What is a Farm in SharePoint?

Question

I am searching a lot for a definition about Farms, but I can't find one which fits my need.

Does anyone know a simple and easy way to explain it?

What is a Farm in SharePoint? How does it work?

I have voted to move this question to http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com. Since this is not a question specifically about code, it is Off Topic here. But it does have a place in the Stack Exchange, so I'm not downvoting it. BTW, a farm in Sharepoint is just a set of servers serving a same application. In other words, a farm in Sharepoint is a *server farm* (this term exists independently of Sharepoint). — Geeky Guy, Jun 19 '13 at 00:11

score 30 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 19 '13 at 04:51

You should check out the helpful posters about SharePoint Topologies, particularly the one about Microsoft SharePoint architecture.

The SharePoint farm is basically the lowest level in the topology, right after the server hardware. Let me explain:

You have one or multiple servers having SharePoint installed. The servers are connected through SharePoint and are all joined to the "SharePoint farm". The SharePoint farm could also just be one server, still it is the farm. There is only one farm per server, there cannot be multiple farms. Next to the servers running SharePoint itself, you also have one or multiple servers (cluster) running SQL Server holding the all data.

From the farm level you can go downwards in the topology (simplified):

On a farm you have one or multiple web applications
On a web application you have one or multiple site collections
On a site collection you have multiple sites/webs
On a web you have one or multiple subwebs
On a web/subweb you have one or multiple lists
On a list you have one or multiple list items

I said "simplified" as I didn't go into the role IIS web applications play, content databases as well as service applications.

As I said: left it out for the sake of simplicity. – Dennis G Jun 19 '13 at 09:55 — Dennis G, Jun 19 '13 at 09:55
Great answer, Thanks Dennis, – Tam Dao Apr 22 '14 at 14:03 — Tam Dao, Apr 22 '14 at 14:03

PersianGulf · Answer 2 · 2014-04-15T06:36:29.967

Simply, a SharePoint farm is a set of one or more server computers working together to provide SharePoint Foundation functionality to clients. For simple scenarios, you can set up a SharePoint 2010 farm by installing and configuring everything you need on a single server computer. A SharePoint farm in a typical production environment runs SQL Server on a separate, dedicated database server and can have multiple front-end Web servers. A farm can also run one or more application servers in addition to a database server and a set of Web servers. (source book: Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010,written by: Ted Pattison)

What is a Farm in SharePoint?

2 Answers2