Windows SharePoint Services in Small Business Server

For the past few years, I've been fascinated by SharePoint Technologies. The more I learn, the more I understand the vast capabilities of this suite to help a company respond to the changing business needs. SharePoint sites truly provide a single infrastructure for all your business Web sites. Share documents with colleagues, manage projects with partners, and publish information to customers.

But a lot has already been said and written about the capabilities and possibilities of SharePoint Technologies. What I really want to focus on is how SharePoint Technologies is implemented in the Small Business Server suite.

SharePoint Technologies was first introduced to us SBS users as Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 in Small Business Server 2003. We’ve made quite a transition from there to the latest SharePoint Foundation 2010 offered in SBS 2011.

One of the reasons why SharePoint technologies have always amused me is how beautifully it integrates Internet Information Services and SQL.

Broadly speaking, this is how I see SharePoint Technologies:

I like to isolate a SharePoint issue using the above diagram into an issue with one (or more) component(s). Once the problem component is identified, the troubleshooting thereafter is more about fixing the broken component and putting the links between the adjacent components back.

To understand how SharePoint looks from each component’s perspective, I use the chart below:

In my next few posts I would like to talk about how different it is to resolve SharePoint issues in an SBS installation as compared to a standard deployment.

I would use this post as a reference for all the troubleshooting and disaster recovery scenarios.