Microsoft Search Server Express 2008

There’s a post over the SharePoint Solutions Blog which describes the benefits of Microsoft’s new Search Server Express 2008 well. One key benefit: You can search across Site Collections in WSS!

An excerpt:

So the scenario is that you have deployed WSS in your company and you do not have a need for most of the MOSS features at this time (personalization, records management, My Sites, etc.). Using WSS, you have setup a separate site collection for each department in the company. The HR department wants to know why they can’t search for information in the Marketing department directly from their own site without having to navigate to the Marketing site. You explain to them: "You are not in the same site collection. Remember when you guys had asked that you want your own database because of the sensitivity of your data… well, we had to give you your own site collection. WSS does not support search across site collections". That doesn’t go well with the folks in the HR department and you are scrambling to find a solution.

See Introducing Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express for the full details.

System Requirements

Search Server Express requires the Windows Server 2003 or 2008 operating system.

• Processor: 2.5 gigahertz (GHz) (minimum)

• Memory: 2 gigabytes (GB) RAM (minimum)

• Operating System: Any of the following editions of the Windows Server 2003 or newer operating system with the most recent service packs: Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition, Datacenter Edition, and Web Edition.

• Hard disk: NTFS-formatted partition with 3 GB of free space (minimum)

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 with ASP.NET 2.0 enabled

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

• Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Runtime Components

• Note: Search Server 2008 Express can be installed on one computer only. It supports an unlimited number of Web front-end servers, but only one application server.