Search is one of the most compelling features of a true enterprise SharePoint deployment. In the last 6 months, our clients have expressed more and more interest in looking across the entire spectrum of search options available with SharePoint. The question normally asked: SharePoint or FAST? In some cases, the choice is clear. Large document volume or particular functional requirements mandates use of FAST.
Our experience with FAST has been positive. Its important, however, to be aware of the learning curve associated with a FAST deployment (“with great power comes great responsibility”). Its ironic that those with SharePoint experience can, in some cases, find the first implementation of FAST more challenging than a SharePoint novice. Things that appear to work the same do, in some cases, work differently.
In subsequent postings, I will explore these similarities and differences. For now, I’ll summarize these along with some hints for getting started.
What’s The Same?
- Search Center, Scopes, etc. – all of these concepts, features, and functions from MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010 are utilized by FAST. There is even a custom “FAST Enterprise Search Center” template available for use with FAST.
- At Your Service – FAST is also made available within a SharePoint farm via services. The more granular service model of SharePoint 2010 (versus the SSPs of MOSS 2007) allows easier mixing/matching of search providers and web applications.
- Crawlers – In general, SharePoint crawls the content; FAST manages the index and searching . . . but
- People Search – FAST does NOT support crawling of user profiles. Instead, SharePoint user profile crawls are configured in SharePoint; FAST exposes the results via query federation in the query service application.
What’s different?
- Farming – the FAST documentation uses the term “FARM”. The deployment of FAST involves creation of a FAST FARM followed by a connection to a SharePoint FARM via service applications. The setup of the FAST farm and provisioning of associated SharePoint services is a partly scripted and partially manual process. Configuration requires significant forethought and planning.
- Search Scope Administration – this is one of the more confusing areas of FAST. Search scopes for FAST appear in the SharePoint Central Admin UI, but cannot be completely managed from the UI Instead, a number of Windows PowerShell extensions are provide to manage content sources and filters.
- Web Crawler – its not immediately obvious, but FAST includes its own web crawler that is substantially more powerful and flexible than that provided with SharePoint Server 2010. This crawler allows for very specific control of the depth of crawling, content inclusion/exclusion, authentication modes, etc. (Several of the configuration options have proved to be key to successful content crawling.) The operation and configuration of this crawler is done via Windows PowerShell and commands on the FAST Farm.
How Do You Start?
- FAST University – search for “FAST University” and you will find a great collection of on-line demos and presentations with both technical and non-technical themes. While some of the presentations are a bit dry, the content is great.
- On Line Documentation – yes, it exists. Its generally accurate and complete, but needs to be followed very carefully.
- Windows PowerShell – but you already need to use that for everything else nowdays!
- Side By Side – the ideal way to learn FAST is to mimic setups you have already completed in SharePoint or complete the same setup in both SharePoint and FAST. This will re-inforce the differences and similarities and reveal the power of FAST
