SharePoint 2010 Service Application Charts

I, along with Paul Stork, recently gave a SharePoint 2010 deployment webcast where we discussed, among other things, Service Applications and some of the considerations that must be taken into account when planning your deployment strategy. We also presented a first look at SharePoint Composer and SharePoint Maestro, the two core products that ShareSquared has been developing for close to a year now.

During the presentation we mentioned that there were some great charts available to help you in planning your Service Applications but that they weren’t the easiest thing to find as they are buried in a series of technical diagrams on TechNet. You can find two of the three charts we referenced at this link, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199.aspx. I’ve also added another chart which shows the dependencies of one Service Application to another (note that this particular chart is a work in progress as we are still discovering odd dependency cases that only occur in certain situations).

Chart 1: Service Applications per SKU

The first chart identifies all the core Service Applications and whether they store data, can be used cross-farm, and to which SharePoint SKU they belong. This chart is particularly useful in planning your initial licensing requirements:

Service applications	Description	Stores data?	Cross-farm?	SharePoint Foundation 2010	SharePoint Server 2010 Standard	SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
Access Services	View, edit, and interact with Microsoft® Access® 2010 databases in a browser.	Cache				X
Business Data Connectivity	Access line-of-business (LOB) data systems.	DB	X	X	X	X
Excel Services Application	Viewing and interact with Excel files in a browser.	Cache				X
Managed Metadata Service	Access managed taxonomy hierarchies, keywords and social tagging infrastructure as well as Content Type publishing across site collections.	DB	X		X	X
PerformancePoint	Provides the capabilities of PerformancePoint Services.	Cache				X
Search	Crawls content, produces index partitions, and serves search queries.	DB	X		X	X
Secure Store Service	Provides single sign-on authentication to access multiple applications or services.	DB	X		X	X
State Service	Provides temporary storage of user session data for SharePoint Server components.	DB			X	X
Usage and Health Data Collection	Collects farm wide usage and health data and provides the ability to view various usage and health reports.	DB		X	X	X
User Profile	Adds support for My Sites, Profiles pages, Social Tagging and other social computing features.	DB	X		X	X
Visio Graphics Service	Viewing and refresh of published Microsoft® Visio® diagrams in a Web browser.	Blob cache				X
Web Analytics	Provides Web Service interfaces.		X		X	X
Word Automation Services	Performs automated bulk document conversions.	Cache			X	X
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service	Tracks subscription IDs and settings for services that are deployed in partitioned mode. Windows PowerShell only.	DB		X	X	X

Source:

Visio (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167090)
PDF (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167092)
XPS (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167091)

Chart 2: Databases That Support SharePoint 2010 Products

This next chart takes what was in diagram form in the original TechNet diagram and displays it in a chart so that it’s a bit easier to read. Use this chart when planning your SQL Server storage requirements:

Service Application Database	Database	Relative Size	Size Guidance
Usage and Health Data Collection Service Application	Usage	Extra-large	Scale up. Only one database service application per farm. Place on separate spindle.
Business Data Connectivity Service Application	Business Data Connectivity	Small	Scale up.
Application Registry Service Application	Application Registry (used during upgrade only)	Small	Scale up.
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service	Subscription Settings	Small	Scale up. You can scale out by creating additional service applications.
Search Service Application	Search Administration	Medium	Scale up. You can scale out by creating additional service applications.
Search Service Application	Crawl	Extra-large	Scale out. For large environments, put on a server that does not contain the Property databases.
Search Service Application	Property	Large to Extra-large	Scale out. For large environments, put on its own server for faster query results.
Web Analytics Service Application	Reporting	Extra-large	Scale up.
Web Analytics Service Application	Staging	Medium	Scale out.
State Service Application, Visio Service Application, InfoPath Forms Services	State	Medium-large	Scale out.
User Profile Service Application	Profile	Medium-large	Scale up. You can scale out by creating additional service applications.
User Profile Service Application	Synchronization	Medium-large	Scale up. You can scale out by creating additional service applications.
User Profile Service Application	Social Tagging	Small to Extra-large	Scale up. You can scale out by creating additional service applications.
Managed Metadata Service Application	Managed Metadata	Medium	Scale up. You can scale out by creating additional service applications.
Secure Store Service Application	Secure Store	Small	Scale up. You can scale out by creating additional service applications.
Word Automation Service Application	Word Automation Services	Small	Scale up.
PerformancePoint Service Application	PerformancePoint	Small	Scale up. You can scale out by creating additional service applications.

Source:

Visio (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=187970)
PDF (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=187969)
XPS (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=187971)

Chart 3: Service Application Dependencies

This last chart is one that we’ve been manually constructing based on our experiences with automating the setup of Service Applications. When doing a scripted install (or even when you use the FCW or manually configure Service Applications) it’s critical to know which Service Applications are dependents for other Service Applications. For example, if you are configuring the User Profile Service Application you must also configure the Managed Metadata Service Application. If you don’t do this you will get errors stating that certain fields cannot be edited when editing a user’s profile – these errors don’t give any indication that what’s missing is the Managed Metadata Service Application – you just have know.

The following chart is an attempt to help users with this hurdle – note that it is still a work in progress as it is very difficult to detect all dependencies as some are only a dependency under certain usage scenarios. Anything with an asterisks (*) next to the “X” indicates that the dependency is conditional based on usage scenarios:

Service Applications	Business Data Connectivity	Managed Metadata	Enterprise Search	Secure Store	State	Usage and Health Data	User Profile	Subscription Settings
Access					X
Business Data Connectivity				X*				X*
Excel Services				X*
Managed Metadata								X*
PerformancePoint				X*
Foundation Search
Enterprise Search	X*					X	X*	X*
Secure Store								X*
State
Usage and Health Data Collection
User Profile	X*	X*	X*					X*
Visio Graphics				X*	X
Web Analytics					X
Word Automation								X*
Subscription Settings

The way you read this chart is to find the Service Application of interest on the left and follow it to the right to see what Service Application it depends on. As you can see there’s not a lot of dependencies and most of the ones that do exist are conditional (for example, all the ones that depend on the Subscription Settings Service Application only depend on it if using Partitioning Mode, or basically a multi-tenant configuration).

As this chart is a work in progress I appreciate any feedback on it’s accuracy. If anyone notices anything that is incorrect with the chart please add a comment and I will be sure to update it accordingly.