Usage and Health Data Collection
Monitoring the status of your farm’s
health is a critical aspect of SharePoint administration. This service
application collects the various logging information stored in
SharePoint and writes it to the logging database. This service
application should always be created.
1. At the prompt, type the following and press Enter:
New-SPUsageApplication -Name "Usage and Health Data Collection"
2. At the prompt, type the following and press Enter:
$proxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where {$_.TypeName -eq "Usage and
Health Data Collection Proxy"}
3. At the prompt, type the following and press Enter:
4. Review Figure 5 to confirm your work.
That will do it. Now you have created the Usage and Health Data Collection service application.
Checking Your Available Service Applications
Your list of available service
applications varies according to what version of SharePoint you have
and what, if any, third-party service applications you have installed.
This walk-through assumes that you have SharePoint Server Enterprise
with no third-party service applications installed. If you are using
SharePoint Server Standard, your list will be slightly shorter:
1. From the left side of Central Administration, click Application Management.
2. Under Service Applications, click Manage service applications.
3. From the Ribbon, click New. Figure 6 shows the list of service applications for SharePoint Server Enterprise.
These are the service applications covered in the
following sections. One additional “secret” service application, called
the Subscription Settings Service, will be created with PowerShell.
Access Services
The Access Services service application
is used to create some very powerful applications and publish them
through SharePoint. Called, appropriately if unimaginatively, Access
apps, they are a new type of database that you build using Access 2013
and then access through SharePoint using a web browser. Business users
are very excited about this functionality. SharePoint and SQL Server
administrators do not share their enthusiasm. For one thing, each app
creates its own database, which must be hosted on SQL Server 2012. The
instance of SQL Server that hosts those databases must have some scary
changes made to it, such as enabling SQL Server Authentication and
named pipes.
Because of all of these requirements, Access
Services are not considered part of a standard SharePoint server build,
so feel free to skip it. No, this isn’t a total cop-out.
Access Services 2010
This is your old friend from SharePoint
2010. Another downside of the Access app model described in the
preceding section is that there is no standard way to convert an Access
Services 2010 service application to the new 2013 model. Therefore, if
you are bringing over any Access applications from 2010, you would
attach the service application database from Access Services in
SharePoint 2010 to this service application to continue to host those
applications. Note also that if you are using any of the reporting
functionality of Access Services 2010, then SQL Server Reporting
Services must be installed and configured, just as it was with
SharePoint 2010. For more information on installing and configuring
Reporting Services, you can
follow these steps to create the Access Services 2010 service
application. Access Services 2010 is a completely optional service
application and should only be created if you have a specific purpose
for it.
1. From
Central Administration, select Application Management ⇒ Service
Applications ⇒ Manage service application, and then click New.
2. In the drop-down menu, select Access Services 2010.
3. In the Create New Access Services Application dialog, enter Access Services 2010 for the Name field.
4. For Application Pool, select Use existing application pool.
5. From the drop-down, select Default SharePoint Service App Pool.
6. Leave the check box selected for “Add this service application’s proxy to the farm’s default proxy list.”
7. Confirm your settings against Figure 7 and then click OK.
Starting the Service on Server
Now that you have created the service
application you need to start its corresponding service on server on
the appropriate server. If you just have one server, then the choice is
clear; but if you have a lot of servers, then you need to balance out
your load and determine which server should host the given service.
Because you will alternate between creating a
service application and then starting its corresponding service on
server, to make your life easier it is recommended that you open a
second tab in Internet Explorer. Leave that tab on the Services on
Server page while your first tab stays on Manage service applications.
That way, you can avoid navigating around a lot and instead just move
from tab to tab.
1. In Internet Explorer, create a new tab. If you are unfamiliar with that process, just press Ctrl+T on your keyboard.
2. From the new tab, open Central Administration. In this example, the URL is http://server:5555 but yours may vary.
3. From the homepage of Central Admin, click Application Management.
4. Under Service Applications, click Manage services on server.
Now you are all set to move back and forth and
quickly start the corresponding service for each service application
you create. If in the previous section you created the Access Service
2010 service application, then start that service.
1. On the Services on Server page, find Access Database Service 2010.
2. To the
right of the name, click the Start link. After a moment you should be
returned to the Services on Server page, and the status should now be
Started.
If your farm has multiple servers, you can use
the Server: link at the top of the page to specify the server for which
you are starting the service. If you click the displayed server’s name,
you can then click Change Server. From the pop-up window that appears,
you then select the server whose services you want to manage.
Configuring the App Management Service
The App Management Service is
the service application that brings apps and the SharePoint and Office
store in SharePoint to life. As part of building a
smoothly functioning farm, you need to configure this application. Note
that configuring this service application also requires creating the
Subscription Service application and making some changes to DNS.
