Because there are software boundaries and limits that affect web application pools, it only stands to reason that there would be metrics around the number of web applications in a SharePoint farm.
For any SharePoint farm, the supported number of web applications is 20 per farm.
In the section on planning for software boundaries, you will note that the supported limit for web applications in a farm is set to 20. this is not a per-web application pool limit, but a limit for the entirety of the SharePoint farm. as with the web application pools, this limitation is memory-dependent, and baseline raM monitoring is recommended before increasing the web application count to that level.
Planning the web app configuration
Several configuration items must be considered when planning web applications in a new SharePoint farm. Recording each of these decisions on or before the new web application is implemented results in a streamlined, repeatable installation as well as providing documentary evidence of the installation processes that have occurred previously.
Although the name of the web application might seem trivial at first, developing a naming standard for both your web applications and the content databases that they interact with is a key first effort at documentation. There are few feelings worse than receiving that phone call after stopping/deleting the wrong web application during business hours.
Determining the purpose of a web application before it is implemented guides the direction of its configuration. Defining this purpose can be as easy as developing a set of questions such as the following:
■■ What group of users does this application serve (intranet, extranet, Internet)?
■■ How are users expected to authenticate?
■■ What type of navigation do users expect when they visit the site or site collections in this web application?
Although not technically part of a web application’s design, the manner in which site collections will be created and deployed has a direct bearing on how a web application should be configured. There are two distinct choices:
■■ Host named site collections
■■ Path-based site collections
Configuration choices made at creation time for the web application have direct bearing on which type of site collections can be utilized within your new web application.
Host named site collections are discussed later in this chapter (and will be compared with path-based site collections).
authentication provider and type
When a new web application is created, there are several choices available for authentication. Choosing which authentication methods will be available generally depends on the audience the web application will serve:
■■ Windows authentication
■■ Integrated Windows authentication (NTLM or Kerberos)
■■ Basic authentication
■■ Forms-based authentication
■■ Using the ASP.NET membership and role provider
■■ Trusted identity provider
■■ SAML token-based authentication
anonymous access
Although not technically a form of authentication, enabling anonymous access for a web application enables users to retrieve content without the need for a user name/password
combination.
Allowing anonymous access does not mean that content in a web application will be immediately available to users; it simply means that site administrators can enable anonymous authorization to site content.
This setting should be left on when using forms authentication mode because certain forms-aware client applications might not correctly authenticate without it.
Database server and authentication type for the web application
Working with the SQL DBA team, you should be able to determine which Microsoft SQL database server or instance should host your SharePoint content databases.
The SQL database administrator (DBA) will let you know which type of authentication is acceptable, but this authentication must be one of the following:
■■ Windows authentication (recommended)
■■ SQL authentication
Specifying a failover database server
There are currently three types of high availability (HA) solutions provided by SQL Server; however, the only one that SharePoint is aware of (the others are transparent) is SQL database mirroring.
When a SharePoint database is mirrored, SharePoint must not only know the name/ instance of the principal server (where the database read/write transactions are occurring) but also the name/instance of the mirror server (the read-only copy of the database). If the mirrored database is failed over, SharePoint then knows the location of the alternative name/ instance.
As stated previously, there are three SQL HA options available:
■■ SQL clustering (SQL 2008 R2 and 2012)
■■ SQL high availability groups (SQL 2012)
■■ SQL mirroring (SQL 2008 R2 and 2012)
IMPORTANT SQL MIRRORING HAS BEEN DEPRECATED AFTER SQL 2012
Although SQL mirroring is still supported in SQL 2012, it has been deprecated, meaning that it will not be supported in the next version of SQL. If you are creating a new SharePoint 2013 farm or upgrade, now might be a good time to consider one of the other options (high-availability groups are the preferred replacement for mirroring).
SQL database planning is discussed in greater detail later in this section.
Service application connections
SharePoint 2013 provides service application functionality (User Profile, Search, Excel Services, and so on) via a series of service application proxies.
These proxies are usually collected into a proxy group (the first one is called “default,” appropriately enough), but it is possible to connect to one or more proxies by simply selecting a custom connection and selecting the check boxes of the proxies that you want to connect the new web application to.
alternate access Mapping (aaM) UrLs and web application zones
Alternate Access Mapping (AAM) URLs are a mechanism that allows for a single site collection to be associated to multiple URLs.
Zones are logical constructs that define several different means of accessing the same web application. Each zone can have different types of authentication mechanisms based on how a user would be accessing the site.
Both AAMs and zones are covered later in this section.
