SharePoint 2010 Service Applications Configuration Part 1

SharePoint 2010 provides different services to users and in SharePoint 2010 you can select only those services which are required by your users, customers and partners. In this article and next couple of articles related to service application configuration we will focus on configuring resources that can be shared across sites within your server farm.

What is SharePoint Service Applications?

SharePoint 2010 Service Application replaces old Shared Service Provider architecture from SharePoint Server 2007. SharePoint 2010 service applications are used to enable sharing resources across sites running in different web applications and different farms. Key benefit of this architecture is, we can use Service Applications as plug and play, use and share whenever we need and stop if we don’t need it anymore.

What is Web Application?

SharePoint Web Application basically a logical container, it contains site. Each web application must have at least one site collection. Each site collection can have more than on site. Each site can have more than one sub sites.

We can describe web application with the help of following picture.

Association between Service Applications and Web applications:

Service application and Web applications are associated with each other by service application connections. SharePoint 2010 Central Admin and Power Shell are used to manage services and create a service connection between service application and web application.


Service Applications Available in Different Core Editions of SharePoint 2010 Server:

SharePoint  Server 2010 Foundation Service Applications
	Has Database	Cross-Farm Capable
Business Data Connectivity	YES	YES
Usage and Health Data Collection	YES	NO
Web Analytics	NO	YES
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Setting Service	YES	NO

SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Service Applications
	Has Database	Cross-Farm Capable
Managed Metadata Service	YES	YES
Search	YES	YES
Secure Store Service	YES	YES
State Service	YES	NO
User Profile Service	YES	NO

SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Service Applications
	Has Database	Cross-Farm Capable
Access Service	NO	NO
Excel	NO	NO
Visio Graphic Service	NO	NO
Word Automation Service	NO	NO
Performance Point Service	NO	NO

Note: SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Edition contains all service applications from SharePoint 2010 Foundation edition and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise contains all service applications available in all other editions.


Server Farm Configuration Wizard:
The Server Farm Configuration Wizard is quickest and easy way to deploy services on your server farm. These are following steps you can use to run farm configuration wizard.


1. Navigate to Central Administration. In the Quick Launch menu on the left, click Configuration Wizards.

2. On Configuration Wizards page, click Launch The Farm Configuration Wizard.

3. On the Configure Your SharePoint Farm page, select Walk Me Through The Settings Using This Wizard; then click Next.

4. Under Service Account, select either Use Existing Managed Account or Create New Managed Account. Then enter a username and password of an account with farm administrator permissions in the available fields.

5. Use the available check boxes to select the desired services; then click Next. Many of the services may already be selected and unavailable to be deselected.

6. When the Create Site Collection page appears, you can click Skip and create the first site collection later, or you can create the first site collection during the wizard.

7. To create the first site collection, give the site collection a name in the Title field.

8. Add an optional description in the Description field.

9. Under Web Site Address, append the URL with a descriptive name for the site collection URL in the URL field.

10. Under Template Selection, choose the desired template tab, choose the desired template, and then click OK.

11. When you get to the last page of the wizard showing you a list of services running on the site collection, click Finish.

Note: The Farm Configuration Wizard is used to add services only. Once the services are added you cannot run wizard to remove these services. If you run this wizard again, you will see services are already selected and greyed out; this mean service is already configured. If you need to remove services, you can do it manually. 

In this article we learnt basics about service applications, web applications, different service applications available in different core editions of SharePoint 2010 server and we also learnt how to run farm configuration wizard and automatically configure service applications.
In next part of this service application configuration, i will try to explain how we can manually configure these service applications and how we can stop and start service applications


This article is referenced from these two books
SharePoint 2010 Administration by Todd Klindt, Shane Young, Steve Caravajal
SharePoint 2010 Configuration Study Guide By James Pyles


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