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Create and configure a new Search service application (Search Server 2010)

 

Applies to: Search Server 2010

Topic Last Modified: 2012-01-06

This article describes how to create and configure a Search service application in Microsoft Search Server 2010.

Note

If you used the Farm Configuration Wizard after you installed Search Server 2010, a Search service application may have been created at that time. To verify whether a Search service application exists, you can click Manage service applications in the Application Management section on the Central Administration home page.

Video demonstration

This video show the steps required to create and configure a new Search service application.

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When you deploy and configure a Search service application, you perform the following basic steps:

  1. Create accounts – Domain user accounts are required to run the various search services and components.

  2. Create a Search service application – A Search service application provides enterprise search features and functionality.

  3. Configure the Search service application – Basic configuration of a Search service application includes configuring a default content access account, an e-mail contact, and content sources.

  4. Configure the Search topology – You can deploy crawl components, query components, and the administration component on different servers in the farm. You can also specify which instance of SQL Server is used to host the administration, crawl, and property databases.

Create accounts

The following table lists the accounts that are required to run the services that are associated with a Search service application.

Account Description

Search service application

The Windows user account that is used for the SharePoint Server Search service, the Search Admin Web Service application pool, and Search Query and Site Settings Web Service application pool.

Default content access

The identity that is used by the Search service application to access content when crawling.

You can use the same account for the Search service account, Search Admin Web Service, and Search Query and Site Settings Web Service. For the default content access account, we recommend that you use a separate account to provide security isolation.

The service account for search (the account used for the Search service account, the Search Admin Web Service, and the Search Query and Site Settings Web Service) must be registered as a managed account in Search Server 2010 to make it available when you create the Search service application. Use the following procedure to register this account as a managed account.

To register a managed account

  1. On the Central Administration home page, in the Quick Launch, click Security.

  2. On the Security page, in the General Security section, click Configure managed accounts.

  3. On the Managed Accounts page, click Register Managed Account.

  4. On the Register Managed Account page, in the Account Registration section, type the user name and password that you want to use as credentials for the service account.

  5. If you want Search Server 2010 to manage password changes for this account, select the Enable automatic password change check box and configure the parameters for automatic password change.

  6. Click OK.

After you have registered the managed account, the next step is to create a Search service application.

Create a Search service application

Before users can perform searches by using Search Server 2010, you must create and configure a Search service application.

You can create multiple Search service applications if you have to have multiple search indexes. For example, if you want to segregate sensitive content, such as employee benefits information, into a separate index so that the content does not appear to users who do not have permission to that content, you can create a separate Search service application, which will have a separate index.

Use the following procedure to create a Search service application.

To create a Search service application

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group for the farm for which you want to create the service application.

  2. On the Central Administration Home page, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  3. On the Manage Service Applications page, on the ribbon, click New, and then click Search Service Application.

  4. On the Create New Search Service Application page, accept the default value for Name, or type in a new name for the Search service application.

  5. In the Search Service Account list, click the account that you created in the previous procedure to run the Search service.

  6. In the Application Pool for Search Admin Web Service section, do the following:

    1. Select the Create new application pool option, and then type a name for the application pool in the Application pool name text box.

    2. In the Select a security account for this application pool section, select the Configurable option, and then select the account that you created to run the application pool for the Search Admin Web Service from the list.

  7. In the Application Pool for Search Query and Site Settings Web Service section, do the following:

    1. Choose the Create new application pool option, and then type a name for the application pool in the Application pool name text box.

    2. In the Select a security account for this application pool section, select the Configurable option, and then select the account that you created to run the application pool for the Search Query and Site Settings Web Service from the list.

  8. Click OK.

After the Search service application has been created, the next step is to configure it.

Configure the Search service application

You configure a Search service application on the Search Administration page for that service application. Use the following procedure to navigate to the Search Administration page for a particular Search service application.

To go to the Search Administration page

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is an administrator for the Search service application that you want to configure.

  2. On the Home page of the Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  3. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the Search service application that you want to configure.

On the Search Administration page, configure the following settings as described in the following sections:

  • Default content access account

  • Contact email address

  • Content sources

Specify the default content access account

When you create a Search service application, the account that you specify for the Search Service Account is automatically configured as the default content access account. The crawler uses this account to crawl content that does not have an associated crawl rule that specifies a different account. For the default content access account, we recommend that you specify a domain user account that has read access to the content that you want to crawl. You can change the default content access account at any time.

If you need to crawl certain content using a different account, you can create a crawl rule and specify a different account for crawling. For information about how to create a crawl rule, see Manage crawl rules (Search Server 2010).

Use the following procedure to specify the default content access account.

To specify the default content access account

  1. On the Search Administration page, in the System Status section, click the link in the Default content access account row.

  2. In the Default Content Access Account dialog box, in the Account box, type the account that you created for content access in the form domain\user name.

  3. Type the password for this account in the Password and Confirm Password boxes.

  4. Click OK.

Specify the contact e-mail address

The contact e-mail address is written to the logs of crawled servers. The default contact e-mail address, someone@example.com, is a placeholder. We recommend that you change this to an account that an external administrator can contact when a crawl might be contributing to a problem such as a decrease in performance on a server that the search system is crawling.

Use the following procedure to specify the contact email address.

To specify the contact e-mail address

  1. On the Search Administration page, in the System Status section, click the link for the Contact e-mail address.

  2. In the Search Email Setting dialog box, in the E-mail Address box, type the e-mail address that you want to appear in the logs of servers that are crawled by the search system.

  3. Click OK.

Create content sources

Crawling requires at least one content source. A content source called Local SharePoint sites is created automatically during installation and is automatically configured for crawling all of the SharePoint sites in the server farm.

If you choose the Standalone installation option when you install Search Server 2010, a full crawl of local SharePoint sites is automatically performed following installation and an incremental crawl is scheduled to occur every 20 minutes after that. If you perform a Server Farm installation of Search Server 2010, no crawls are automatically scheduled or performed.

You can add content sources to specify what other content is crawled and how the system crawls that content. For more information, see Add, edit, or delete a content source (Search Server 2010). When you create and configure a content source in Search Server 2010, you do it in the same way that you did in the previous product version, with the following exceptions:

  • The Business Data Catalog is now a subset of the Line of Business Data content source type.

  • There is a new content source type for crawling custom repositories. This option requires that one or more custom connectors are registered.

  • On the Add/Edit Content Source page, there is a new section named Content Source Priority. You can use this section to specify that the content source has either normal or high priority. The default setting is Normal.

Configure the Search Application topology

When you create a Search service application, the SharePoint Server Search service is started on the application server that is hosting the Central Administration Web site, and the search administration component together with one crawl component and one query component are deployed to that server. If you have more than one application server in your farm, you can deploy these components on other application servers, depending on your requirements. You can deploy multiple instances of each crawl component and each query component.

For information about how to plan the topology of your Search deployment, see Plan the topology for enterprise search (Search Server 2010).