SharePoint O365: Components Overview

Recommended Server Topologies

  • This section provides an overview of server topologies based on the relative size of your SharePoint environment.

  • These server topologies focus on the document indexing and preview generation functions.

  • Smart Previews does not require dedicated hardware.

  • For this reason, it is possible to run the Smart Previews server on the same box as your SharePoint index server, as shown below.

Hybrid Installation Using the Cloud Hybrid SSA

Example Network Deploying Smart Previews for SharePoint O365

The following diagram is just one example of how Smart Preview components and services can be distributed. 

The diagram below exhibits the following:

  • SharePoint Online
  • SharePoint On-Premise components
    • Connector Framework
    • Smart Pipeline
  • Smart Previews Hybrid service employing On-Demand Preview Fetchers
  • Smart Previews Import server employing On-Demand Preview service
  • Smart Previews database
  • Preview CEWS service

    SharePoint O365 Domain and Components

Smart Preview Components

Smart Previews is composed of a number of various components working together such as:

  • Databases

  • Crawlers

  • Services

See the description of the various Smart Previews components in the table below:

Component Description
Content Sources

  • Indicates where the content to be crawled originated from.

  • In most Preview for O365 implementations these are either the native SharePoint Online content, or content sources configured in the Cloud SSA.
Crawler The SharePoint Cloud SSA Crawling component.
CEWS

  • The Content Enrichment Web Service is an enrichment component called by the Connector Framework at crawl time, and saves the content so that a preview can be generated. 

  • This component saves to the Preview CEWS Output Directory.
FAST Proxy Service

  • This service that takes the files that are stored in the Preview CEWS Output Directory, and places them into the Transfer Folder

  • Fast Proxy service validates the file against the preview generation rules configured via the Import Server UI, discarding any files that do not need to be processed based on the rules.
Smart Previews SharePoint Monitoring Service This is the service that monitors the Transfer Folder and moves data to the Smart Previews Import Server.
Import Server This is the Smart Previews Import Server generates the Previews and places them in the databases.
Databases

There are 3 Smart Previews databases:

  • Preview Cache: where the generated previews are stored. (You may have 1 or more of these databases.)
  • Preview Configuration: contains a master index of the generated previews generated along with the required configuration settings.
  • Preview User Profile: contains information that is added or updated when users use their workspace.
Fetchers A part of the Smart Preview Hybrid service, fetchers retrieve files from the source when generating previews on-demand.
Smart Previews Hybrid Site

This site is hosted on-premise in IIS, and retrieves the preview data from the preview databases in response to requests from the Smart Previews Web Resources site.

Smart Previews Web Resources

  • This site is hosted in Azure as an App Service. 

  • This component is called by the end users browser to deliver preview templates to the SharePoint search results page, as well as to process requests to retrieve previews.