manual
17 www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
By publishing a service application, you can share it across server farms. This capability
does not apply to all service applications, and some services can be shared only within a
single server farm. Services that support sharing across farms can be run in a central
farm and consumed from regional locations. From the ribbon, you can also see that a
service application can connect to other service applications published by other server
farms. This sharing capability allows some services to be hosted locally while sharing
those of other farms.
Additional improvements for the service application model include:
• The services architecture is extensible, allowing third-party companies to build and add services
to the platform.
• Services are managed directly in Central Administration (rather than a separate administration
site).
• Services can be monitored and managed remotely.
• Services can be managed and scripted by Windows PowerShell™.
• Shared services communications take place over HTTP(S). Shared services do not directly access
databases across farms.
• Most new services are built on the Windows
® Communications Framework. They have
optimization built into their protocol, using binary streams instead of XML for data transfer. Test
results show improvements in network throughput with this change.
Examples of service applications are described in the following sections.
Search
SharePoint Server 2010 Search includes new features and a new architecture that
enables a more scalable topology. Search capability continues to be pervasive and
integrates very well with the new social networking features. The new architecture scales
to approximately 100 million items, and search can be used in a multi-tenant hosting
environment.
Search management has been improved by consolidating search administration to a
single dashboard in the user interface, and administration can be scripted by using
Windows PowerShell. Password management can be achieved by using managed
accounts. Search performance and functionality can be monitored, and there is also
support for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) monitoring and alerting. Search
reporting has been improved by using built-in and extensible search analytics and
reporting engine.