Connect to a service application on a remote farm (SharePoint Server 2010)

Article
07/22/2014

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010

In Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, you can publish some service applications to make them available over remote connections. By publishing a service application, you can optimize resources and avoid redundancy, and provide enterprise-wide services without installing a dedicated enterprise services farm. This article describes how to connect to and consume a published service application.

Important

Before you start to share service applications, we highly recommend that you read the articles Share service applications across farms (SharePoint Server 2010) and Services architecture planning (SharePoint Server 2010).

You can connect to a service application that has been shared by another farm if you know the address of the farm's discovery service or the address of the service application. Be aware that you can only connect to a service application on a remote farm if the farm administrator for the remote farm has published the service application.

In this article:

To connect to a service application on a remote farm by using Central Administration
To connect to a service application on a remote farm by using Windows PowerShell

To connect to a service application on a remote farm by using Central Administration

Verify that you are a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group.
On the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, click Application Management, and then click Manage service applications.
On the ribbon, click Connect.
On the Connect drop-down menu, click the kind of service application to which you want to connect.
On the Connect to a Remote Service Application page, type the appropriate URL in the Farm or Service Application address text box, and then click OK.

Note

You can obtain the URL from the administrator of the publishing farm. For more information, see Publish a service application (SharePoint Server 2010). There are two kinds of URLs that you can use in this step: either the URL of the service application or the URL of the remote farm’s topology service application. If you use the URL of the service application, only the corresponding service application will be listed in Step 6 of this procedure. If you use the URL of the topology service, all service applications in the farm will be listed in Step 6 of this procedure.
The new Connect to a Remote Service Application dialog box displays the service applications that match the URL that you typed in Step 5. Click the row that contains the name of the service application, and then select the check box to add the service application connection to the farm’s default list of service application connections (that is, the default proxy group). Click OK.
You are prompted to change the connection name. Type a new name into the Connection Name text box or leave the default name, and then click OK.
We recommend that you use the instructions in Exchange trust certificates between farms (SharePoint Server 2010) to establish trust between the two farms.
After the new connection is created, you must click OK to complete the procedure.
Associate the new service application connection with a local Web application. For information about how to do this, see Add or remove a service application connection to a Web application (SharePoint Server 2010).

To connect to a service application on a remote farm by using Windows PowerShell

Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
On the Start menu, click Administrative Tools.
Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:
```
Receive-SPSharedServiceApplicationInfo -FarmUrl <PublishingFarmTopologyURL>
```
Where the <PublishingFarmTopologyURL> is the information that is retrieved by running the Get-SPTopologyServiceApplication cmdlet on the publishing farm. For more information, see Publish a service application (SharePoint Server 2010).
At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:
```
New-SP*ServiceApplicationProxy -Name " <ServiceApplicationProxyName>" -Url "<PublishingFarmTopologyURL>"
```
Where:
- <ServiceApplicationProxyName> is a unique name for a service application connection on the consuming farm.
- <PublishingFarmTopologyURL> is the service application topology URL that was also used in the previous command.
Each kind of service application has a specific Windows PowerShell 2.0 cmdlet that should be used instead of New-SP*ServiceApplicationProxy. (These cmdlets are listed in the See Also section.) For example, the following command creates a new Managed Metadata service application proxy named "MetadataServiceProxy1" that connects to the service application located at the stated URL.
```
New-SPMetadataServiceApplicationProxy -Name "MetadataServiceProxy1" -Uri "
urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:service:9c1870b7ee97445888d9e846519cfa27#authority=urn:uuid:02a493b92a5547828e21386e28056cba&authority=https://ua_powershell:32844/Topology/topology.svc  "
```
You must associate the new service application connection with a local Web application. For information about how to do this, see Add or remove a service application connection to a Web application (SharePoint Server 2010).

Connect to a service application on a remote farm (SharePoint Server 2010)

See Also

Reference

Additional resources