Markus,It would be great if we could get a discussion going regarding various deployment strategies for FIM. Some guidance would be really appreciated when trying to determine the proper physical architecture for any given client, i.e. What are MS thoughts on deployments in small, medium or large organizations? What are the pros and cons on separating the various services (FIM Password Mgmt, FIM Portal, FIM Service, FIM Synchronization) onto separate servers or running them all on 1 server? Is MS recommending that at the vary least, the FIM Portal/FIM Service be hosted on one server, while the FIM Synchronization Service be hosted on a second server, in light of a small organization (1-2K users/groups)? Given the above, should each server also host a SQL Server instance for the respective database requirements or can one server host both required databases? Is the ILM 2007 best practice of co-locating the Synchronization Service and its SQL Server instance on the same server still applicable to theFIM 2010, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 stack? Those are some of the questions off the top of my head. If there is documentation already out there addressing this topic, please let me know, as I certainly haven't had any luck finding it. :)Cheers,Marc Marc Mac Donell, ILM MVP, Senior Consultant (Identity Assurance), Avaleris Inc.

Thanks, Mark! Apparently, the description for the Suggestion Box works.Im modifying the subject of a post (removing the prefixx) after I have added it to the catalog page.That way, you can see that it has been processed. You are not missing anything we are working on related content for RTM.Feedback like this is incredible valuable!Cheers,MarkusMarkus Vilcinskas, Knowledge Engineer, Microsoft Corporation

Hi Markus,To add to Marc's questions, has MS Operations been able to provide the performance metrics? I beleive Brjann had mentioned in one of his presentations MS Ops was working on providing this info for sometime now. Just wondering if they have release any of the findings.Cheers,GeoffAgerica

Markus, I would expect such papers from Patterns & Practices. They did a good job in the past on certificate authority topology and ADFS etc.Danny Alvares, Technical Solutions Architect IAM