From time to time we come across a situation where a customer has no real investment in SharePoint.  When I say they have no real investment, I mean that someone sets up a SharePoint server – but it is not a formal part of IT – it is not strategic so to speak.  We will often find that the customer will have the database and the SharePoint on the one server and it will be the minimum spec recommended by Microsoft.  This is a great start as it allows the customer to dip their toe in the water.  But six months later we will find that the server has two hundred users and over 500 hundred projects – yikes!  Sometimes we even see the 500 projects rolling up to one dashboard.  That small server was never meant for this load.  As you might expect the first step is to see if the “size” of the server(s) is correct.  Here are some self help getting started resources.

Microsoft have a free SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0.

The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool is a set of free models of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). The two models use the analysis and simulation features of System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP) to help you explore suitable IT infrastructure options for your SharePoint deployment, based on the SharePoint usage requirements for your organization that you provide to the tool. It can give you a head start on planning your SharePoint topology by producing a first approximation of the topology your organization needs. Architects, systems integrators, and deployment engineers will find it to be a valuable starting point for further refinements of the topology.

HP also have a similar tool called, the HP Sizer for Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and one for 2010.

HP Sizer for Microsoft SharePoint is a complimentary planning resource that encapsulates knowledge gained from extensive performance characterization of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint 2010 in the HP Alliances Performance and Solutions labs, widespread collaboration between HP and Microsoft, and numerous SharePoint performance whitepapers produced by HP engineering.

I did not see a sizing tool from DELL per se, but I did see some white papers that give some good indications of the right size.

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/services/dell_small_sharepoint_farm.pdf http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/services/dell_medium_sharepoint_farm.pdf http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/services/dell_large_sharepoint_farm.pdf