Sharing SharePoint 2010/ 2013 Service Applications across Farms

We can share/Publish-consume a Service Application across different farms like User Profile Service Application on Production can be shared to DEV, QA and UAT farms which will save duplication.

Below is the Technet Link and more steps how the Service Application can be shared across farms.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff621100(v=office.14).aspx


1.Exchange trust certificates between the farms
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee704552(v=office.14).aspx
2.On the publishing farm, publish the service application.
3.On the consuming farm, set the permission to the appropriate service applications
4.On the consuming farm, connect to the remote service application
5.Add the shared service application to a Web application proxy group on the consuming farm

Backup, Restore and Disaster Recovery

Gathering Requirements

* RTO - Recovery Time Objective
* RPO - Recovery Point Objective

Content Recovery
    - Less Serious
    - Recycle bin is the best friend
           1) First stage made available to business users
           2) Second stage available to site collection administrators
           3) Recycle bin settings configures in web application
           4) Users can recover deleted Items/ Documents/ Sites
    - Third Party tools like Ave Point (or) Quest can get item level restore
     
Disaster Recovery
   - Its a Big one
   - If entire Data Center is down,
            1) Data center synchronization via Log shipping is one method
            2) Stand by farm in remote location and wit Log shipping you can easily recover simply by                                flipping the switch. (DNS Headers, IP's Info  etc)
            3) DB Mirroring is another method, basically it takes a mirror image of your environment                                  and run simultaneously on your recovery farm.
High Availability
  - Expect problem and plan for up time
  - Doubling up the servers so that if one goes down we have other
  - Most effective focus on SQL Server databases
             1) Database Mirroring
             2) Database Clustering
             3) Transaction log shipping

Backing Up SharePoint Content
  - Two Common Strategies
            1) Backup site collection - SharePoint backups
                   i) Backup-SPSite/ Restore-SPSite
                       *** Can lead to performance issues with 1GB or more
                   ii) Export-SPWeb/ Import-SPWeb
                   iii) Export-SPList/ Import-SPList
       Power Shell Script: Backup all the site collections to "C:\backups"
                Get-SPWebApplication |Get-SPSite | 
                 ForEach-Object{
                     $FilePath = "C:\Backups" + $_.Url.Replace("http://","").Replace("/","-") + ".bak"
                     Backup-SPSite -Identity $_Url -Path $FilePath
                     }
                   iv) Granular backup - Sitecollection/ Web/ List
            2) Backup content databases - SQL backups
                    i) SQL Server backup/ restore tools are very mature
                    ii) Provides efficient means to recover content
 
DR: Server failure - Farm
  - Decide what to back up
          1) Content Databases
          2) Configuration Database
          3) Service Application databases
DR: Server failure - Server
  - Files
         1) Solution Packages
         2) Webtemp.xml
         3) Docicon.xml and file icons
         4) SSL Certificates
         5) Web.config
         6) Configuration from IIS metabase
         7) Registry Keys
  - Folders
        1) \15 hive
        2) \14 hive
        3) \inetpub
        4) \install
In addition, system level files
%windir%\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe add backup "My Backup Name"
%windir%\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe restore backup "My Backup Name"
%windir%\System32\inetsrv\history

DR: Server failure - Farm Backup
SharePoint Supports Farm Level backup

SP2013 Migration Process

1) Create SharePoint 2013 Farm setup

2) Copy databases to New SQL Server 

3 & 4) Upgrade content databases and service applications(if required)

                i) Create a web applications in the new farm and use the same url and port numbers

5) Upgrade site collections independently

User Profile Application in SP2013

The user Profile Sync service must be run in the context of the farm account.  That is still one of the requirements.  You can't change it to use a different account

I am having problem to start “User Profile Synchronization Service”.

(1)    I grant the farm admin account “Replicate Directory Changes” permission and add the account to the “Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access” group on the domain
(2)    Create a User Profile Service application with the farm admin account.
(3)    Start “User Profile Service”.
(4)    Start “User Profile Synchronization Service”.

Because this is a single server farm, so I following the instruction on the set up page to restart IIS. However, the service just cannot started - “Starting” forever.
Both “FIMService” and “FIMSynchronizationService” are disabled. Both services are log on with the same farm admin account. I set them to “Auto (Delay)”. I tried to manually start them but get errors “Window could not start the Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization service on local computer” and “The Forefront Identity Manager Service stop automatically…”.

I have recreate the service application couple times and nothing is changed. I really appreciate if someone can help me out. Many thanks.

Script to change the service account for AppFabricCachingService in SP2013

Power Shell Script:

$farm = Get-SPFarm
$cacheService = $farm.Services | where {$_.Name -eq "AppFabricCachingService"}
$accnt = Get-SPManagedAccount -Identity "Domain\useraccount"
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.CurrentIdentityType = "SpecificUser"
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.ManagedAccount = $accnt
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.Update()
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.Deploy()

Clear Cache in SP2013

How to clear SP2013 cache

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg277249.aspx

BCS Location Result Source

If we follow the steps mentioned in the below blog, we will be able to achieve it.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bill_voss_blog/archive/2013/04/16/how-to-get-search-results-for-a-specific-content-source.aspx

SP2013 Classic and Claims WebApplication

Good article for DB migration with Claims/Classic authentication details

http://blog.armgasys.com/?p=275

Migration from Classic webapplication to claims webapplication

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg251985.aspx

Classic Web Application Creation

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg276326.aspx