FAST for SharePoint Architecture

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (FAST for SharePoint) provides new components for querying and indexing and relies on SharePoint for some search functions. Shown here is a logical diagram of a typical FAST for SharePoint installation.

User queries go to the FAST Query Search Service Application (Query SSA, at top). This component runs on user-facing SharePoint Web servers and returns results from the FAST query and indexing infrastructure (which is formally known as FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, the same name as the full FAST for SharePoint product), combined with People Search results from the standard SharePoint search infrastructure. Most content for FAST indexing comes from the FAST Search Connector (also called the Content SSA), which runs on SharePoint application servers and crawls SharePoint farms, Web servers, file shares, Exchange Public Folders, and application databases using SharePoint content connectors for these sources. However, FAST content connectors are used to crawl some sources, including Lotus Notes databases, databases accessed via the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API, and Web servers on the Internet.