DWG IFilter 2007 - Support Pages & FAQ

How many licences, how many indexing servers do I need in my specific scenario?
Where to install in my scenario?
How to install, which settings to register, and where?
If our MOSS 2007 environment is setup in a multi-tiered architecture with multiple web front ends that also serve as query servers, and a separate server that does the content indexing, how many licenses would we need?
- Many user-based licenses for we have many users connecting to one server?
- Would it be 3 (to cover both query servers and the index server)?
- 2 (to cover just the query servers)?
- Or 1 (to cover just the index server)?

In a multi-tiered WSS environment, you will only need one DWG IFilter license. Only one server is accessing the files to add them to the index - and this is the only place where the IFilters are needed.
Even in a setup where hundreds, thousands of users are accessing the search pages, you only need one license for the index server.
In a MOSS farm, you need to check what content is beeing indexed. Your setup may need DWG IFilter installed and registered on both the indexing server and the SQL server.

Please read some 'official' information before looking trough all the comments on the internet: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/6899a44a-6a22-4cdd-a734-d19aec4dfca71033.mspx?mfr=true or read the book at http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/4f8b3c7c-c6d5-4c17-aeb3-5a4c43b58e0c1033.mspx?mfr=true

A good overview is available here: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-305251.html

It is 'generally known' that you can only have only one indexing server in your farm; alltough officially it is possible to create more indexing servers in a MOSS install: http://blogs.msdn.com/scaravajal/archive/2007/04/04/moss-indexing-and-ssps.aspx There may be some confusion on which is an indexing server, what is a content crawler server.
Today (2007) SharePoint uses only one indexer; for example in the internal intranet of Microsoft, a huge amount of content is indexed on one machine.
In the near future you will see a different scenario. Expect the servers that are hosting the different content stores to be able to participate in the search processing also (as in federated search). Expect your SQL, Exchange machines to have a need for IFilters when they participate in the SharePoint related search.

And it may be advisable to keep part of your farm as 32-bit: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/johnwpowell/archive/2007/07/19/64-bit-gotchas.aspx as there will be a long discussion on 64 bit ifilters like this: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/adir_ron/archive/2007/04/11/PDF-IFilter-for-x64-bit.aspx

When using the DWG IFilter on the desktop, each machine is reading the files and adding them to its own index. In this scenario you will need a desktop license for each machine.

Where to install
Where do I need to install the IFilter? I can choose: the web server, SQL server, the Indexing Server, which one? The IFilter only needs to be installed on the Indexing Server. When you are not sure about this, feel free to install on all your servers, load some DWG files here and there onto SharePoint; and look into the event log where you find the DWGIFILTER2007 entries. Buy licenses only for the machines that do the actual work filtering the DWG files.

The discussion continues online...
For now, please accept the information below 'as is'. I am happy to receive comments to improve the text.

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TOPIC: MOSS 2007 WSS 3.0 & PDF Search - iFilter
Original post Thurs 25 Oct 2007 02:35 found in:
     http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.sharepoint.setup_and_administration/browse_thread/thread/61f431b20fae2528
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Thanks for additional contribuitons by Mike Walsh
The text below is based on the original post in the newsgroup, and will be adjusted further based on your suggestions to ifilter@cadcompany.nl

Hi,
I have the feeling that where to install the IFilter does not depend on the IFilter, more on your actual scenario.

Please, anyone to confirm or correct any of these statements below? I'd like to build an overview on our support site.
Until this is confirmed, probably the safest way to check this is to install in all locations and check the logs to see which one picks up the work. Try storing the file in all locations possible. (note that also the old Indexing Service on your server may be active and may be picking up your files too)

WSS 3.0 (Windows SharePoint Services '2007')
- With WSS 3.0, single server, with built-in SQL: Install on the single server and register with WSS to enable indexing of all applicable content.
- With WSS 3.0, multi server with non-built-in SQL Server, one of the servers is the indexer, many can be a front-end. Install only on the Indexing server and register with WSS 3.0 to enable indexing of all applicable content.
(Mike: You can't have multi-server and use the built-in SQL. The built-in SQL is only available for a single-server installation. Can you really have an Indexing server for WSS 3.0?)
- With WSS, single or multi server, and database in SQL 2005 (...) , SQL server may actually be used to index the content, I am not sure??

WSS 2.0 (Windows SharePoint Services)
Please note the installation procedure for WSS 2.0 is significantly different from WSS 3.0.

MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the big brother of WSS 3.0)
- With MOSS, single server, with built-in SQL: Install on the single server and register with MOSS to enable indexing of all applicable content.
- With MOSS, multi server, using built in SQL, one of the servers is the indexer, many can be a front-end. Install only on the Indexing server and register with MOSS to enable indexing of all applicable
content.
- With MOSS, single or multi server, and database in SQL 2005 (...) , SQL server is to index the content that is stored here in the site (=in SQL). Indexing server is used in indexing all other content on file shares, exchange, other HTTP, other sharepoint sites crawled as HTTP. Install on indexing server and register with MOSS, also install on SQL server and register with SQL 2005.

Oh, built-in SQL for MOSS is limited in size, for WSS 3.0 seems to be unlimited. So for MOSS you'd like to use an installed SQL Server.

SQL Server 2005 and FTS Full Text Search
In SQL Server, the IFilter finds its use in FTS. Full Text Search commands can be used directly by any software that supports it. SQL/FTS will detect appropriate IFIlters by extention if a column is available to provide the filename, otherwise it needs to rely on content type. I expect most IFilters are registered for file extention only.
For SQL/FTS you have a choise to configure SQL to pick up IFilters registered with the OS, or to use IFilters registered with the SQL Server instance only.
Some Document Management Systems are based on SQL/FTS and may be able to use IFilters trough SQL/FTS.

WDS 3.0 (Windows Desktop Search 'XP' or '2007')
- Any desktop scenario with WDS 3.0 (for example on XP or Vista): Install, register as default with the system (indexing services 3.0 method) and optionally register with WDS 3.0. This should support search in your local folders, and outlook, and any network resources you have configured. First thing to check is which folders and filetypes are adressed by WDS 3.0.

WDS 2.x (Windows Desktop Search)
Please note the installation for WDS 2.x is different. The Indexing services 3.0 method is sufficient. You may want to upgrade to WDS 3.0 anyway.

Indexing Service (The service installes and enabled by default in all windows up to XP and Windows server 2003)
- Any desktop scenario based on Indexing service: Install and register as default with the system (indexing services 3.0 method)
Some Document Management Systems are based on the Indexing Service for either the indexing or the search query process, or both. These applications may well be able to use the IFilters.

Exchange server (2005 ??)
- Scenario with Exchange server, install on the exchange server and register with Microsoft Exchange. This should support server side Search in outlook.

I expect in future releases of Microsoft products, you may need to also install the IFilter on your exchange server if you need this to have the filetypes in content source added to your MOSS search .

Note: Registering with WDS 3.0, MOSS, WSS 3.0, SQL 2005 requires adding some registry settings and executing some commands. Our DWG IFilter comes with a configurator tool that should take care of this in most popular scenario's.
I have documented some details on our support site www.dwgifilter.com and I'd like to add more; also our product download contains some testing tools to see if the IFilter can be found correctly on the system; you can easily adjust this test to check your favorite file type. The DWG IFilter has a 60 day trial period to allow you to figure out what is best in your scenario.