Implementing Cross-Farm Federation
Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010
In the Service Application Framework, federation enables service applications to span multiple remote servers.
For example, a search service application proxy in one farm (a child farm) can consume a search service application from a remote farm (the parent farm). You do not have to install the service application binaries on the child farm.
Publish your service application to other farms by installing the service application proxy in the other farms and pointing it to a specific URI provided by the Central Administration when you publish the service application. This enables enterprises to have dedicated service farms that can be configured specifically for the services that are provided (such as search and analytics). These services can then be shared with other SharePoint farms.
Services must implement the IServiceAdministration and ISharedServiceApplication interfaces on the SPService and SPServiceApplication derived classes, respectively.
These interfaces support the Service Application Framework services administration features, including the SharePoint topology service, which enables the service to be discovered and consumed from remote farms. You can also implement these interfaces on the Service Application Management page in Central Administration.
Supporting Connections
Enable connections to service applications in remote farms either by using the Connect button on the Service Application Management page or by implementing IServiceProxyAdministration on the SPServiceProxy class.
Publishing
Publishing enables you to advertise your farm application to other farms.
Implement ISharedServiceApplication to publish your application. You can also do this through the UI by using the Publish button on the Service Application Management page.
See Also
Reference
Concepts
Integrating Service Applications with the Manage Services Applications Page