Performing Administrative Tasks Using Central Administration (part 12) - Service Applications

1.16.6. Change site collection administrators

When you create a new site collection, you are prompted for a primary site collection administrator, and optionally, you can add a secondary site collection administrator. You can also change the primary and secondary administrator for the specified site collection.

Note:

Although only two site collection administrators can be defined here, you can add more administrators using the People And Groups option at the site collection level.

1.16.7. View all site collections

This option allows you to view a list of site collections per Web application. After accessing this page, confirm that the correct Web application is listed or choose the Web application you want from the drop-down menu to view the site collections associated with the Web application you have chosen.

1.16.8. Configure self-service site creation

This option was discussed in the section titled Section 1.10 earlier in this article.

1.17. Service Applications

Service applications are new to SharePoint 2010 and replace the Shared Service Providers (SSPs) previously offered in SharePoint Server 2007. SSPs offered multiple services to all applications associated with the SSP, but they lacked the much-needed scalability and extensibility that service applications offer in SharePoint 2010.

A service application is a functional service of data or processing that, after it is configured, can be consumed by Web applications. All service applications are defined at the farm level, and some of these services can be consumed by other Web applications from other farms, which makes these service applications more scalable. Furthermore, some of the service applications can even store content in their own databases, creating a tighter integration between SharePoint and SQL Server.

After a service application is created, it can be consumed by any Web applications that require the resources or data provided by the service. If a particular service isn’t configured correctly for all Web applications, you can create another instance of that service.

1.17.1. Manage Service Applications

When you click the Manage Service Applications link in the Application Management section of the Central Administration home page, you are presented with the Manage Service Applications interface shown in Figure 14, which contains a Ribbon interface for managing and configuring your service applications.

Creating a New Service Application From the Ribbon in the Manage Service Applications interface, click the arrow under the New button to display the different service applications that you can create for your farm. This option allows you to create and configure the first instance of the service application, or if necessary, you can create and configure multiple instances of a service application.

Connecting to a Service Application From the Ribbon, click the arrow under the Connect button to display a list of service applications that you can connect to that are being hosted on another farm. To connect to an instance of a service application located on another farm, you need to specify either the address of the farm’s discovery service or the address of the service application.

Deleting an Existing Service Application You can also delete a service application from your farm configuration using the Ribbon in the Manage Service Applications interface. First click the row that contains the service application that you want to delete and then click the Delete icon on the Ribbon. This action presents a dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 15, which requests that you select a check box indicating that you want to delete the data associated with the service application. The service application is deleted after you click the OK button.

Managing Your Service Applications You can use the Manage icon on the Ribbon to configure a service application running on your farm by first clicking the row that contains the service application that you want to manage and then clicking the Manage icon on the Ribbon. This action presents a page of configuration options that varies depending on the service application that you selected. After you configure the service application, click OK to save your changes.

Note:

Alternatively, you can access the service application configuration options by doubleclicking the name of the service application located in the list of service applications.

Identifying Administrators for Your Service Applications You can also configure who has permissions to manage each of your service applications in your farm from the Ribbon. To do this, click the row that contains the service application that you want assign permissions to and then click the Administrators icon on the Ribbon. This action presents a dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 16, where you can add the accounts and identify the permission level for the accounts in the appropriate text boxes. When you finish, click the OK button and the permissions will be assigned to the user for that particular service application.

Configuring Properties of Your Service Applications Some service applications have properties that can be configured for them, like database name, failover server, and application pool configuration settings. You can configure the properties of a service application by first clicking the row that contains the service application you want to configure and then clicking the Properties icon on the Ribbon. Some of the common service applications that have configurable properties include the Business Data Connectivity, Manage Metadata Services, and PerformancePoint service applications.

Publishing a Service Application Some service applications can be configured to provide services to Web applications located in other farms. You access the settings to do so by clicking the Publishing icon on the Ribbon after clicking a row that contains a service application that is capable of providing its service to Web applications in other farms. The Publish Service Application page shown in Figure 17 contains the items you must configure to permit the service application to host Web applications from other farms.

Configuring Permissions for a Service Application You can configure the accounts or principals that have the permissions to invoke the service application using the Ribbon. First click the row that contains the service application you want to configure and then click the Permissions icon on the Ribbon. The accounts you specify are normally the service accounts of the Web applications that are accessing the service application.