-configuration • Make sure to activate the publishing infrastructure features on the site where the FAST Search Center will live. You won’t be able to successfully add a FAST Search Center site to the Site Collection until this is done.

41. Useful resources • FAST Search Server for SharePoint Deployment & Configuration Guide • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a65aef6f-bc99-4b29-81bb-37fce8ad6ea7&displaylang=en • FAST Search Server for SharePoint Known Issues • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8101DA55-1AF2-41A1-89EF-15536A8000F2&displaylang=en • FAST Search Server for SharePoint Cmdlets Overview • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0A91AE47-8C6F-447E-8084-2EF7208837AE&displaylang=en • Deploy Office Web Apps (SharePoint 2010) • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee695758(office.14).aspx#bkmk_activatingPS • Search TechCenter • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/enterprisesearch/ee441234.aspx

42. Questions???