Definitive Online Resource for Microsoft FAST Search?

Question

My team is experienced in designing, implementing, and administering SharePoint 2007/2010 solutions. However, we are struggling in finding good information on Microsoft FAST search, probably compounded by the fact that FAST was acquired by Microsoft fairly recently.

I have spent time on Microsoft's sites and on Google in general, but most of the information I've found is either theoretical, based on beta info, incomplete, etc. Rather than work with bits and pieces, I would appreciate a more holistic source for information.

Can anyone recommend an online resource for FAST Search?

Specifically, I would like to see:

• An active community that my team could participate in (for example, being able to ask and answer questions). I know there are a few books out there on FAST, but the dynamics of a community is so much more conducive to rapid learning.

• Complete documentation for setup and configuration in SharePoint 2010.

• Best practices for real-world FAST deployment.

• .Net/PowerShell examples for extending and integrating FAST (for example, can you consume FAST results from an ASP.Net application? Automate administration with commandlets?)

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Microsofts forum FAST Search for SharePoint is a good starting point community wise. You could also check out Fast University for online training. There's also an independent FAST forum at http://www.fastforum.info/, but it might be more related to the FSIA version.

Technet has a lot of documents regarding deployment, tuning and scaling.

As for best practices the planning and deployment guides should give a good indication, or ask on the Microsoft Forum.

Using the results in an ASP.Net app is very much possible. It's a matter of using the Search webservice in SharePoint. You might want to check out the search query tool on codeplex.

That's what I have bookmarked for resources myself so far with the new stuff, having worked with FAST for a while before the SharePoint revolution :)