We are in the process of planning a SharePOint 2013 Enterprise solution. We are looking at a 3-tier setup with 1 WFE, 1 Application Server, and 1 SQL server.
As I study the documentation, I'm finding some conflicting (at least to me) recommendations about application pools.
First, the recommendation in Software Boundaries and Limits for SharePoint 2013 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx) for the max number of application pools is 10. I understand this is largely based on the server load and the amount of available memory.
So it isn't surprising that Microsoft recommends that you limit the number of application pools you configure. The design samples on TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261995.aspx) suggests you run all your web applications in one application pool and all your service applications in another application pool.
However, this is where it gets confusing. Almost all the documentation about configuring service applications recommend that you configure another application pool to isolate the service for security reasons. See this example about Excel Services; http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219698.aspx.
So here are my questions. Am I completely missing the point of having separate applications pools for different service applications? If I need to create more than 10 application pools, how do I scale that across servers? Can I use PowerShell on my Application Server to create an application pool for Excel Services that only exists on the Application Server? Or, do all the same application pools exist on all my SharePoint servers, and only consume resources when a service application is started on that server?
Thanks in advance,
David Price