System Services/ Service Applications in SharePoint 2010

Hi All,

In this post, I’d like to share some thoughts about SharePoint 2010 terms in regard of planning your SharePoint Farm. I will show in details the differences between some terms such as: System Services, Application Services, Cross-farm services, Single-farm services, Services associated or not to a service applications and How to configure each of them in your SharePoint Farm.
If you are familiar with SharePoint 2007, Service applications are the equivalent to Shared Services in SharePoint 2007.
1) System Services: In SP 2007, some common services were combined under Shared Services service (search, user profile…etc.), in SP 2010, each service is a standalone application, called Service Application. In SP 2010 you can configure each service application alone. Some of these system services are associated or not with a service application.
To configure System Services in SP 2010, follow these steps:
1) Open SP 2010 Central Admin
2) Select System settings
3) Click on Manage services on server
You will be able to select the servers within the farm and Start/Stop them
2) Web Application and system services: Once you create a web application in your farm, all system services are associated to your web application, You can configure which service application would you like to associate with your web application, to do so:
1) Open SP 2010 Central administration
2) Select Application Management
3) Click on Manage configure service application association
4) Click on your web application and select the required system services required
5) Select custom from the drop down list to start configure the system services associated with your web application

3) Cross-farm services vs. Single-farm services:
Cross-farm services: are the services that can be shared across different farms within the organization such as: User Profile, Managed Metadata, BCS, Search, SSS and Web Analytics.
Single-farm services: are the services that can be configured only within only one farm such as: State service, Master data services, Performance Point, Excel Services, Access Services, Word Services, Word Viewing, Power Point and Visio Service.



Regards,
Mostafa Arafa
twitter.com/mostafaelzoghbi