Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

458 Part VI: Administration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003
always default to the same server as the configuration database server and cannot
be changed here. This database name will end with _PROF. Using the same
example as before, the database would be named Woodgrov1_PROF.
■ Global E-Mail Server. Even though this is not a database server, it appears in
this section and should be configured for the farm. The farm can operate without
having an e-mail server defined; however, the alert feature will not function.
The alert feature allows users to subscribe to lists and documents and be
alerted via e-mail when those lists or documents change. The configuration
page allows you to set the SMTP e-mail server name or IP address (which can
be Microsoft Exchange, the IIS SMTP service, or any third-party SMTP server
that accepts Anonymous connections) that the alerts should show the change
notification as coming from and to whom replies will be sent, as well as the
character set used for the e-mails. Keep in mind that this is a global setting for
the farm. If a certain server needs to be pointed to a different e-mail server
(such as for a portal server residing outside of a firewall), that server can have
its e-mail server setting changed on its Windows SharePoint Services Central
Administration page.
■ Single Sign-On Credentials. If you are wondering about Single Sign-On
credentials, they too do not have anything to do with databases and are configured
with an optional setting used in highly customized portal site implementations.
Single Sign-On allows you to store and map an application’s
account credentials to user account credentials. This prevents users from having
to sign on again when portal-based applications retrieve information from
business applications, such as third-party enterprise resource planning and
customer relations management (CRM) systems.
By using Single Sign-On, you can centralize information from multiple backend
applications through a single portal site that uses application definitions. By
using application definitions, you can minimize and automate the sign-on process to
these applications in a more secure environment. In addition, SharePoint Portal
Server 2003 provides an easy interface for developers to create and extend this
feature.
Component Assignments
The Component Assignments area lists all servers that have been assigned some role
in the server farm. Servers that are assigned as database servers or e-mail servers will
not have a hyperlink, while servers that play one of the following key component
roles will have a hyperlink: Web, Search, Index, and Job. This makes sense because
the hyperlink leads to the SharePoint Central Administration pages as serviced by the
virtual server on that server, which of course requires SharePoint Portal Server 2003
to be installed on that server.
To assign or change the component roles that the listed servers will play, click
the Change Components button at the bottom of the page. This can be useful if, for