A new server farm configuration is supported in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 where the computers that are running SQL Server 2000 are located in a trusted domain

This article discusses a new server farm configuration that is supported in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. In this configuration, the computer or computers that are running Microsoft SQL Server 2000 are located in a trusted domain.

A server farm is a centralized grouping of network servers that provide a network with load balancing, scalability, and fault tolerance. In a server farm deployment, you configure individual servers so that they appear to represent a single resource. The following types of server farm deployments are available in SharePoint Portal Server 2003:

• Small server farm
• Medium server farm
• Large server farm

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 requires domain membership for all servers. Two domain membership configurations are supported for server farm deployments. You can use one of the following domain membership configurations:

• A server farm deployment where all servers in the server farm are members of the same domain
• A server farm deployment where the computer or computers that are running SQL Server 2000 in the server farm are located in a trusted domain

The following are requirements for the new domain membership configuration where the computer or computers that are running SQL Server 2000 are located in a trusted domain:

• The account from the trusted domain is the default crawling account.
• The account from the trusted domain is the CentralAdminAppPool application pool account.
• The account from the trusted domain is the content application pool account.
• The account from the trusted domain must also be a portal administrator. Additionally, the following conditions are true:
  • The account is the only account that has permissions to configure single sign-on and to create a single sign-on service database on the server farm.
  • The account is the only account that has permissions to back up and to restore servers on the server farm.

For additional information about server farm deployments of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: For more information about server farm deployments of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, see the "Deployment Scenarios" section of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root folder of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.