This is it. Your boss confirms the project: “We’re going to use SharePoint as the Official Intranet Platform for the company.” Everyone happy! And then, he adds: “We will moving all the Shared Drive contents in it.” – Sure Boss! Why not. But, in your mind, you say: “It’s crazy, it’s an astronomical amount of data.” Can SharePoint handle it?

Yes it can, but you need to plan. Not only how to build the architecture, but also thinking about the evolution.

Relax! We won’t just copy the data!

First, calm down! SharePoint isn’t a network drive. You won’t just take the data from the regular shared drive and throw it in SharePoint. Information Architects and Taxonomy specialists will come to your rescue. Using SharePoint as a network drive isn’t a good idea at all. The entire shared drive contents will be analysed, categorized, and put it at the right place in the Intranet. Soon, you’ll discover only a portion of the data will be moved. Historical data will be archived, or keep available on a shared drive until no ones check it anymore.

Then what?

Then, you start planning. And it’s a very simple equation: For the amount of data needed in the Intranet, multiply it by 2.5. It’s a thumb rule. SharePoint requires at least two and a half times the size of the data in a Web Application. Some SharePoint Databases get very large: Search Crawl, Web Analytics, Usage and, of course, Content Databases.

Now, to estimate the amount of data over a year, another thumb rule applies. Usually, data amount growth as a rate of 3% to 5% per month. It’s not a scientific study, but it’s a confortable estimation. Unless SharePoint is used as a record management system, normal Intranet with collaboration sites and publishing pages is running under this limit.

Never the less, reviewing the best practices are always a good idea and I strongly advice to check these articles on the TechNet Sites

• Capacity management and sizing for SharePoint Server 2010
• Performance and capacity management (SharePoint Server 2010)
• Performance and Capacity planning guidance for SharePoint 2010