What is a SharePoint farm?

A SharePoint farm is a collection of servers that work together to host and provide the functionalities of a SharePoint environment.

It forms the backbone of SharePoint’s architecture, enabling organizations to deploy, manage, and scale their SharePoint applications. Each server in the farm plays a specific role, such as hosting databases, running web applications, or managing search services, and they all collaborate to deliver a unified platform for content management, collaboration, and communication.

In a SharePoint farm, there are typically several types of servers, including:

  • Web Servers: Handle incoming web requests and serve web pages to users.
  • Application Servers: Host services like search, Excel services, or the SharePoint timer service.
  • Database Servers: Store content and configuration data in SQL Server databases, managed by SharePoint.

A SharePoint farm can range from a single server handling all roles in smaller environments to a complex setup with multiple dedicated servers in larger, enterprise-level deployments – referred to as a SharePoint farm topology. This architecture allows for scalability, high availability, and load balancing, ensuring that SharePoint can meet the varying needs of organizations.

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