SharePoint 2010 - Central Administration

SharePoint 2010 - Central Administration

The SharePoint Central Administration is a website used for:

•Application Management (Web Application, Sites, Lists, Services etc.)

•Monitoring (Job Status, Problems etc.)

•Security

•Application Settings, System Settings

•Performing Backup/Restore

•Configure Search, Services, Migration Assisting etc.

•In summary the Central Administration is an Administrator/Developer tool. It is used to manage the websites for other users.

Opening Central Administration

We can access central administration from the start menu item:

On executing the command you can see the following screen in the browser (ensure you provided the credentials properly - by default it will be system username and password)

Application Management

The Application Management page contains those tasks directly related to the management of site collections, sites, web applications, and service applications. It is subsequently a page where an administrator can spend a great deal of time during the initial configuration of SharePoint 2010.

System Settings

The System Settings page contains those tasks related to the settings of the system, e-mail and text messages, and farm management. We can manage the servers, configure outgoing email settings, configure mobile account, configure privacy options, manage farm features and manage farm solutions etc.

Monitoring
The monitoring features in SharePoint Server 2010 use specific timer jobs to perform monitoring tasks and collect monitoring data. The health and usage data might consist of performance counter data, event log data, timer service data, metrics for site collections and sites, search usage data, or various performance aspects of the Web servers. The system uses this data to create health reports, Web Analysis reports, and administrative reports. The system writes usage and health data to the logging folder and to the logging database.

Backup and Restore

This describes the backup architecture and recovery processes that are available in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, including farm and granular backup and recovery, and recovery from an unattached content database. Backup and recovery operations can be performed through the user interface or through Windows PowerShell cmdlets. Built-in backup and recovery tools may not meet all the needs of your organization.

Hierarchy

Server Farm: Server Farm contains multiple components like SharePoint server and database server providing multiple Web Applications spanned over multiple machines. For development machines one single machine can support all the components.
 

Web Application: Web Application contains multiple Site Collections. This could be equivalent to an ASP.NET application.

Site Collection: Site Collection contains multiple Sites.

Site: Site contains Lists, Documents etc.

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SandBox vs Farm solution

SandBox vs Farm solution

Sandboxed solutions run in a secure, monitored process. Sandboxed solutions can be deployed without requiring SharePoint administrative privileges. If you choose a sandboxed solution, you can only use project item types that are valid in sandboxed solutions.

Sandboxed solutions are deployed at the site collection level rather than the farm level, so this lets you isolate a solution so it is only available to one site collection within the farm. Sandboxed solutions also run in a separate process from the main SharePoint IIS web application process, and the separate process is throttled and monitored with quotas to protect the SharePoint site from becoming unresponsive due to a misbehaving sandboxed solution. With sandboxed solutions, users

can upload solutions without requiring administrator approval.

If you choose the option “Deploy as a farm solution,” Visual Studio will deploy the solution as a fully trusted farm solution. If you choose a farm solution, you can use all available SharePoint project item types in your project, but deployment will require administrative privileges and the solution will run in full trust.

So in the end, the choice between sandboxed and farm solutions should come down to whether or not you need to create an application page or a workflow with code in it. For these kinds of solutions, you should pick a farm solution. For all other solutions, pick a sandboxed solution. The only  other reason to use a farm solution over a sandboxed solution is if you really have some code that needs to run at the web application or farm level, perhaps because it needs to interact with or move data between multiple site collections. In this case, you would create a farm solution as well.

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Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Central Administration Tools

There are various tools provided by Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Central Administration which helps us to manage the sites and its documents. The tools provided by Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Central Administration are as:

1)    Application Management

2)    System Settings

3)    Monitoring

4)    Backup and Restore

5)    Security

6)    Upgrade and Migration

7)    General Application Settings

We can see the tools or components in the home page of Central Administration as show in the below figure:

The details of each component of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Central Administration are as follows:

Application Management

The Application Management page contains those tasks directly related to the management of site collections, sites, web applications, and service applications. It is subsequently a page where an administrator can spend a great deal of time during the initial configuration of SharePoint 2010.

System Settings

The System Settings page contains those tasks related to the settings of the system, e-mail and text messages, and farm management. We can manage the servers, configure outgoing email settings, configure mobile account, configure privacy options, manage farm features and manage farm solutions etc.

Monitoring

The monitoring features in SharePoint Server 2010 use specific timer jobs to perform monitoring tasks and collect monitoring data. The health and usage data might consist of performance counter data, event log data, timer service data, metrics for site collections and sites, search usage data, or various performance aspects of the Web servers. The system uses this data to create health reports, Web Analysis reports, and administrative reports. The system writes usage and health data to the logging folder and to the logging database.

Backup and Restore

This describes the backup architecture and recovery processes that are available in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, including farm and granular backup and recovery, and recovery from an unattached content database. Backup and recovery operations can be performed through the user interface or through Windows PowerShell cmdlets. Built-in backup and recovery tools may not meet all the needs of your organization.

Security

SharePoint Server 2010 incorporates a new, more powerful and flexible authentication model that works with any corporate identity system, including Active Directory, directory services, LDAP-based directories, application-specific databases, and new user-centric identity models such as LiveID.

Upgrade and Migration

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 has been designed for scale and performance and as such requires new hardware and software requirements. These requirements apply to both the in-place and the databases attach upgrade approaches. SharePoint Foundation 2010 provides new members and types that make it possible for you to upgrade custom Features through versioning and declarative upgrade actions. You can update any Features you created for Office SharePoint Server 2007 to work with SharePoint Server 2010 by using these members.

General Application Settings

We configure the Web application general settings when we create a new Web application. You can access the general settings in Central Administration by clicking Manage Web applications in the Application Management section, clicking the Web application that you want to configure, and then clicking General Settings on the ribbon.

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Components and Purpose of SharePoint

Components of SharePoint

1.       SITES: SharePoint 2010 Sites provides a single infrastructure for all your business        Websites. Share documents with colleagues, manage projects with partners, and     publish information to customers. 

2.       COMMUNITIES: SharePoint 2010 Communities delivers great collaboration tools     and a single platform to manage them. Make it easy for people to share ideas and   work together the way they want.

3.       CONTENT: SharePoint 2010 Content makes content management easy. Set up      compliance measures ”behind the scenes”—with features like document types,     retention polices, and automatic content sorting—and then let people work     naturally in Microsoft Office.

4.       SEARCH: SharePoint 2010 Search cuts through the clutter. A unique combination of    relevance, refinement, and social cues helps people find the information and    contacts they need to get their jobs done.

5.       INSIGHTS: SharePoint 2010 Insights gives everyone access to the information in    databases, reports, and business applications. Help people locate the information    they need to make good decisions.

6.       COMPOSITES: SharePoint 2010 Composites offers tools and components for    creating do-it-yourself business solutions. Build no-code solutions to rapidly    respond to business needs.​

Purpose of SharePoint

1)It is Portal Collaboration Software Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

2)Business users gain greater control over the storage, security, distribution, and management of their electronic content, with tools that are easy to use and tightly

integrated into familiar, everyday applications.

3)Organizations can accelerate shared business processes with customers and partnersacross organizational boundaries using InfoPath Forms Services–driven solutions.

4)Information workers can find information and people efficiently and easily through the facilitated information-sharing functionality and simplified content publishing. In

          addition, access to back-end data is achieved easily through a browser, and views into          this data can be personalized.

 5)Administrators have powerful tools at their fingertips that ease deployment,          management, and system administration, so they can spend more time on strategic tasks.

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Developer Features for SharePoint 2010

The major features for the SharePoint developer can be broken down into three main categories:
➤➤ Developer productivity
➤➤ Rich platform services
➤➤ Flexible deployment

These three areas, in turn, can be broken down into greater detail.

Developer Productivity

For developer productivity, a significant advance for SharePoint 2010 is the tooling support that

ships with Visual Studio 2010. Included with Visual Studio are a number of project-level templates

and item-level templates that you can use to create and deploy a wide array of features and solutions

to SharePoint. For example, Figure 2-1 shows the different templates available to you, which are

described in the following list:

➤➤ Import SharePoint Solution Package — This option imports a SharePoint Solution Package

(a file with a .WSP extension), the standard way of building and deploying SharePoint solutions

into your current project that can be redeployed into another SharePoint instance of

your choice.

➤➤ State Machine Workflow — This represents a workflow that is based on the system or application

state and can be deployed to SharePoint. It leverages Windows Workflow and is a special

template that enables automated deployment to SharePoint.

➤➤ Event Receiver — This allows you to create server-side code that can be called and executed

by a feature or solution. Event receivers are often created to respond to a user action (for

example, when a user adds an item to a list, an event is triggered to update a log entry).

➤➤ Empty Project — An empty SharePoint project can be used as a blank starting point for project

development. You can add lists, Web parts, event receivers, and so on, to an empty project,

and then deploy it to SharePoint.

➤➤ Module — This provides a way to deploy a specific file to a SharePoint site. It allows for the

bundling and provisioning of files for a feature. So, when the feature is activated, the files are

deployed to the specified file location.

➤➤ Business Data Catalog Model — This is used to create connections to line-of-business (LOB)

systems. This is similar to what is created by SharePoint Designer 2010 (see Chapter 8), but

Visual Studio uses a more code-centric approach for more advanced and complex connectivity

➤➤ Content Type — A custom content type (for example, a template, document, list column, and

so on) can be repurposed across SharePoint.

➤➤ Sequential Workflow — This represents a workflow that works in a sequential manner

through a set of activities and can be deployed to SharePoint. It also leverages Windows

Workflow and is a specific template that enables automated deployment to SharePoint.

➤➤ List Definition — This is used to define and deploy a list to a SharePoint site. For example,

you can define fields or columns when you create the list definition.

➤➤ Import Reusable Workflow — This is used to import a declarative workflow (only the XML

part of the declarative workflow) that has been created by SharePoint Designer 2010, and

converts it into a code workflow that a developer can then further customize.

➤➤ Site Definition — This is used to define and deploy a site into a site collection. Your site can

also contain elements such as lists or Web parts — items that are available from the Project

Item templates.

➤➤ Visual Web part — This is an ASP.NET-based Web part that you can use to build and deploy

Web parts using drag-and-drop controls. You can then write ASP.NET event handlers for

those controls.

Rich Platform Services

In terms of rich platform services, SharePoint has evolved quite a bit from SharePoint 2007. For

example, you have a rich set of UI objects that you can develop against (such as the SharePoint ribbon),

and you have a core set of SharePoint artifacts that can be used to build out your SharePoint

site

Flexible Deployment

With SharePoint 2010, you have two primary deployment options:

➤➤ On-premises — The on-premises version of SharePoint is where you or your company own

the assets on which the instance of SharePoint runs. For example, you deploy it on your corporate

network behind the firewall, you manage the hardware and updates to that hardware,

and you manage the administration of the site. Subsequently, you absorb the costs of running

SharePoint for your organization.

➤➤ SharePoint Online — SharePoint Online is a hosted version of SharePoint that Microsoft

runs for you out of its data centers. In SharePoint Online, you build and deploy your SharePoint solutions to a sandboxed environment — a ring-fenced environment that runs in

the cloud within the purview of a site collection. For example, you can build a solution that

reads and writes to a contact list within a site collection. This works on-premises, and can

equally work in SharePoint Online.

This information is taken from  "Beginning SharePoint 2010 Development"

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