SharePoint 2010 : Deploying and Managing FAST Search with Windows PowerShell (part 1) - Using the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Shell

Briefly, when FAST Search Server for SharePoint is installed, it adds additional servers to your existing SharePoint Server topology, plus it installs software on servers that run SharePoint Server. FAST Search Server for SharePoint consists of the following three main parts.

• Servers that run FAST Search Server for SharePoint. This includes at least two servers. One is a server designated as a FAST Search Server (back-end), which runs services such as query matching, indexing, and document/item processing; the other is a server for monitoring FAST Search. One of the FAST back-end servers runs the administrative services. The admin server must be configured and running before you can add one or more non-admin servers to a multiple server deployment.

• FAST Query Search Service Application (SSA) installed on the SharePoint Server Web server to provide query Web Parts, integration capabilities, and query capabilities by using the query object model to talk to the FAST back-end for query matching and processing.

• FAST Content Search Service Application (SSA) installed on a SharePoint Server application server, where it replaces a portion of the crawler so that it can retrieve content that it then sends to the FAST back-end server for indexing.

There are several options that allow you to manage a FAST Search Server for SharePoint installation. These include

• The SharePoint 2010 Central Administration website The administration pages can be found by navigating from Central Administration to Applications Management to Manage Service Applications, where you click the SSA you want to manage. You then can administer content sources and crawl rules as you do with SharePoint Server enterprise search. In the navigation area at left, you also can click FAST Search Administration to administer the management of crawled and managed properties, property extraction, and spell checking. Not all server-related administrative tasks can be completed using these Web pages, however.

• FAST Search Windows PowerShell cmdlets These can be used for specific administrator tasks, including uploading a compiled dictionary to the resource store, creating a security user store, and mapping metadata to indexable fields. Just as there is a management shell for SharePoint Server, so there is a management shell for FAST Search for SharePoint.

• FAST Search administrative executable commands These commands, such as nctrl, allow you to manage a FAST node.

• The FAST Search Site Administration feature This allows you to delegate management of FAST search keywords, user contexts, and site promotion and demotion to users who own the content. This is the easiest way to tune relevance.

Note:

Learning to use Windows PowerShell with FAST Search Server for SharePoint is more important than knowing how to use it to manage other aspects of SharePoint Server, because some administrative operations can only be performed by cmdlets or other command-line tools.

The following sections cover these topics related to FAST Search.

• Using the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Shell

• cmdlets for FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010

• Adding FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 to a SharePoint 2010 Installation

$SiteScope = Start-SPAssignment;
Foreach ($Site in ($SiteScope | Get-SPSite -webappl
   http://intranet.contoso.msft))
{
 if (!(Get-SPFeature searchextensions -site $Site.Url `
    -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue;))
 {
   Write-Host "Enabling feature for site collection" $Site.Url;
   Enable-SPFeature "searchextensions" -Url $Site.Url;
 }
}
Stop-SPAssignment $SiteScope;

1. Using the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Shell

You can access the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint shell by clicking Start, selecting Programs, and then selecting Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 For SharePoint. Then select Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 For SharePoint. A review of the properties of the shortcut exposes following the command.

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\PowerShell.exe  -NoExit " &
 ' C:\FASTSearch\\installer\scripts\shell\FastSearch.ps1 ' "

The Windows PowerShell profile file, FastSearch.ps1, contains the following code, plus a signature.

Add-PSSnapin AdminSnapIn
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.FASTSearch.PowerShell
$FASTSEARCH = [environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("FASTSEARCH","Machine")
$path = Join-Path -path $FASTSEARCH -childPath "bin"
$envpath = Join-Path -path $FASTSEARCH -childpath "etc"
Update-FormatData -AppendPath "$envpath\FASTSearch.Format.ps1xml"
cd $path

This profile file completes the following tasks.

• Adds two Windows PowerShell snap-ins so you have access to the new FAST Search Server for SharePoint cmdlets.

• Obtains the environment variable %FASTSEARCH% that contains the drive and folder where the FAST Search Server for SharePoint files were installed and stores the information in a variable, $path.

• Creates a variable, $envpath, to store the folder %FASTSEARCH%\foldername. This variable is then used to reload the formatting data from the XML file FASTSearch.Format.ps1xml. The Format.ps1xml files in Windows PowerShell define the default display of objects in Windows PowerShell. To find out more about this file, type Get-Help about_Format.ps1xml in a Windows PowerShell console.

• Change the current directory to %FASTSEARCH%\bin. This allows you to use the management shell to run FAST Search administration programs that live in the bin directory, such as psconfig and nctl, without specifying a path for them.

Note:

The environment variable %FASTSEARCH% was created when FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 was installed, and by default the installation location is C:\FASTSEARCH. This folder and its subfolders contain a number of Windows PowerShell scripts that you can find by searching for .ps1, mostly in the %FASTSEARCH%\installer\scripts directory. You might consider adding this folder to the environment variable %PATH%, especially during the installation process. To have this directory added to the path variable every time you start the management shell, add the following lines to the profile file.

$ScriptPath = Join-Path -Path $FASTSEARCH -ChildPath "installer\scripts";
$env:path += "; $ScriptPath";

Note:

SECURITY ALERT For some tasks, you will need to start the Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Shell as an administrator, such as when you complete the post-installation tasks. To do this, right-click Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 For SharePoint and then select Run As Administrator.

When the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint shell is started, you may receive an error message that says “FastSearch.ps1 cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system,” as shown in Figure 1.

If this happens, complete the following procedure.

Note:

You must run the command Set-ExecutionPolicy as an administrator because it alters the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell.