In my current project, I got the opportunity to set up the
SharePoint 2010 farm creation. In this blog I will only talk about the
way I configured the Search Service application. There are numerous
links/contents available, this piece only talks about what I did. If I
have missed any points please put your comments. Hope to talk about more
configurations in coming blogs….
When we deploy and configure a Search service application, we perform the following basic steps:
- Create accounts – Domain user accounts are required to run the various search services and components.
- Create a Search service application – A Search service application provides enterprise search features and functionality.
- Configure the Search service application
– Basic configuration of a Search service application includes
configuring a default content access account, an e-mail contact, and
content sources.
- Configure the Search topology
– You can deploy crawl components, query components, and the
administration component on different servers in the farm. You can also
specify which instance of SQL Server is used to host the administration,
crawl, and property databases.
The below Accounts are required to configure search service application
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Account
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Use
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Search service application
SharePoint Foundation Search Service Account: “spSearch”
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The
Windows user account that is used for the SharePoint Server Search
service, the Search Admin Web Service application pool, and Search Query
and Site Settings Web Service application pool.
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Default content access
SharePoint Foundation Search Content Access Account:
“spSearchCA”
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The identity that is used by the Search service application to access content when crawling.
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1.1.1 Register Managed Accounts
The
service account for search (the account used for the Search service
account, the Search Admin Web Service, and the Search Query and Site
Settings Web Service) must be registered as a managed account in
SharePoint Server 2010 to make it available when you create the Search
service application. Use the following procedure to register this
account as a managed account.
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Description
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On the Central Administration home page, in the Quick Launch, click Security
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On the Security page, in the General Security section, click Configure managed accounts
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On the Managed Accounts page, click Register Managed Account (the AD users should have “Read” access permission defined in AD)
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On the Register Managed Account page, in the Account Registration section, type the user name and password that you want to use as credentials for the service account
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If you want SharePoint Server 2010 to manage password changes for this account, select the Enable automatic password change check box and configure the parameters for automatic password change
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1.1.2 Search Database Architecture
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Description
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Architecture (Databases)
When
you create a Search service application, SharePoint Server creates
three databases for storing search information and associated data:
· Administration Database – used to store search admin information
· Crawl database – used to store crawl information
· Property Database – used to store index information
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You can create multiple Search service applications if you have to have multiple search indexes.
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Description
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Verify
that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of
the Farm Administrators group for the farm for which you want to create
the service application
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On the Central Administration Home page, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications
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On the Manage Service Applications page, on the ribbon, click New, and then click Search Service Application
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On the Create New Search Service Application page, accept the default value for Name, or type in a new name for the Search service application.
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In the Search Service Account list, click the account that you created in the previous procedure to run the Search service
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In the Application Pool for Search Admin Web Service section, do the following:
1. Select the Create new application pool option, and then type a name for the application pool in the Application pool name text box.
2. In the Select a security account for this application pool section, select the Configurable
option, and then select the account that you created to run the
application pool for the Search Admin Web Service from the list.
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In the Application Pool for Search Query and Site Settings Web Service section, do the following:
1. Choose the Create new application pool option, and then type a name for the application pool in the Application pool name text box.
2. In the Select a security account for this application pool section, select the Configurable
option, and then select the account that you created to run the
application pool for the Search Query and Site Settings Web Service from
the list.
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Click OK on the new Create New Search Service Application dialog to provision the new service application.
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Once
the Search Service Application has been successfully provisioned on the
server farm you will have a topology with 1 Search Administration, 1
Crawl, and 1 Query component on the machine hosting SharePoint 2010
Central Administration and all associated databases on the default
database server.
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1.3 Configure the Search service application
You configure a Search service application on the Search Administration page for that service application.
Use the following procedure to navigate to the Search Administration page for a particular Search service application.
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Description
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Verify
that the user account that is performing this procedure is an
administrator for the Search service application that you want to
configure.
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On the Home page of the Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.
On the Manage Service Applications page, click the Search service application that you want to configure. Go to the Search Administration page
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On the Search Administration page, configure the following settings as described in the following sections:
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Specify the default content access account
When
you create a Search service application, the account that you specify
for the Search Service Account is automatically configured as the
default content access account. The crawler uses this account to crawl
content that does not have an associated crawl rule that specifies a
different account. For the default content access account, we recommend
that you specify a domain user account that has read access to the content that you want to crawl. You can change the default content access account at any time.
If
you need to crawl certain content using a different account, you can
create a crawl rule and specify a different account for crawling. For
information about how to create a crawl rule, see Manage crawl rules (SharePoint Server 2010).Use the following procedure to specify the default content access account.
To specify the default content access account
1. On the Search Administration page, in the System Status section, click the link in the Default content access account row.
2. In the Default Content Access Account dialog box, in the Account box, type the account that you created for content access in the form domain\user name.
3. Type the password for this account in the Password and Confirm Password boxes.
4. Click OK.
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Specify the contact e-mail address
The
contact e-mail address is written to the logs of crawled servers. The
default contact e-mail address, someone@example.com, is a placeholder.
We recommend that you change this to an account that an external
administrator can contact when a crawl might be contributing to a
problem such as a decrease in performance on a server that the search
system is crawling.
Use the following procedure to specify the contact email address.
To specify the contact e-mail address
1. On the Search Administration page, in the System Status section, click the link for the Contact e-mail address.
2. In the Search Email Setting dialog box, in the E-mail Address box, type the e-mail address that you want to appear in the logs of servers that are crawled by the search system.
3. Click OK.
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Create content sources
Crawling
requires at least one content source. A content source called Local
SharePoint sites is created automatically during installation and is
automatically configured for crawling all of the SharePoint sites in the
server farm. If you perform a Server Farm installation of SharePoint Server 2010, no crawls are automatically scheduled or performed.
1. Click the Content Sources from quick launch menu
2. Click Local SharePoint Sites (otherwise you can create New Content Source)
3. Add the url in “Start Address”
4. Click “Start all crawls” from the Content Sources page.
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1.4 Configure the Search topology
The search topology covers the below:
The Search administration
(Admin) topology does not scale out - there can be on one (1) search
administration component and one (1) search administration database per
Search Service Application.
The Crawl topology
can be scaled out by adding Crawl Components or Crawl Databases. Crawl
Components can have a many-to-one relationships with Crawl Databases.
The Query topology can
be scaled out by adding Property Databases or by adding Query
Components. Index Partitions subdivide the full-text index. A new
Query Component can either be the first component in a new partition or
an additional component in an existing partition.
The next step is to move the query components to the servers on the Web tier,
the crawl and property store (query) databases are provisioned on the
SQL server instance that was specified for the SharePoint Server farm.
If you have more than one application server in your farm, you can
deploy these components on other application servers, depending on your
requirements. You can deploy multiple instances of each crawl component
and each query component.
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Description
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To move the query component to a Web server (with query component in 2 WFEs)
1. On the Central Administration Home page, click Manage service applications.
2. On the Services Applications page, click Search Service Application.
3. On the Search Administration page, in the Search Application Topology section, click Modify.
4. On the Topology for Search Service Application: Search Service Application page, in the Index Partition section, click Query component 0, and then click Edit Properties.
5. On the Edit Query Component page, select one of the front-end Web servers from the Server drop-down list, and then click OK.
6. On the Topology for Search Service Application: Search Service Application page, in the Index Partition section, click Query component 0, and then click Add mirror (for fail over).
7. On the Add mirror query component page, in the Server drop-down list, select the front-end Web server that you identified on the Edit Query Component page, and then click OK.
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To move the crawl component to a Web server
1. On the Central Administration Home page, click Manage service applications.
2. On the Services Applications page, click Search Service Application.
3. On the Search Administration page, in the Search Application Topology section, click Modify.
4. You can edit or create a new crawl component and select the App Server.
5. Finally click Apply Topology Changes
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Finally the Topology would look like below:
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