About server roles (Office SharePoint Server)
Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007
This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.
The server topology consists of three tiers: front-end, application, and database (SQL Server).
All three tiers can be run on a single server.
For larger installations, we recommend that the database tier have a dedicated server (or servers). The front-end and application tiers can then be separated according to capacity or administration requirements.
The application tier hosts one or all of the following services: Index, Excel calculation, Project, and Query. If the front-end and application tiers are being hosted on the same server or servers and are underperforming, we recommend that some or all of the application services be hosted on dedicated servers.
When you move services from front-end servers to application servers in order to reduce the load on the front-end servers, we recommend that you move the services in the following order:
Index
Excel calculation
Project
Query