Book excerpt: Buy the print SharePoint 2013 Unleashed and get the eBook version for free! See inside the book for access code and details. ¿ SharePoint 2013 Unleashed is the most complete, practical resource for¿all administrators, managers, architects, users, and developers to make the most of Microsoft’s powerful new SharePoint 2013 platform. ¿ Drawing on their experience implementing SharePoint solutions in hundreds of organizations, Michael Noel and Colin Spence focus on what administrators and knowledge workers really need to know to effectively design, implement, configure, and use SharePoint 2013. They fully address key SharePoint 2013 innovations such as PowerShell scripting to automate administration and farm provisioning; better virtualization support; improved security and authentication; new business intelligence tools, social networking improvements; enhanced lists; libraries; metadata; and more. ¿ Step by step, through easy-to-understand examples, they help you streamline administration, optimize performance, control cost, and implement high-value solutions for collaboration, document and web content management, and business intelligence. ¿ Detailed information on how to... ¿ Optimize your SharePoint 2013 design/deployment plan, right-size your server farm(s), and improve scalability ¿ Reduce costs by virtualizing your SharePoint environment and automating farm deployment ¿ Optimize search with metadata, content types, and taxonomies ¿ Streamline management with PowerShell and the SharePoint Central Administration tool ¿ Efficiently monitor, back up, and restore SharePoint environments ¿ Understand new Shredded Storage capabilities and new Service Applications built into the infrastructure layer of SharePoint ¿ Deploy SharePoint’s improved social networking features, including microblogging ¿ Deploy SharePoint as an extranet using various external authentication providers ¿ Use powerful out-of-the-box workflows—and create your own with SharePoint Designer 2013 and Visual Studio 2013 ¿ Build Business Intelligence solutions with PerformancePoint and Business Connectivity Services ¿