Thủ thuật Sharepoint 2010 part 24 pot

146
❘
CHAPTER 6 UsiNg the NeW ceNtral admiNistratioN
CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION CATEGORIES
From the Central Administration home page, you’ll notice that some of the most commonly used
actions are immediately available under the heading for each category. For instance, you can start
creating site collections in a single click from the home page with the link Create site collections
under the Application Management header. Similarly, you can quickly start a backup by clicking the
Perform a backup link under the Backup and Restore header. The rest of the actions found in each
category can be accessed by clicking the category’s header or its corresponding link in the Quick
Launch. Another nice feature added to this new Central Administration site is the use of tooltips
when hovering over a link. Throughout Central Administration, hovering the mouse over a link will
give you a brief description of what that link opens.
The following sections describe the various categories and what you can do with each.
Application Management
The Application Management category is likely the area of Central Administration you will use the most.
As you might guess from its name, Application Management is the location from which you manage your
web applications and service applications and related items, such as site collections and databases. This
category includes a good portion of the links that were found in the Application Management tab of
SharePoint 2007’s Central Administration. In SharePoint 2010, the Application Management category
is further divided into several subcategories, each pertaining to a specific area.
Web Applications
In the Web Applications section (see Figure 6-4), you can access a list of all the web applications
available in the farm, as well as configure alternate access mappings. Clicking the Manage web
applications link will open a list of all of the web applications you have running in the farm.
FIGURE 64
You’ll notice that initially you can’t do a whole lot with the Ribbon, as nearly every button is grayed out
with the exception of the New button. Once you select a web application on the page, the Ribbon lights
up and gives you many other options that can be used for changing the settings for the selected web
application. You’ll also notice that many options that were available from the Application Management
tab in SharePoint 2007 now live on the Ribbon, reducing link clutter on the page (see Figure 6-5).

Central Administration Categories
❘
147
FIGURE 65
Managing the Web Applications enables you to make widespread changes to your sites. Because
Web Applications are one of the highest levels of SharePoint containment, any settings you make
from the Manage Web Applications screen will affect any site collections contained in the selected
Web Application.
A few notable Ribbon items that you may end up using include the Extend button, which enables
you to extend the selected Web Application to a different IIS website than the one on which it is cur-
rently hosted. You can use this in conjunction with Alternate Access Mappings to allow the same
content to be accessed from more than one URL.
The Delete button enables you to remove the Web Application from SharePoint. You also have the
option to remove the IIS website and the content database as well if you wish.
The General Settings button, as you might guess, enables you to set some of the basic settings for
the Web Application. Here is where you can enable RSS feeds for all the site collections in the Web
Application, as well as set the maximum upload size for fi les. The General Settings button also has a
drop-down from which you can set other options. Some of these are covered in subsequent chapters,
so we won’t cover the rest of the options in great detail.
Some of these options can be accessed from other areas of Central Administration,
too. While exploring Central Administration, you will fi nd that several options
can be found in more than one place.
Let’s head back to the Application Management page. Alternate Access Mappings (AAMs), under
the Web Applications subheader Confi gure alternate access mappings, provide a way to access the
same SharePoint content from different URLs. This can be useful if external users in an organiza-
tion will access the SharePoint site using a different URL than the internal users. If you are familiar
with setting up AAMs in SharePoint 2007, there’s nothing new this time around. The interface is
exactly the same. SharePoint enables you to confi gure up to fi ve different zones, or entry points, as
alternative URLs that point to the same Web Application.
AAMs also need to be confi gured if the SharePoint site is behind a reverse proxy server (such as Microsoft

Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010). In this scenario, the URL that end-users type to access
the site may not be the actual URL of the SharePoint site, but rather a URL that the reverse-proxy
server hands off to SharePoint. An alternate access mapping allows SharePoint to receive the request
and return the correct content.
148
❘
CHAPTER 6 UsiNg the NeW ceNtral admiNistratioN
Site Collections
In this subcategory, all your site collection needs are met. Most of these items, which were found on
the Application Management tab in SharePoint 2007, now have their own featured page, enabling
you to more easily find what you need. You can create and delete site collections from the various
Web Applications in the farm, set quota templates and apply quotas to individual site collections,
change the administrators of the site collections, and set up self-service site creation for users. For
the most part, working with site collections in Central Administration is exactly the same as it was
in SharePoint 2007. In most cases, you choose the web application and site collection you’d like to
work with, and then configure the settings available on the screen.
The process of creating a site collection in SharePoint 2010 is identical to that in SharePoint 2007.
You still choose the web application that will contain the site collection, give it a name, pick the tem-
plate, and assign an administrator and quota (if desired). Configuring and applying quotas is also the
same, as is the capability to set up confirmation e-mails and notification for site usage and deletion.
One addition to the site creation process is the ability to create a site collection without specifying
a site template. This is done by selecting the Custom tab on the site template selector and choosing
<Select template later…>. The first time the new site collection is accessed by a site collection admin-
istrator, the template selector will be displayed. Using this new feature means that a SharePoint
administrator can set up a site collection for a group of users, but let the site collection’s adminis-
trator make the call on which template is most appropriate for his or her needs.
Service Applications
Service applications are a new concept to SharePoint 2010. In a nutshell, service applications are
the replacement for the Shared Services Provider (SSP) used in MOSS 2007. Unlike the SSP, which
housed all available services, such as search, people services, Excel Calculations, and other services

shared between web applications in the farm, in SharePoint 2010, service applications are individual
components that can be individually associated with web applications. This approach offers much
more flexibility than the SSP model from SharePoint 2007. Because not all services need to be running
on any given web application, this can save on overhead. You will learn much more about service appli-
cations in Chapter 7, so this section serves more as a quick introduction to working with service
applications in Central Administration.
When you click the Manage service applications link, you are presented with a list of all the available
service applications that were configured during the initial farm configuration. This management page
also utilizes the Ribbon for efficient management of the service applications. You can create additional
instances of service applications using the New button. You can select which type of service applica-
tion you’d like to create, and a pop-up window opens, enabling you to create a new service application.
Figure 6-6 shows a list of service applications, with the Managed Metadata Service highlighted.
When working with service applications, you’ll probably use the Manage and Properties buttons most
often. The Properties button enables you to adjust general settings for the service application (such as
its name), while the Manage button opens the management options for the selected service applica-
tion. This is where you’ll actually work with the service application. For example, selecting the Search
Service Application and clicking Manage in the Ribbon opens the Search Administration page.
Service applications aren’t contained in a completely separate web application like the SSP was.
Instead, they’re all individual components that can be accessed directly from Central Administration.
Central Administration Categories
❘
149
Each service application has a slightly different interface, but you’ll find that it’s a rather seamless
transition from working in Central Administration to managing a service application.
FIGURE 66
Databases
Also finding a home in the Application Management category is the subcategory Databases. Using
these links enable you to specify the default database server, as well as manage the content data-
bases in the farm. The interface on the Manage content databases screen is nearly the same as in
SharePoint 2007, with the addition of a couple of extra columns that provide some additional infor-

mation. In addition, the column headers are now more descriptive, specifically indicating that they
are referring to site collections.
Just as in SharePoint 2007, clicking the database name will enable you to configure properties of
the database, but this time around you get more information and options to set. You can specify a
failover database server on this screen, set the search server, and adjust the database capacity for
the number of site collections permitted in the selected Web Application. By default, you can create
15,000 site collections, and a warning event is triggered when the number of site collections reaches
9,000. You can adjust these values to meet your needs. You may want to revisit Chapter 3 for more
information on architecture and capacity planning.
From this screen, you can also check the database schema versions by clicking on the database name.
This is helpful to determine the patch level of the SharePoint farm. In SharePoint 2010, you can actu-
ally install patches to SharePoint without upgrading the databases at the same time. This enables you
to mitigate downtime during patch installations. Although you can run SharePoint and the databases
150
❘
CHAPTER 6 UsiNg the NeW ceNtral admiNistratioN
at different patch levels, you will want to synchronize them as soon as it’s feasible by running the
SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard.
New to SharePoint 2010 is the capability to assign a specific server to be responsible for the timer jobs
that run against a particular content database. While this likely wouldn’t be a common setting, if you
do need to take advantage of it, the interface for setting that is also on this page. You can read more
about this in Chapter 15.
Finally, you can remove the content database from the web application from this screen. This won’t
delete the database from SQL; it simply removes the association with the web application.
System Settings
Administrators familiar with SharePoint 2007 will recognize many of the pages in this category. As
stated earlier, many of the screens in SharePoint 2010 are nearly identical to SharePoint 2007, but
how you get to them has changed. System Settings houses many of the pages that can be used to make
farmwide settings.
Servers

As shown in Figure 6-7, there are only two links in the Servers subcategory: Manage servers in this
farm and Manage services on server. Clicking the former link will open a page that lists all the serv-
ers that are part of the SharePoint farm. This includes all servers with SharePoint actually installed
on them, but not the SQL servers where the databases reside.
To remove a server from the SharePoint farm, click the Remove Server link in the row of the server’s
name. This page is largely informational. Clicking on the server name will open the Services on Server
page (which is actually the equivalent of clicking the Manage services on server link from the System
Settings category page and selecting the desired server).
FIGURE 67
On the Services on Server page, you’ll see all the services currently running on the selected server.
These services are configured based on the type of role the server plays in the farm. Next to the
service name is the service’s status. This is either stopped or started, and next to that is the related
action that can be performed (i.e., stopped services can be started and vice versa). You’ll notice
that some of the service names are hyperlinks and some are not. Clicking the hyperlinked names
opens a page where you can make additional configurations before or after the service has been
started.
Central Administration Categories
❘
151
E-mail and Text Messages (SMS)
This subcategory has three links. Confi gure outgoing e-mail settings enables you to specify a server
in your network set up with SMTP to send messages from the SharePoint farm. There isn’t much to
confi gure here; simply enter the server, the From: address, and the Reply to: address, and you’ve just
enabled outgoing e-mail from the SharePoint farm.
Setting up incoming e-mail is only a little more involved. To use incoming e-mail, the SMTP feature
needs to be enabled on the server. If it’s not enabled, you’ll receive a notice dialog box when you access
the Confi gure incoming e-mail settings page. Once again, the settings page for incoming e-mail is iden-
tical to SharePoint 2007. First, decide whether you are going to enable incoming e-mail for your farm.
Then, decide whether you want to let the server handle all the dirty work (with Automatic mode) or
whether you want to confi gure the SMTP drop folder yourself (with Advanced mode).

Next, you can specify if you want to enable Directory Management Service, which is basically a fancy
way of saying that the e-mail can be tied in with your Active Directory and Exchange systems if you
so desire. You can also set the e-mail display address and the e-mail drop folder as well, if you are
working in Advanced mode. If you chose Automatic mode, you have the option to either specify safe
e-mail servers or simply allow e-mail from all e-mail servers. Once incoming e-mail is confi gured, a
SharePoint timer job will check the e-mail drop folder that the SMTP service uses to drop off messages,
and route them to the appropriate list or library.
Finally, you can enable SharePoint to send out text message alerts via an SMS service. If your organiza-
tion subscribes to a text message service, you should have a username and password for your account.
Simply specify the URL of the service, enter the username and password you have been provided with,
and you have set up a mobile account to send alerts to any user who has chosen to be alerted with a
text message when an item in SharePoint changes that meets the alert criteria. If you aren’t subscribed
to an SMS service, Microsoft has made the process easy by providing a link directly on the Mobile
Account Settings page that displays a list of compatible services.
Farm Management
The last stop in the System Settings category is the Farm Management subcategory. This section
contains links to various widespread settings that affect the entire farm.
Notice that you have another link to confi guring AAMs here. Because we’ve
already covered AAMs, we’ll skip right over that link.
You can manage features scoped to the farm level from this subcategory by clicking the Manage farm
features link (you’ll learn more about Features in Chapter 13). Essentially, features are bits of func-
tionality that can be turned on or off in a subsite, a site collection, a web application, or the entire
farm. This list happens to include all out-of-the-box features scoped to the farm level. If you know
you won’t be using a particular feature in your organization, you can deactivate it to remove its func-
tionality. Generally, however, you will probably want to leave most of these features activated, as they
affect every server and web application in your farm.
152
❘
CHAPTER 6 UsiNg the NeW ceNtral admiNistratioN
The Manage farm solutions link is the SharePoint 2010 equivalent of the Solution management link

from SharePoint 2007. Also known as the Solution Store, this is where any installed solution pack-
ages that have been added to the farm are stored. From here, you can deploy or retract solutions
using a GUI interface. If you prefer using STSADM or PowerShell, you can also deploy and retract
solutions from a command prompt.
Any user-submitted solutions can be managed with the Manage user solutions link. This screen
offers administrators the option to block any solutions they wish. To block a solution from running
in the farm, simply browse for the solution file and optionally provide a message informing users
that their request is being blocked. You can also set how SharePoint handles multi-server scenarios
and solutions. You can allow solutions to run only on the server on which the request was made, or
on other servers running the User Code Service.
The Configure privacy options link is simply a page where you can specify whether you would like to
send information to Microsoft regarding the SharePoint farm. You can opt in or out of the Customer
Experience Improvement Program, as well as decide if you’d like to automatically send any errors
related to Microsoft. Finally, you can choose whether you’d like to display help from the locally
installed help files or whether you’d like to use the online help from Microsoft.
Lastly, administrators can use the Configure cross firewall access zone link to enable SharePoint to
send externally accessible URLs in alerts. This is useful if the site is being set up with SSL. Choose
the web application, and then choose the zone that will be used as the cross firewall access zone
from the drop-down list.
Monitoring
Monitoring in SharePoint 2010 has been improved, offering more insight into the state of your farm.
The Monitoring category contains three subsections: Health Analyzer, Timer Jobs, and Reporting
(see Figure 6-8). This section is meant only as a primer and the real meat on these topics is presented
in Chapter 15.
FIGURE 68
Health Analyzer
SharePoint 2010 introduces a new feature called the Health Analyzer (sometimes called the Best
Practices Analyzer). This rule-based tool periodically scans the farm, checking various components
and settings of SharePoint and comparing them to a rule bank.