Performing Administrative Tasks Using Central Administration (part 16) - Farm Management

2.3. Farm Management

You use this section of Central Administration to define farm level settings that control how the farm is accessed and what functionality is available at the farm level. This section also provides you with the opportunity to control how solutions are used in SharePoint 2010. Lastly, you can use settings in this section to configure what information is shared with Microsoft when errors are generated and how mobile alerts are received outside of the SharePoint farm.

2.3.1. Configure Alternate Access Mappings

This topic was described in the section titled Section 1.15 earlier in this article.

2.3.2. Manage Farm Features

Features are a container of code that a developer can create and deploy to administrators, and then the administrators can decide which features to turn on or off depending on the requirements of the layer where they are. Features can be deployed to many of the layers in SharePoint depending on the particular functionality that the feature provides. Features are one of the few components that you will see throughout the SharePoint model. They appear at the farm level, Web application level, site collection level, and site level.

Features can also be deployed in a silent method so that they do not appear as features to be activated or deactivated, but rather, they can be deployed in a way chosen by the developers so that the code hides the feature activation option.

Features are also deployed when third-party products are installed, such as the Nintex workflow product, which has farm, site collection, and site level feature activation.

At the farm level, several out-of-the-box features are activated. However, if necessary, all of these out-of-the-box features can be deactivated. The following farm level features are available and activated by default.

• Connect to Office Ribbon Controls

• Access Services Farm Feature

• Data Connection Library

• Excel Services Farm Feature

• FAST Search for SharePoint Master Job Provisioning

• Global Web Parts

• Office.com Entry Points from SharePoint

• Office Synchronization for External Lists

• Social Tags and Note Board Ribbon Controls

• Spell Checking

• Visio Process Repository

• Visio Web Access

2.3.3. Manage Farm Solutions

Solutions are a way for developers to package all of the required components that are part of a custom solution (a custom Web Part, for example) and then pass the solution to the administrator so they can deploy and manage the farm solution.

There are two main elements involved in deploying a solution: adding the solution to the solution store and then deploying the solution from the solution store.

Farm solutions are an ideal way for administrators and developers to create, test, and deploy solutions without the developers needing access to the production servers. Developers create and test their solutions on their developer computers, and when they are ready to deploy them, they can package them into a .wsp file and pass the file to the administrator, who then adds the solution to the store and deploys it.

2.3.4. Manage user solutions

Site collections now have a Site Collection Solution Gallery that makes it possible for power users to upload their own solutions, bypassing the farm-managed solution approach. This can create potential performance or security issues for the administrator. Central Administration provides a way for administrators to manage user solutions by blocking specific code from running in site collections. Using the Manage User Solutions interface shown in Figure 22, the administrator can upload the same solution into the user solution management section and block it from running. Follow these steps to block a user solution.

Alternatively, you can choose to control how and where the user solution runs. You accomplish this by specifying that the solution can run if the code runs on the same computer as the request came from and that computer is running the User Code Service, or the solution can run if it uses solution affinity, which means that it will be organized and routed to available servers that are running the User Code Service.

2.3.5. Configure Privacy Options

You can configure the level at which Microsoft can collect information regarding the use and errors generated by your SharePoint 2010 servers, as shown in Figure 23. When errors are generated, the information about the error—plus information about your computer hardware—will be sent to Microsoft for analysis. The information collected is used to help improve SharePoint and is used to determine what will be included in patching and service packs.

It is also possible to provide online help in addition to the local help files by adding the ability to search both local and external help files hosted by Microsoft. This allows Microsoft to maintain a central online updated help system that provides users the most recent help-related content.

2.3.6. Configure Cross-Firewall Access Zones

The Configure Cross-Firewall Access Zone setting is specifically designed to help mobile users access SharePoint content from the outside world. To make sure that all mobile alerts and notifications are sent using the correctly published external URL, you can set the alternate access zone to be used from the Web application where the content is stored. If a link is included in a text message that you receive on your mobile device, the link will be accessible from that device. This provides similar functionality as Alternate Access Mappings does but in a way specific to mobile devices.

For example, if the users have content in the portal.contoso.com Web application site, but externally the zone that is published to the Internet is internet.contoso.com, then you must extend and map the Web application using the Internet zone for portal.contoso.com to specify that the Internet zone is the default for all mobile alerts and notifications for the portal.contoso.com Web application.