SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise + FAST Used by Employees

Providing users access to the full set of SharePoint Server 2010 features augmented with a higher-end search engine requires purchase of a variety of different licenses for servers as well as clients. Microsoft often uses the term “SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise” to refer to a system where all SharePoint Server functions—both the Standard Client Access License (CAL) features as well as the Enterprise CAL features—are enabled. FAST Search Server for SharePoint (FAST for SharePoint), which is based on technology Microsoft acquired with FAST Search and Transfer in 2008, offers better search tuning, greater scale, and other improvements compared to SharePoint Server’s stock search engine.

To provide increased scale, higher availability (fault tolerance), and better manageability, the SharePoint Server 2010—based system depicted in the illustration is implemented using multiple servers, each operating in a dedicated role. The Web servers (1) handle the display of the site, and the application servers (2) run various services such as a usage and health data collection service, secure store service (for single sign-on authentication), Excel Services, and the Office Web App hosting service. Servers in both the Web Server and Application Server roles run SharePoint Server 2010 code and must be allocated a SharePoint Server 2010 server license, as well as be licensed for the underlying OS (Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter edition of Windows Server 2008/2008 R2).