Deploying Global or Distributed Multifarm Environments

For environments with multiple geographical locations, it may make sense to deploy multiple farms in different geographical locations. This enables SharePoint content to be consumed locally and is what is recommended in scenarios in which WAN links are not as robust. Consider several key points before deciding where to deploy geographical farms:

• A single SharePoint farm should not span a WAN link and should ideally be limited to one geographical location. In some organizations, in which the definition of WAN includes at least 1GB of bandwidth with less than 1ms of latency between offices located relatively close to one another, it may be possible to stretch a farm across locations, but this is the only scenario in which this would be supported. If you need to consume content locally, it must be part of a separate farm.

• There is no native way to do two-way replication of content between farms with SharePoint 2010. However, several third-party companies on the market enable this type of functionality, which can be advantageous in disaster recovery scenarios in which content is replicated to multiple farms.

• For many organizations, it may make more sense to deploy a single, centralized SharePoint farm in one location rather than to deploy siloed SharePoint farms in multiple locations. Clients access SharePoint using the latency tolerant HTTP/HTTPS protocols, so access to a centralized infrastructure may make sense. It also has the advantages of providing a single URL to access SharePoint and keeps data in one location. Organizations need to decide if the level of service accessing SharePoint across a WAN is sufficient for this to be a possibility.