Hello

I am new to Umbraco and CMS for that matter, but have been working in the Web Development Business for 15 years as a developer of web based front ends to Databases and more recently Web parts for Sharepoint. 

I have a new manager that is interested in setting up a CMS to replace our existing Intranet and Extranet web sites.  I am looking into Umbraco as a potential solution.

We have a Web Farm infrastructure that consists of a standalone Dev server, a stand alone Test Server and a production DFS Farm consisting of a root file server and 4 destination production IIS Web Servers.

I'm not sure who your target audience for your documentation is, but it dosn't appear to be me.  I have spent more than an hour going through your documentation and it's just not answering what I think are very simple questions about your product.

What I need to know is what is really happening under the hood?

What is actually happening when someone pushes the Publish button?

What is actually happening when someone visits the site?  

In a Dev to Test to production Web Farm implimentation, what software has to be loaded on each server?

What role does the SQL server play?  Is it used in Production or just Authoring? 

I'm trying to figure out how I would design an Umbraco implimentation that would fit onto our infrastructure.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a network diagram indicating data flow through the process would be a great tool to give my CIO to explain what each part of the system is doing.

Any help in finding this type of information would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks in advance.

Jim