1.4.1. Failover Server
New to SharePoint 2010 when creating a new Web application is the option to specify a failover server, as shown in Figure 6.
This option allows you to host a mirrored copy of the content database
for your Web application. Mirroring your content databases provides
fault tolerance and can be helpful in a disaster recovery scenario. You
can also use this option to provide a read-only environment for running
reports, which will minimize database contention among your users.
1.4.2. Search Server
To allow sites associated
with your new Web application to be indexed using the Windows SharePoint
Services Search service, you must have the service available on at
least one server. If you have more than one server available, then you
use the Search
Server section to choose which server is responsible for indexing the
content on the database using the SharePoint Services Search service.
Associate the content database with a server that is running the Windows
SharePoint Services Search service.
1.4.3. Service Application Connections
In the Service
Application Connections section, select the service application
connections that you want available to this new Web application by
selecting either Default or Custom in the drop-down menu. You use the
Custom option to select the specific service application connections
that you want associated with this Web application. When you choose the
Custom option, the check boxes for each service application are cleared
and you then select the check boxes for the service applications that
you want to associate with this Web application.
1.4.4. Customer Experience Improvement Program
The final configuration option is to decide whether you want to participate in Customer
Experience Improvement Program, which gathers hardware information and
data about how you are using SharePoint and periodically sends it to
Microsoft. This information helps Microsoft identify which SharePoint
features need improvement. If you choose the Yes option, you indicate
that you are willing to participate in the program. The farm level
setting for this same option must also be enabled to report this
information to Microsoft.
1.5. Extending a Web Application
After creating a Web
application, you have the option of extending the Web application, which
allows you to expose the same content hosted in your initial Web
application to a different group of users using a different URL or
authentication method. You achieve this by specifying a different zone
or entry method for the different group of users. A Web application that
has been extended can use up to five different zones: Default,
Intranet, Internet, Extranet, and Custom. This allows you to provide
five different entry points to the same content using a different URL or
authentication method.
If you choose to extend the Web application by selecting the Extend option on the Web Application Ribbon shown previously in Figure 2, the page shown in Figure 7
will be displayed. This option allows you to redirect requests made to
that Web application to another already-provisioned site collection.
This allows you to change the authentication mechanism on the extended
Web application to another level of authentication, such as basic
challenge response with an SSL certificate, to support external users
connecting from the Internet. This method enables both Windows
authenticated users and basic authenticated users to access the same
site collection and content, but using unique URLs to access the site
from internal and external networks.
