Where SharePoint saves Data, and Can I add more Hard Disks?!
I once received a query saying: Can I add new hard drive to SharePoint environment, after it went live?
The guy who asked assumed that SharePoint is rigid in this regard, and that SharePoint has knowledge about logical to physical volume mapping. This is not the case, for SharePoint and most of other applications.
SharePoint is an application that is abstracted from the physical hardware, similar to other applications. SharePoint has two kinds of storage:
- File System folders: used for installation files, index files, and also for basic web content deployed to IIS.
- SQL Server storage: All of SharePoint content and most of configuration data reside in SQL Server 2005 databases. SQL Server 2005, in turn, saves its data to file system in terms of MDF and LDF files.
It's the Windows Server 2003 responsibility to manage the file system storage and map logical volumes (C:, D:, …) to physical volumes (Hard disks, …). So, properly designed Windows Server 2003 environment can give you the flexibility of adding or removing physical disks, or can prevent you from doing so.
Given the above, and knowing how Windows Server 2003 manages its file system storage, then SharePoint Server 2007 has no control or even aware of what's happening beneath it.
The bottom line is: do proper planning for your Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 environment, especially when it comes to storage management. With that, your SharePoint environment will not suffer from space issues.
