SharePoint 2010 : Configuring Service Applications (part 1) - Creating a Custom Application Proxy Group for a Web Application

2/28/2011 9:08:19 AM

When you understand how you need to plan your service application architecture, you can then begin to configure it. Start the services you want and then deploy those services into service applications and groups.

1. Starting and Stopping a Service

Starting a service is the first step in the service application architectural process. If the service is not running, the service application will not know which server to send the request to.

Confirm that the user account performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group.
Open a browser and go to the SharePoint Central Administration website.
Click System Settings, and then on the System Settings page, in the Servers section, click Manage Services On Server (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Services page
To change the server on which you want to start or stop the service, click Change Server on the Server drop-down menu and then click the server name that you want.
By default, only configurable services are displayed. To view all services, on the View drop-down menu, click All.
To start or stop a service, click Start or Stop in the Action column of the relevant service.
Click OK to start or stop the service.

Note:

BEST PRACTICE If a service application has a dependency on a service running on the server, you’ll be able to install the service application without having an error message appear if the service is not started. Best practice is to ensure that the underlying services are started on the server before installing and configuring the service application.

2. Deploying Service Applications to an Existing Web Application

As an administrator to a SharePoint 2010 farm, you don’t always get to start your farm from the beginning. Sometimes Web applications are already created, or new business processes change the default design. With this in mind, SharePoint 2010 allows you to deploy service applications to an existing Web application. To deploy service applications to an existing Web application, complete the following steps.

Open a browser and go to the SharePoint Central Administration website.
Under Application Management, click Manage Web Applications.
Click the Web application from the list of Web applications. The Web application will turn blue to indicate that it has been selected.
Select Service Connections from the Manage group of the Web Applications ribbon.
Select the service applications in the list that you want to deploy and then click OK to close.

3. Creating a Custom Application Proxy Group for a Web Application

In the event that the default proxy group does not meet your company’s business requirements, you can create a custom application proxy group to satisfy your specific requirements. One example of this is could be exposing different user profile information on your extranet verses what is exposed on your intranet. To create a custom application proxy group through Central Administration, complete the following steps.

Open a browser and go to the SharePoint Central Administration website.
Click Application Management and then under Service Applications, click Configure Service Application Associations.
Select the Web application you want to modify.
Within the Web application, the Configure Service Application Associations screen shown in Figure 2 will have a new option: Edit The Following Group Of Connections.

Figure 2. Configure Service Application Associations screen
Choose Custom from the drop-down list.
Select the appropriate service applications.
Click OK. The Web application now no longer uses the default group and has its own custom service application proxy group, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Custom application proxy group

Note:

To create a custom application proxy group with a custom name, you will need to use the Windows PowerShell command New-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroup.