SharePoint 2010 Service Application infrastructure is beast. Because Microsoft has built SharePoint Service Application architecture as pluggable, many of the out of the box service applications has been built for different needs with different configurations. Some of the key service applications components like service accounts, backend database, whether it’s available in SharePoint foundation or server product, whether it’s multi-tenant enabled, whether it’s cross-farm enabled are key to understand and will take you long way while designing service applications architecture during initial/ongoing farm configuration.
Additional References
- Microsoft Press – SharePoint 2010 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant Book, Chapter 2, Table 2-1
- Wrox’s Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration Book, Chapter 7, Table 7-1
- Technet Poster – Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010 – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=167089
I have put together a high level grid to map all the major components of service applications for quick reference. I would encourage you to take this reference table and map it to your specific farm infrastructure. Enjoy.
| Service Application | SKU | Recommended Location of Server | Stores Data? If Yes, Provide DB Name | Cross Farm Capable?Publish-able? | Windows Service? | Multi-Tenant Aware? | Is IIS Web Application Associated? | Is IIS WCF Service Application Associated?Managed from Central Admin? |
| Access Service | Enterprise | Application | Cache | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Application Registry Service | Foundation | Application | DB (Application Registry) | No | No | Yes (only deployed using PowerShell or FCW) | ||
| Business Data Connectivity Service | Foundation | Application | DB(BDC) | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Central Administration | Foundation | Application | DB(SharePoint_AdminContent) | N/A | No | N/A | Web App, SharePoint Central Administration v4, Runs as Farm Admin account | N/A |
| Claims to Windows Token Service | Foundation | Application | No | No | C2WTS, Installed as part of WIF. Disabled by default. Enabled by this Service. Runs as the local system user. | No | No | |
| Document Conversions Launcher Service | Application | No | No | |||||
| Document Conversions Load Balancer Service | Application | No | No | |||||
| Excel Service | Enterprise | Application | Cache | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Lotus Notes Connector | Application (Index) | No | Yes (Search) | |||||
| Managed Metadata Service | Standard | Application | DB (Managed Metadata) | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Incoming Email | Foundation | Web or Application | No | No | ||||
| Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscriptions Settings Service | Foundation | Web or Application | DB (Subscription Settings) | No | Yes (PowerShell Only) | No | Yes (only deployed using PowerShell) | |
| Microsoft SharePoint Foundation User Code Service | Foundation | Web or Application | No | SPUserCodeV4 – Runs under SP Service Account | No | No | ||
| Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web Application | Foundation | All Web Servers, Stop on Application Servers | No | No | No | |||
| Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer Service | Foundation | Web | No | No | No | |||
| PerformancePoint Service | Enterprise | Application | DB (Performance Point) | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| PowerPoint Service | Office Web Apps | Application | Cache | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Search Query and Site Settings Service | Standard | Application (All Query Servers), Load balances queries across all Query servers | Yes | No | Yes (Search) | |||
| Secure Store Service | Standard | Application | DB (Secure Store) | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| SharePoint Foundation Help Search Service | Foundation | On Foundation Farm, Search Server.On Server Farm, Application, Start this Service only on one computer. | DB (Help) | No | SPSearch4 – Runs Under Local Service user | No | No | |
| SharePoint Server Search | Standard | Automatically Configured to run on Appropriate Servers in the farm.This Service can’t be started or stopped from the Central Admin. Search components are provisioned from the Search Admin Page. | DB (Search Admin, Crawl, Property) | Yes | OSearch14 – Runs under SP Service Account | Yes | No | Yes (Search) |
| State Service | Standard | Application | DB (State) | No | No | No | No | Yes (only deployed using PowerShell or FCW) |
| Usage and Health Data Collection Service | Foundation | Application | DB (WSS_Logging) | No | No | No | No | Yes (only deployed using PowerShell or FCW) |
| User Profile | Standard | Application | DB (Profile, Social Tagging, Synchronization) | Yes, Requires both farms to be in trusted AD domain. | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| User Profile Synchronization Service | Standard | Application | No | No | FIMService FIMSynchronizationService Windows Services are provisioned by the User Profile Sync Service. Runs as the Farm Admin account. | ?? | No | No |
| Visio Graphic | Enterprise | Application | Blob Cache | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Web Analytics Data Processing Service and Web Analytics Web Service | Enterprise | Application | DB (Reporting, Staging) | Yes | WebAnalyticsService -Runs under SP Service Account | No | No | Yes (Web Analytics) |
| Word Automation | Standard | Application | DB (Word Automation) | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Word Viewing | Office Web Apps | Application | Cache | No | No | No | No | Yes |
