Portal design (multiple web apps, site collections, navigation)

Hello there,

I am working on developing an intranet portal for my company in SharePoint Server 2010. My question is purely about the design of the farm in terms of the web apps, site collections and sites as well as navigation between them.

What would you recommend as a best practice route in terms of usability, scalability and security of the system?

Now, grab a nice cup of coffee, tea or whatever you fancy and sit comfortably in your chair. This will challenge you intellectuallyJ [some would prefer vodka at this point].

Here is the scenario:

My company has two business branches: United Kingdom and USA.

UK is where everything originated so we keep their branch as the primary one and US (recently launched) is just mirroring their British colleagues.

Altogether, we do not have more than 100 users and we operate on the same network with UK GMT and US GMT-6.

We will have WFE and APP on the same server and a dedicated SQL. Server resources and size of the data are not of a concern.

I am thinking of:

1. [Web App] Central Admin + IIS App Pool

1. [Web App] uk.<company>.com+ IIS Pool + Search Service

                                    [Site collection] uk.<company>.com/accounts    withSP_uk.accounts     content db

                                                [Site] uk.<company>.com/accounts/Sites/budget     with libraries and lists

                                                [Site] uk.<company>.com/accounts/Sites/yearend   with libraries and lists

                                                                        :

                                    [Site collection] uk.<company>.com/production with SP_uk.productioncontent db

                                                [Site] uk.<company>.com/production/Sites/testing   with libraries and lists

                                                                        :

                                    [Site collection] uk.<company>.com/sales            withSP_uk.sales           content db

                                                :

                                                :

…and exactly the same (mirror) Web App for the US:

1. [Web App] us.<company>.com+ IIS Pool + Search Service

                                    [Site collection] us.<company>.com/accounts    withSP_us.accounts     content db

                                                [Site] us.<company>.com/accounts/Sites/budget     with libraries and lists

                                                [Site] us.<company>.com/accounts/Sites/yearend   with libraries and lists

                                                                        :

                                    [Site collection] us.<company>.com/production with SP_us.productioncontent db

                                                [Site] us.<company>.com/production/Sites/testing   with libraries and lists

                                                                        :

                                    [Site collection] us.<company>.com/sales            withSP_us.sales           content db

                                                :

                                                :

There is no need for ‘My site’ Web App.

I am fine up to this point. Perhaps you have any comments or suggestions here?

Now, I would like to create a ‘one-stop-shop’ (portal) site housing fly-out menu links to respective departments [Site Collections] and their functions [Sites] for each business branch (UK and US).

At the same time I want to have a portal page same for everybody (with its unique URL).

I was thinking of creating another [Web App] calledportal.<company>.com with a [Site Collection] portal.<company>.com/homethat would show some UK-US-wide info like holiday calendar, weather and time, company announcements, some aggregated figures etc. that will be the same regardless US or UK User Group.

On that home site, in a top navigation I would create a link visible only to managers and the CEO which will take them to their personal high level view of figures and data they want to see (aggregated from UK and US Web Apps).

Being on the same landing page for everybody (portal Web App) I want users to access a Web App relevant to them (UK Web App or US Web App) based on their authentication. Again, portal page would look exactly the same for everybody.

1. Is it even achievable that way (pulling data from across Web Apps and have a ‘smart redirection’ to relevant Site Collection in another Web App in the farm)?
2. Is the above a good approach?
3. How can I achieve this in global navigation on a portal page? (hard-coded links too cumbersome for maintenance?)

I think I prefer Web Apps as opposed to Site Collections since I can have a dedicated search service running on each app.

These apps will be in separated application pools so if something happens to one, others are unaffected.

(I think 4 app pools will not cause server crying out for resources, will it?)

Security wise, Web Apps serve better than site collections.

Please share your wisdom and suggest some robust solutions. I seem to be stuck and running down in circles with the ideas.

Thanks a lot!