PS2007 with Project Workspaces on Separate SharePoint Farm?

[RichardG]

Hi All,

Is it possible to set up Project Server 2007 so that it uses a separate
SharePoint farm for its Project Workspaces?

In the corporate environment where I'm working there is a large and powerful
shared SharePoint farm that would be ideal for hosting the Project
Workspaces, but the team that runs it is wary of installing Project Server on
it. Would it be possible to have Project Server (and PWA) on its own farm,
but have it provision the workspaces on the shared farm?

Any advice would be very welcome.

Thanks and Regards,
Richard

 

[Mark Everett | PMP]

Hi All,

Is it possible to set up Project Server 2007 so that it uses a separate
SharePoint farm for its Project Workspaces?  

In the corporate environment where I'm working there is a large and powerful
shared SharePoint farm that would be ideal for hosting the Project
Workspaces, but the team that runs it is wary of installing Project Server on
it.  Would it be possible to have Project Server (and PWA) on its own farm,
but have it provision the workspaces on the shared farm?

Any advice would be very welcome.

Thanks and Regards,
Richard

Yes it is. Our IW Team (SharePoint folks) do that often. You can
specify the site collection and the path. The IW guy who is in the
office right now is working with a client but he said to view Site
Settings and the Project Workspace Provisioning Settings and you
should be able to do what you need to do. Sorry I can't be more
specific - I'm a Project Server guy, not a MOSS guy, but it can be
done.

Mark Everett PMP MCITP
www.catapultsystems.com

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Richard:

I think your SharePoint team is wise in being wary. There's is no compelling
reason why you want to put your Project Workspaces on a separate farm unless
you are trying to leverage some MOSS capability within the Project Work
Spaces. You have to install at least WSS on the server where you install
Project Server, so there's little reason to use a separate farm as WSS
supports everything in the baseline Project Workspace requirement.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com

 

[RichardG]

Thanks for this Mark. That's the answer I was looking for!

Regards,
Richard

 

[RichardG]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your response. The reason for putting the Project Workspaces on
a separate farm is that it is much bigger and faster than the Project Server
farm and can handle the (SharePoint) capacity better. It also has a very
good support arrangement.

The Project Server farm is much lower powered. The vast majority of our
users only use the Project Workspaces and do not ever go near PWA - we don't
use the task update or timesheet facilities of Project Server. This means
that the smaller farm is adequate for Project Server and PWA.

Currently, we discourage our users from using the workspaces for anything
other than issues and risks because the Project Server hardware hasn't the
capacity to support much content. We have a separate system (LiveLink) for
use as project document repositories. However, we still get users wanting to
use (and actually using) the workspaces for storing all their content. By
rearranging things so that the workspaces live on the beefier farm, they will
be able to keep everything together (issues, risks, and documents) in the one
place, and this will assist in the phasing out of LiveLink...

Also, the shared SharePoint farm is MOSS and the additional features (Excel
Services, Forms Services, etc) will be enabled over the next few months.
This will give the users the ability to use these features in their
workspaces, too...

Does this sound like a reasonable rationale for going down this route?

Thanks,
Richard

 

[RichardG]

Thanks Gary.

The big MOSS environment has its own SQL Server cluster, so the Project
Workspace content will be stored there. The Project Server related data will
be held on the Project Server environment's SQL server. I'm assuming that
issues and risks, etc, will be in the MOSS database too...

Do you happen to know if it will be necessary to install any additional
templates or other components on the SharePoint farm hosting the workspaces,
or will the relevant files etc be copied to it automatically when Project
Server provisions the sites?

When I get the chance, I'm going to set up a couple of VMs to simulate this
arrangement (one to mimic the Project Server 2007 environment, and another
one for the shared SharePoint farm), and I'll test it out.

Thanks again,
Richard

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Richard:

I'm not sure what "files" you are referring to, so I can't answer your
question without more specifics. You may want to bone up on using web parts
across farms. Other than that, you should be good to go.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com

 

[RichardG]

Hi Gary,

What I meant was "Is there *anything* Project Server specific that I would
need to install/enable/configure on the shared environment to support it
hosting Project Workspaces?". I'll follow your suggestion of boning up on
using web parts across farms.

Thanks again,
Richard

 

[RichardG]

Hi Mark,

I've just been having a play with this, and I don't seem to be able to
specify that the Project Workspace should be created on a different
SharePoint farm. I can select which Virtual Server to use (on the Project
Server farm) from a dropdown list, and can enter the site URL in a text box.
There's no way that I can see to choose another Virtual Server or Farm.

Do your IW Team really use a different farm, or is it just a different
Virtual Server on the same farm?

Thanks,
Richard

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Richard:

This is not something I've done, so I'm loathe to give you deeper advice on
this.

--
----------
Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Project Server Help Blog: http://www.projectserverhelp.com

 

[RichardG]

Hi Gary,

No problem! Thanks for your advice so far, anyway. It is very much
appreciated.

As it turns out, it looks like it won't actually be possible to do what I
wanted - I'm now pretty sure that the Project Workspaces have to be on the
same Farm as Project Server. Oh well!

Regards,
Richard