SharePoint 2010 – 2013 – 2016 – 2019 on premises
Farm:
- It runs son one or more servers.
- It consists of several web applications and service application.
- The farm configuration database
- Stores the web application details and the service applications within the farm.
- It is only one database per farm
Service Application:
Provide specific functionality to web applications within the farm such as Search application – Excel Service – User profile service.
The admin creates the service application at the farm level. It connects to the web application through service app. proxy.
Web Application:
- It holds one or more site collection in one or more content database.
- A web application can one or more host header (alternate access mapping) and a folder in IIS file structure of each WFE to store associated code, solution, template and configuration files.
Content Database:
It stores the content from one or more site collection(s).
Site Collection
- It holds one or more SharePoint sites that are organized as a hierarchy within the site collection.
- Top level Site:
- the highest in the hierarchy
- the shortest in the URL.
- Some of the settings are accessible through the top level site.
- There is no hierarchy between site collections and no inheritance as well.
Site:
- Created as part of hierarchal structure within a site collection starting with top level.
- In same respect, you should consider SharePoint sites as analogous to folders in a network file share. Which are often used to organize content that has similar purpose to use.
- Sites inherits settings from the parent site.
Summary:
SharePoint logical architecture can be summarized by the following diagram.
