Theoretical introduction of SSP in MOSS 2007

Objective

This article will give an overview of Shared Service Provider in MOSS. This will list out few of advantages of SSP and how they fit into MOSS architecture

MOSS adapts a three tier architecture

Web Server at front

1. These are simple web servers
2. These are used for load balancing
3. These are used for Fault tolerance

Data Base Server at back

1. These are simple Database server.
2. These might be clustered.
3. These are used to store data of a SharePoint sites.

Application Server or SSP

Shared Service Provider is collection of Application servers. These servers are used to provide Shared services. 

SSP is a Share Point site collection to achieve the services listed below.

The various Shared services are,

1. Search
2. Index
3. Audience Compilation
4. User Profile Database
5. My Sites
6. Business Data Catalogue
7. Excel Services

Any of the above service can exist on any number of the Application server. Index Shared Service could exist on only one Application server.

Five Facts on SSP

1. SSP is a separate Web Application
2. SSP can run either on port 80 or higher ports
3. SSP administration interface is a site.
4. There must be at least one SSP
5. SSP is available with MOSS not with WSS.

Example of SSP

A good example with a SSP we can import all of the profile information from AD once and then our various web applications can consume the data. So maybe we have http://marketing and http://accounting it doesn't make sense for each one to maintain identical profile information, they should share.

Another advantages of SSP

1. Manage user profiles
2. Manage audiences
3. Manage permission
4. Manage user analytics

Conclusion

This article gave a very basic introduction of SSP in MOSS 2007. Thanks for reading.Happy Coding.