Windows version/edition (64 bit only)	SharePoint 2010 support
Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation	No
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard	Yes
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise	Yes
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter	Yes
Windows Web Server 2008 R2	No
Windows HPC Server 2008	No
Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based systems	No
Windows Server 2008 Standard	Yes
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise	Yes
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter	Yes
Windows Web Server 2008	No
Windows Storage Server 2008	No
Windows Small Business Server 2008	Yes*
Windows Essential Business Server 2008	Yes*
Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based systems	No
Windows Server 2008 Foundation	No
Windows Vista	Developer-only**
Windows 7	Developer-only**

• The hardware and software must meet or exceed the minimum system requirements to run the new version.
  This includes the requirement for 64-bit hardware and 64-bit versions of the operating system and Microsoft SQL Server. For more information about minimum requirements click here

• Office SharePoint Server 2007 must be updated to Service Pack 2
  Your environment must be updated to at least Service Pack 2 of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to run the upgrade process, either for an in-place or database attach upgrade.
  

Resolution

• Go to the windows directory and find the TEMP folder. (c:\windows\TEMP) Right click the TEMP folder and select the security tab.
• Click the add button for adding a new user. Write the name "network service". Give Read/Write rights and click OK.
• Go to the location c:\windows\system32\Logfiles. Write the name "network service". Give Read/Write rights and click OK.

Microsoft published model describes common ways to build and scale farm topologies by using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, including planning which servers to start services on.

You can download it as pdf, vsd or xps file.

Access Services : Enables users to view, edit, and interact with Microsoft Access databases in a Web browser.

Application Registry Service : Enables users to search and collaborate around business data.

Business Connectivity Services : Enables structured data from line-of-business applications, such as SAP and Siebel systems, to be integrated into SharePoint Server "14".

Excel Services : Enables users to view and interact with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets in a Web browser.

Lotus Notes Connector : Enables users to search data on a Lotus Notes server.

Managed Metadata Service : Enables teams or departments to manage their own taxonomy, hierarchies, keywords, and social tagging infrastructure, so that, for example, taxonomies and content types can be shared across the organization (across site collections and web applications)

People : Enables users to search for people within their organization to, for example, find skills, memberships within enterprise communities, and shared interests.

Performance Point Service : Balanced scorecard and dynamic dashboard tool that allows power users/IT to create dynamic and highly interactive dashboards that display strategy to operations. Performance Point Services allows you to combine multiple data sources, and objects providing a single view of the business.

Search Service Application : Enables user to index content, gather information, and perform search queries.

Secure Store Service : Enables users to store data securely, and associate it to a specific identity or group of identities.

State Service : Enables users to temporarily store user session data for SharePoint Server "14" components.

Usage and Health Data Collection : Collects farm-wide usage and health data, so that users can view usage and health reports.

Visio Graphics Service : Enables users to view and refresh published Visio diagrams.

Word Conversion Service Application : Enables users to perform automated bulk document conversions.

References : http://sharepoint-sandbox.com

This is a password that is used to encrypt all communications across the farm. The farm passphrase is required to be input anytime you wish to remove a server from the SharePoint farm or add a server to the farm. The password should be recorded and kept in a safe place and can be changed through Windows PowerShell by the administrator. 

WSS is great and Search Server Express is great, put the two together and you have an awesome collaboration and search solution in one. Ian Morrish writes detailed blog post about this topic. You will find this great post via this link : http://www.wssdemo.com/Blog/archive/2008/11/29/Installing-WSS-and-Search-Server-Express%20.aspx

1. On the SharePoint Central Administration home page, click the Operations tab on the top navigation bar.
2. On the Operations page, in Topology and Services, click Servers in farm.
3. On the Servers in Farm page, click the server on which you want to configure the search service.
4. Click Start next to Office SharePoint Server Search.
5. On the Office SharePoint Server Search Settings page, in the Query and Indexing section, make sure that the Use this server for indexing content and Use this server for serving search queries check boxes are selected.
6. In the Default Catalog Location section, type a path to a physical folder to store the index files, or use the default location that is specified.
7. In the Contact E-Mail Address section, specify a valid e-mail address.
8. In the Service Account section, click Configurable, and in User name and Password, type the user name and password for the user account under which you want the Search service to run. The user account must be a member of the Administrators group on the computer that is running the Search service. If you want to use the principle of least privilege and select a unique user account that does not have administrative rights on your front-end servers or on your back-end database servers, see the Known Issues/Readme for Office SharePoint Server 2007 Beta 2. The user name must be in the format DOMAIN\username.
9. In the Web Front End And Crawling section, do one of the following:
If you are configuring the search service on a server that provides Web services and renders Web content, click No dedicated Web front-end computer for crawling

If you are configuring the search service on a server that is a standalone search server that does not provide Web services and render Web content, click Use a dedicated web front end computer for crawling, and then, in Select a web front end computer, click the computer you want to use for crawling.

1. On the SharePoint Central Administration home page, click the Application Management tab on the navigation bar.
2. On the Application Management page, in the Office SharePoint Server Shared Services section, click Create or configure this farm's shared services.
3. On the Manage this Farm's Shared Services page, click SharedServices1.
4. On the Shared Services Administration page, in Search, click Search Settings.
5. On the Configure Search Settings page, in the Crawl Settings section, click Default content access account.
6. In the Default content access account section, in Account, Password, and Confirm Password, type the user name and password for the user account that you want to use to crawl content on your sites. This account must be a domain user account. It is recommended that you use the principle of least privilege and select a unique user account that cannot modify content and does not have administrative rights on your front-end servers or on your back-end database servers.
7. You can use the user account that you specified as the Office SharePoint Server 2007 service account; however, if that user account is a member of a security group that has administrative rights on your front-end servers or your back-end database servers, you will not be following the principle of least privilege. The user account that you specify will be added to the Web application Full Read policy for your farm. The user name must be in the format DOMAIN\username.
8. Click OK.
9. In the Crawl Settings section, click Content sources.
10. On the Manage Content Sources page, click Local Office SharePoint Server sites.
11. On the Edit Content Source page, in the Crawl Schedules section, under Full Crawl, click Create schedule.
12. In the Manage Schedules dialog box, configure schedule settings for full crawls of your content, and then click OK.
13. In the Crawl Schedules section, under Incremental Crawl, click Create schedule.
14. In the Manage Schedules dialog box, configure schedule settings for incremental crawls of your content, and then click OK.
15. In the Start Full Crawl section, select the Start full crawl of this content source check box, and then click OK.

Configure surface area settings in SQL Server 2005 
      - Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, point to Configuration Tools, and then click SQL Server Surface Area Configuration.
      - In the SQL Server Surface Area Configuration dialog box, click Surface Area Configuration for Services and Connections.
      - In the tree, open your instance of SQL Server, open Database Engine, and then click Remote Connections.
      - Click Local and Remote Connections, click Using both TCP/IP and named pipes, and then click OK.

Security account requirements
To install Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a server farm environment, at-least 2 accounts are required:

      - A user account that you can use to install Office SharePoint Server 2007 and run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. This account must be:
            - A domain user account.
            - A member of the Administrators group on each of your front-end servers.
            - A member of the SQL Server Logins, which grants login access to your SQL Server instance.
            - A member of the SQL Server Database Creator server role, which grants permission to create and alter databases.
            - A member of the SQL Server Security Administrators server role, which grants permission to manage server logins.
      - A unique domain user account that you can specify as the Office SharePoint Server 2007 service account. This user account is used to access your SharePoint configuration database. It also acts as the application pool identity for the SharePoint Central Administration application pool and it is the account under which the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service runs. The SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard adds this account to the SQL Server Logins, the SQL Server Database Creator server role, and the SQL Server Security Administrators server role. It is recommended that you follow the principle of least privilege and do not make this user account a member of any particular security group on your front-end servers or your back-end servers.

Before you install and configure Office SharePoint Server 2007, make sure your servers have the recommended hardware and software. To deploy a server farm, you need at least one server computer acting as a Web server and an application server, and one server computer acting as a database server. The server computers must meet the following requirements:

Hardware requirements

Front-end Web server and application server computers: a dual-processor computer with processor clock speeds of 2.5-gigahertz (GHz) or higher and a minimum of 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. Back-end database server: a dual-processor computer with processor clock speeds of 2.0 GHz or higher and a minimum of 2 GB of RAM.

Software requirements Web and Application Server

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, or Web Edition) with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0 The Web server and application server computers must be configured as Web servers running Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) in IIS 6.0 worker process isolation mode. Each of the computers must be using the NTFS file system. Windows Server 2003 includes a conversion utility (Convert.exe) that you can use to convert an existing file allocation table (FAT) volume to NTFS without losing data.

Back-End Database Server
The back-end database server computer must be running Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with Service Pack 3 (SP3) or later. It is assumed that you have installed and configured the database program on the back-end server computer. You do not need to set up or create specific databases for Office SharePoint Server 2007. The Office SharePoint Server 2007 Setup program will create the necessary databases when you install and configure Office SharePoint Server 2007.

It's easy!!!
You can execute STSADM Utility with following parameters :

stsadm.exe -o backup -directory C:\BackupFolder -backupmethod full -url http://SiteURL -filename backup.dat -overwrite

Andrew Connel describe we HOWTO: Configuring a Office SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Site with Dual Authentication Providers and Anonymous Access

1. On the SharePoint Central Administration home page, click the Application Management tab on the top navigation bar.
2. On the Application Management page, in the Office SharePoint Server Shared Services section, click Create or configure this farm's shared services.
3. On the Manage this Farm's Shared Services page, click New SSP.

Important: If you have not created a Web application for the SSP administration site, you need to create one before you create the SSP. If you have already created a Web application for the SSP administration site, skip to step 14.

4. On the New Shared Services Provider page, click Create a new Web application.
5. On the Create New Web Application page, in the IIS Web Site section, click Create a new IIS web site, and do not modify the default settings in this section.
6. In the Security Configuration section, under Authentication provider, select the appropriate option for your environment, and do not modify the default settings in the remainder of this section.
7. In the Load Balanced URL section, do not modify the default settings.
8. In the Application Pool section, click Create new application pool.
9. In Application pool name, enter the name of your application pool or use the default name.
10. Click Configurable, and in User name and Password, type the user name and password for the user account under which you want the application pool to run. The user account does not have to be a member of any particular security group. It is recommended that you use the principle of least privilege and select a unique user account that does not have administrative rights on your front-end servers or on your back-end database servers. You can use the user account that you specified as the Office SharePoint Server 2007 service account; however, if that user account is a member of a security group that has administrative rights on your front-end servers or your back-end database servers, you will not be following the principle of least privilege. The user name must be in the format DOMAIN\username.

11. In the Database Name and Authentication section, verify the database information and make sure that Windows Authentication (recommended)is selected.
12. In the Search Server section, do not modify the default settings.
13. Click OK. Upon successful creation of the Web application, the New Shared Services Provider page appears.
14. In the SSP Name section, in Web Application, select the Web application that you created for the SSP, and do not modify any of the default settings in this section.
15. In the My Site Location section, do not modify any of the default settings.
16. In the SSP Service Credentials section, in User name and Password, type the user name and password for the user account under which you want the SSP to run. The user account does not have to be a member of any particular security group. It is recommended that you use the principle of least privilege and select a unique user account that does not have administrative rights on your front-end servers or on your back-end database servers. You can use the user account that you specified as the Office SharePoint Server 2007 service account; however, if that user account is a member of a security group that has administrative rights on your front-end servers or your back-end database servers, you will not be following the principle of least privilege. The user name must be in the format DOMAIN\username.
17. In the SSP Database section, you can either accept the default settings (recommended), or specify your own settings for the database server, the database name, or the SQL authentication credentials.
18. In the Search Database section, you can either accept the default settings (recommended), or specify your own settings for the search database server, the database name, or the SQL Server authentication credentials.
19. In the Index Server section, in Index Server, click the server on which you configured the Search service.

Note: If there is no index server listed in the Index Server section, then no server in your farm has been assigned the index server role. To assign the index server role to a server in your farm, follow the instructions in the "Configure the Search service" section earlier in this topic.

20. In the SSL for Web Services section, click No.
21. Click OK. Upon successful creation of the SSP, the Success page appears.
22. On the Success page, click OK to return to the Manage this Farm's Core Services page