What is in your Website Search?


Original Photo by JohnStover

There are literally hundreds and thousands of ‘search engines’ out there. Some of these search engines are for finding stuff on the Internet, like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Some search engines are more specialized, like the search box you see on a single web site that searches only that single website. Search is an incredibly complex topic that has an astounding number of factors that contribute to finding that single important piece of content that you are trying to find. Frankly, Google spoiled all of us. I expect to find exactly what I’m looking for out of the millions of pages of stuff all over the internet by simply typing a single word into a single little box. If I don’t find what I want on the first page of results, I might try changing my search a little bit or adding two words, but I won’t keep trying for long.

The Internet contains at least 27.5 billion pages, as of Tuesday, 03 August, 2010, according to http://www.worldwidewebsize.com. Not only do I expect to find exactly what I want on the Internet, but if I use the search on your website, I get EXTREMELY frustrated when it doesn’t find exactly what I want when I want. How is this possible? I know what I want is on your website somewhere. Figure out what I want and show it to me! And please do it in under a second if it’s not too much trouble!

In the beginning, search was simple. Search was based on keyword matching. If I typed in a keyword, the ‘search engine’ scanned the content and found instances of that word and showed me hyperlinks with those results. I could search for ‘blog’ and the search would show me any page that had the word ‘blog’ in it. That was perfect! It’s all anyone needed. Then websites started to grow in complexity. Soon, each website had thousands of pages. If I did a simple keyword search, I would get hundreds of results. This wasn’t useful anymore. Search had to get better.

Search introduced major improvements. Boolean search operators were introduced. I could search for “SharePoint AND WordPress”. I could search for “SharePoint NOT WordPress”. I had some control on what I was searching for exactly. I also got search result sorting. I could sort all of the results to see the most recently created pages at the top. After all, if the page was newer then it clearly was more relevant, right?

That statement introduces a very important topic: RELEVANCE. Relevance denotes how well the results meet the need of the user searching; see the all-knowing Wikipedia for more details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_(information_retrieval). Relevance is determined by the search algorithm. That’s right; a computer programmer wrote a mathematical formula that uses the available information to determine the relevance of the content to your search word. In reality, that algorithm was written by a very large team of programmers, analysts, mathematicians, executives and many others. And the search is getting more complicated and far better every day.

Most modern search engines are comprised of two different primary components: the INDEX and the QUERY. The index is just like the index at the back of a book. Rather than scanning all of the content in real time, the search engine builds a big index of all of the content. This is much faster than scouring through the content in real time. Furthermore, the index can be optimized for the type(s) of searches being performed. Your individual website search is responsible for searching your website. Facebook search searches Facebook – the profiles, comments, photos, tags, etc. Google and Bing try to search everything – your website, my website, her website, their website. Your website search should search ALL of your content – web pages, HTML, PDF files, Word docs, PowerPoint files, Excel files, images, comments. The index should include ALL of your content.

So how is the index built? Usually indexes are built by a Web crawler – some type of automated software that scours all of the links and content on your site. The index uses the concept of word breaker to look for different words. In the English language, there are many characters that break words apart. Spaces, hyphens, periods, colons, semicolons, exclamation points all separate words in English. When you get into multi-lingual content, the story gets even more complicated because other languages don’t even use the same characters. So the crawler goes through all of the content and builds this enormous index for use in queries. The index contains the words, counts, metadata, information about where the words were found, information about the pages, information about the documents, titles, cached portions of pages and much more.

When a user enters a query, the search engine uses it’s algorithm to provide the most relevant information possible. What determines relevancy? There are many factors that should determine relevancy…

  • Content Type. What type of content is the word found on? PowerPoint files typically have fewer words. If your keyword is one of the 20 words on a slide, that file is likely more relevant than a Word document or web page that has 2000 words.
  • Location. If your keyword is found on the homepage or main landing page it is likely more relevant than if the page is found 30 nodes away through some obscure navigation.
  • Popularity and linking.  How popular is the page? How many other pages and documents link to the page? How frequently is the page visited?
  • Analytics.  How frequently is the page visited with similar queries? If 50 other people searched for the same keyword(s) you searched for, which pages did they eventually go to?
  • Words. How many times is the keyword on the page?  How many
  • Metadata. Is your keyword in the metadata or just the main content area? Is your keyword in the page title?
  • Language Detection. Is my browser set to Spanish? Should documents in Spanish show up with a higher ranking in the search results?
  • Variants (Word Stemming). What if I search for the word “Flying”? Should the search engine also search for Fly and Flew and Flown? What if it’s a different language? Should the search engine be aware of other word variations?
  • Human Influence. What about best bets, synonyms and keyword mapping. If someone is on the Association site and searches for the word Meeting, do you want to artificially influence the search results to show ‘Sign up for the Annual Conference’ as the first result?  I bet the conference organizers do!

As you can see, the effectiveness of the search engine depends on the ability to determine relevance and then use that relevance to rank the search results. Modern search engines are available both inherently integrated and completely independent from your website content management technology. WordPress, for example, has a built in search that is pretty simple (and thus largely ineffective).  It’s great for finding a keyword, but I would hardly call it a search engine.  Both Microsoft and Google provide real search solutions.  The have solutions for you at every level: your desktop, your enterprise, your website, and the Internet.  We are focusing primarily on your website and to a lesser extent your enterprise. The Google Search Appliance provides a great solution that provides excellent relevancy that can be customized for your particular web site needs. The Google Search Appliance and Google Mini require annual maintenance fees.

Microsoft provides a free solution to search for your website and for the enterprise. That’s right; Microsoft provides enterprise level search capabilities for FREE. Microsoft Search Server 2010 Express provides the search capabilities described in this overview for FREE. While this solution may not be the perfect fit for every website, I think it is at least worth evaluating. You can download the software for free, install it, and configure it in a matter of minutes. If it works for you, implementing it with your website is as simple as replacing the search box.


SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part VI: FAQs

I’ve tried to cover a lot of information in this SharePoint Licensing mini-series, but there is still a lot of information to cover.  For lack of a better format, I’m also including a SharePoint Licensing FAQ.

Q: My company has a lot of employees that will be using SharePoint 2010.  Can we just purchase the SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites license and use that?
A: No.  If you will have “private sites” are to be used exclusively by employees, then site needs SharePoint Server 2010 plus at least the SharePoint 2010 Standard CAL for each employee that will use the site.  In reality, if you have 1200 sites in your SharePoint 2010 environment and a single site is ‘staff only’, then you need to purchase licenses based on CALs for your staff.

Q: Does every server in the farm need SharePoint 2010 installed?
A: Every SharePoint server in the farm needs a server license, whether WFE, Index, Query, etc. – except for dedicated SQL Servers that are not running any SharePoint services.  If the server is running any of the SharePoint services, then you must ensure that the server has the appropriate SharePoint 2010 license.  Additionally, each SharePoint server needs the same set of server licenses. For example, if you are running an Internet-facing farm that has 2 WFE and 1 index server, you must use the SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites license on all 3 servers. If you are running a single 3-server farm that is supporting your Intranet, Extranet, and Internet sites, you must run 2 different licenses on each of the 3 server servers: SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites (for public access) and SharePoint Server 2010 (for employees-only sites, for which you would also need appropriate CALs for staff).

Q: If we were to initially deploy the "Internet Server" version, would we be able to later launch private sites for users who were covered by individual CALs (staff)?
A: Yes. The SharePoint 2010 licensing model allows for both versions of the product (internal and external) to be installed on the same farm. If you deploy SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites only, and then decide that you want to add sites for CAL-based users later, you need to purchase the appropriate CALs and the SharePoint 2010 Server license in addition to the Internet license. The Internet Sites license can not be used with CALs, because CALs are only usable with the SharePoint 2010 Server license.

Q: Where do I install a SharePoint 2010 CAL?
A:  You don’t install the CALs anywhere.  Like a lot Microsoft software, SharePoint 2010 environments are based upon the ‘honor system’.  You must have appropriate licensing to utilize the software, but there is no actual licensing check that will disable unlicensed users from accessing your SharePoint 2010 server farm.  SharePoint 2010 has usage logging that can be used to determine who is accessing your SharePoint 2010 environment(s) to help keep you licensed correctly.

Q: We want to deploy an EXTRANET – sites that will be used for collaboration between Staff and Non-Staff (partners, members, customers, etc).   What license do we need?
A: From my understanding of talking with tons of resellers and Microsoft Licensing Reps, Extranets are the one area that there is some licensing flexibility.  To be clear, we are defining a SharePoint 2010 Extranet as  containing collaborative sites that are not staff-only and do not allow public anonymous users (everyone is authenticated).  For this type of site, you could purchase the SharePoint Server 2010 license and the appropriate CALs for ALL authenticating users – staff and on-staff.  OR, you could purchase the SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites license and no CALs.  If you are wanting to run a single STAFF-ONLY site, then you must purchase the SharePoint Server 2010 and CALs.

Q: If we are deploying Excel Services, Access Services, or Visio Services, do we need licenses of Office 2010 for everyone?
A: Maybe. Users that are consuming Excel Services do not need to have Excel installed.  Same goes for Access Services and Visio Services.  However, any user that wishes to create spreadsheets using Excel to deploy on the Excel Services component of SharePoint 2010 Enterprise will need a license of Excel 2010. If your consultant or contractor is developing all of your spreadsheets, then that is the individual that needs Excel 2010 – not your staff.

Q:  I have external users that already have SharePoint 2010 in their own companies (not our company).  Can they be allowed to access our systems with their own licenses, or would we still have to purchase new CALs for them?
A: You cannot use CALs from an external company license for anything in your company.

Q: Do I need Microsoft Office 2010 to use Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010?
A: No.  In fact, you do not even need to use any version of the Microsoft Office desktop application to get a tremendous amount of benefit from SharePoint 2010. You can use SharePoint 2010 for content management, surveys, discussion boards, picture libraries, web pages, email record management, content types, and many other things (including document management for PDFs, PSDs, TIF, GIF, JPG, and many more non-Office document types) without purchasing or using any version of Microsoft Office. I’ve seen many articles/blogs/newsgroup entries that indicate that you need Office to use SharePoint – this is absolutely incorrect!

If you are using the document collaboration features, you can get a lot of benefits from using Microsoft Office.  The later the version of Office, the more features you will have access to.  You can, however, leverage older versions of Microsoft OFfice with SharePoint 2010, including Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007, and Office 2010.

Q: Can I use FAST Search for SharePoint with SharePoint 2010, Standard, or SharePoint Foundation 2010?
A:  No.  FAST Search for SharePoint requires SharePoint Server 2010, Enterprise.  For internal use, you simply purchase the FAST Search for SharePoint server license.  For external use, there is no specific license to purchase.  You must purchase an additional SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise, server license and add another server to the farm dedicated to running FAST.  Of course, larger environments will require more planning and architecture than ‘simply add another server’ – but hopefully you get the gist.

The previous posts in this mini-series include explanations of the different products involved with SharePoint 2010:

Hope this helps.

SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part V: SharePoint 2010 Licensing Costs

How much does SharePoint cost?  Everyone asks about costs and fees (imagine that!).  SharePoint license costs change frequently and change by vendor.  Each reseller that you talk to will have different prices – definitely shop around.  There are also different licensing tiers.  If your organization is an eligible charity, then you may get significantly discounted pricing.  There are pricing tiers for educational institutes and government agencies.  There are different Microsoft pricing tiers depending on how much software your organization purchases.  There is Microsoft Open License (with different levels), Microsoft Select, Microsoft Select Plus, and many more options.  As I have mentioned repeatedly in this mini-series, check with your software reseller.  I would shop around – many of these license costs are even negotiable.

If you work for a nonprofit, try and make use of TechSoup, located at http://www.techsoup.org.  TechSoup offers nonprofits extremely discounted software, in addition to free information, resources, and support. 

This pricing list is dated as of today’s internet searches (July 3, 2010).  I was looking around on sites that have published costs.  I haven’t listed government, academic, or various costs with different structures.  This pricing list is not complete and should not even be considered ‘accurate’.   This pricing list is to give you an idea of the software costs for planning purposes only.  Work with your reseller (have I said that enough yet?).

SharePoint 2010 License Costs and Fees

Software

Retail

Charity

TechSoup

SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise $32,000 – $42,000 $9,500 – $11,000  
SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard $9,000 – $12,000 $2,600 – $3,200  
SharePoint Server 2010 $3,500 – $5,000 $1,200 – $1,400 $269
SharePoint 2010 CAL, Standard $72 – $92 per CAL $27 – $30 per CAL $3
SharePoint 2010 CAL, Enterprise $63 – $75 per CAL $25 – $29 per CAL  
SharePoint Foundation 2010 FREE FREE FREE
FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 $18,000 – $22,000 $5,000 – $6,000  

 

The previous posts in this mini-series include explanations of the different products involved with SharePoint 2010:

Hope this helps.

SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part IV: Scenario Examples

For Part IV in my SharePoint 2010 Licensing mini-series, I have put together several different licensing scenarios and detailed the requisite licensing for each.   SharePoint is very flexible in both licensing and capability.  As with any large company, understanding exactly which licenses you need can be quite perplexing!  Hopefully this will shed some light on different scenarios to help you get your SharePoint 2010 environment licensed correctly.

The previous posts in this mini-series include explanations of the different products involved with SharePoint 2010:

As a SharePoint consultant and architect, I get a lot of questions about “What SharePoint licenses do I need?”.  These example scenarios detail the products that you will need to purchase specific to SharePoint 2010.  For simplicity, these scenarios are limited to Windows, SQL, and SharePoint licenses. These examples do not detail antivirus software, backup software, management software, or any other ITC-type software packages.  Also, this page is specific to SharePoint 2010 only.  A later post in this series will describe example scenarios for other options as well, such as FAST Search for SharePoint, Office Web Applications, Project Server 2010, Microsoft Online, and more.

Scenario A. SharePoint Foundation 2010 Intranet Site on a single Stand Alone Server. Corporate, internal-only use for 20 employees. For this environment, this would be a single server configuration running only SharePoint Foundation 2010 on the included SQL Server 2008 Express (which would automatically be installed during the SharePoint Foundation install).

  1. Windows Server 2008  Standard Edition License
  2. Windows Server 2008 CAL, 20-pack

That’s it!  All you need is Windows Server and CALs for your users.  If you have an existing Windows shop, you likely already have the Windows CALs, so all you would need is another Windows Server.  Furthermore, for a 20 user environment, you could just run SharePoint 2010 on an existing, under-utilized server and thus would need no new licenses to install and run SharePoint.

Scenario B. SharePoint Foundation 2010 based Internet Site (Public Facing or External Facing).  Public facing assumes anonymous access, and external facing assumes that the sites are not for Staff-only.  This means this could be an Extranet, working with clients, vendors, customers, members, volunteers or any other non-staff.  Again, this example will be installed as a Stand Alone Server. For Internet facing sites, you don’t need any CALs at all.

  1. Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition License
  2. Windows Server 2008 External Connector License

Scenario C. SharePoint Server 2010 Intranet Site.   I would consider this a very small site.  Stand Alone Server. Corporate, internal-only use for 20 employees. All employees only using Standard Edition functionality. Single server configuration running only SharePoint Server 2010, Standard, on the included SQL Server 2008 Express.

  1. Windows Server 2008  R2 Standard Edition License
  2. Twenty (20) Windows Server 2008 CALs
  3. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Standard
  4. Twenty (20) SharePoint 2010 CALs, Standard Edition

Scenario D. SharePoint Server 2010 Intranet Site. This one is a little larger environment running on a two Server Farm. This site would still be corporate-only use for 20 employees, two (2) server configuration with a web server running SharePoint Server 2010 and a database server running SQL Server 2008 (or 2005).  For this sample configuration, all 20 employees will utilize SharePoint 2010 Standard features, while only 10 of these employees will utilize SharePoint 2010 Enterprise features.

  1. Two(2) Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Licenses, 1 WFE (web front end) and 1 database server.
  2. Twenty (20) Windows Server 2008 CALs
  3. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (must have appropriate service packs and patches, of course)
  4. Twenty (20) Microsoft SQL Server 2005 CALs
  5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
  6. Twenty (20) SharePoint 2010 CALs, Standard Edition  (1 for each user, since SharePoint 2010 CALs are additive)
  7. Ten (10) SharePoint 2010 2010 CALs, Enterprise Edition (for only the users that will be using Enterprise features)

Scenario E: SharePoint Server 2010 Intranet and Extranet Site(s). This example assumes a single farm consisting of both public facing Internet site and a Corporate use site for 20 employees.  This would be a two (2) server farm with a web server running SharePoint 2010 and a database server running SQL Server 2008.  For this sample configuration, all 20 employees and the anonymous users (or authenticated non-staff users) will utilize Enterprise features.  NOTE: In addition to the SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, this environment requires a SharePoint Server 2010 license and appropriate CALs because there are STAFF-ONLY sites running in addition to the other sites.

  1. Two(2) Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Licenses, 1 WFE and 1 database server.
  2. Twenty (20) Windows Server 2008 CALs
  3. Two(2) Windows Server 2008 External Connector Licenses
  4. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition – Processor License (no CALs required)
  5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites
  6. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
  7. Twenty (20) SharePoint 2010 CALs, Standard Edition
  8. Twenty (20) SharePoint 2010 CALs, Enterprise Edition

Scenario F: SharePoint 2010 Standard, Internet-Only Site, two (2) server configuration with web server running SharePoint Server 2010, Standard, and database server running SQL 2008.

  1. Two(2) Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Licenses, 1 web and 1 database server.
  2. Two(2) Windows Server 2008 External Connector License
  3. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition – Processor License (no CALs required)
  4. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard

Scenario G: SharePoint 2010 for an Internet-Only Site running on a five (5) server farm configuration running SharePoint 2010, Enterprise, and SQL 2010.  For this sample configuration, there are 2 SQL, 2 SharePoint 2010 WFE, and 1 SharePoint 2010 backend (Index).

  1. Five(5) Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Licenses, 2 WFE, 1 SharePoint App/Search, and 2 database server.
  2. Two (2) Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition – Processor Licenses (no CALs required)
  3. Three (3) Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites,  Enterprise
  4. Five (5) Windows Server 2008 External Connector Licenses – that’s right!  All 5 servers require an external connector.

Scenario H: SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Internet, Intranet, and Extranet Sites, on a five (5) server farm configuration running SharePoint 2010 Enterprise and SQL 2008.  For this sample configuration, all 20 employees will utilize Enterprise features on this farm consisting of 2 SQL, 2 SharePoint 2010 WFE, and 1 SharePoint 2010 backend (Index).   Again, this environment assumes that there are STAFF only sites running, therefore all Staff require CALs.

  1. Five(5) Windows Server 2008  Standard Edition Licenses, 2 WFE, 1 Search/App, and 2 database server.
  2. Two (2) Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition – Processor Licenses (no CALs required)
  3. Five (5) Windows Server 2008 External Connector Licenses
  4. Three (3) Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise
  5. Three (3) Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
  6. Twenty (20) SharePoint 2010 CALs, Standard Edition (required for Enterprise staff access because SharePoint CALs are additive)
  7. Twenty (20) SharePoint 2010 CALs, Enterprise Edition

SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part III: Search, Office Web Applications, and Project Server

In the previous post, SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part I: Foundation, Server, and Designer and SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part II: Windows Server and SQL Server, I covered SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Windows Server, and SQL Server.  In this post, I’ll cover additional related products.

Microsoft Search Server Express 2010.  SharePoint Server 2010 comes with incredibly robust search capabilities.  Microsoft Search Server Express 2010 provides most of these search capabilities for free.  Microsoft provides a Search Server Express 2010 vs SharePoint Server 2010 Search comparison that provides a very good high-level overview of the differences.  So why would you use Search Server Express 2010?  Maybe your organization can’t afford SharePoint Server 2010 in this year’s budget.  Maybe you are running SharePoint Foundation 2010 and want an enterprise search and not just the site level search.  Maybe you want a powerful search engine to index your public facing web site, your file shares, Exchange public folders, other SharePoint sites, or even structured content in your database (like CRM/AMS/LOB systems).  Maybe most important of all is that the Microsoft Search Server Express 2010 license is free.

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.  FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint adds even more functionality to the search capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010 Standard search, including support for indexing up to a BILLION content items, sub-second query latency, better search refinements, visual cues for rapid recognition (think thumbnail previews), advanced content processing, intelligent automatic metadata recognition, and much more.  As mention in SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part I, FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint licensing is included in SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise licensing.    Microsoft provides a SKU to add a FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint license to your SharePoint Server 2010 License for your internal (client/server CAL) SharePoint Server 2010 environment.    Quoted from the Microsoft SharePoint Licensing Details page, “SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise, also includes the rights to FAST Search Server for use in Internet or Extranet scenarios. You can deploy a single server license of SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise, as SharePoint server or a FAST Search server—but not both concurrently.”

A wonderful resource regarding FAST is the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Evaluation Guide.

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Microsoft Office Web Applications 2010.  Office Web Apps are the online version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote so that you can access, view, and edit documents from any authorized web browser – PC, Mac, or mobile.  For business use, Office Web Apps require at least SharePoint Foundation 2010 (which is free), but will also run on SharePoint Server 2010 Standard or Enterprise.  Business users are licensed through the Microsoft Office 2010 Volume License and can access the downloads at the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center. For personal use, Office Web Apps are free and available via Live along with your SkyDrive.  Get more details from the Microsoft Office 2010 site.

Microsoft Project Server 2010.  When presenting some of the task management capabilities of SharePoint, a question that inevitably comes up is, “Does SharePoint work with Microsoft Project?”  The short answer is, of course, yes.  You can absolutely use SharePoint to manage MPP files, including version history, exclusive check-out, workflow, alerts – just like any document type.  However, if you want to utilize Microsoft Project to manage projects, tasks, durations, work breakdowns, and assignments, then you probably are wanting to expose that detailed project information via the web site and let other project team members view and update the information directly from their browser.  That’s exactly what Project Server 2010 does.  Project Server 2010 is actually built on top of SharePoint 2010, provides a seamless integrated web experience, and allows you to cohesively interact with your entire project team. 

Microsoft Project Server 2010 follows the same client/server licensing model as SharePoint Server 2010 for internal users.  A server license is required for each server, and a Microsoft Project Server 2010 Client Access License (CAL) is required for each user that will authenticate and utilize the software.  Keep in mind that Project Server 2010 runs on top of SharePoint Server 2010, therefore you must have appropriate licensing for SharePoint Server 2010 with both the Standard CAL and Enterprise CAL as well.  Depending upon your configuration within an enterprise environment, this licensing required for each user may include:

  • Project Server CAL (note that Microsoft Project Professional 2010 also includes a Project Server 2010 CAL)
  • SharePoint Standard CAL
  • SharePoint Enterprise CAL
  • SQL Server CAL
  • Windows Server CAL

  Visit Microsoft to get the Project Server 2010 Licensing Guide for full details.

This is Part II in a series on SharePoint 2010 Licensing.  View the entire series:
SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part I: http://stovereffect.com/2010/06/29/sharepoint-2010-licensing-part-i-the-basics/
SharePoint 2010 Licensing Part II: http://stovereffect.com/2010/06/30/sharepoint-2010-licensing-part-ii-windows-server-and-sql-server/