Create and Configure the Search Service Application in SharePoint 2010

In this article we will learn how to create and configure the search service application in SharePoint 2010. We first need to understand the basic principles of search service applications. Before that we need to learn what crawling and indexing is and how to query in a search service application.

What is crawling?

Crawling and indexing are doing the same thing such as when a user uploads a document in a Document Library the search application first indexes the document using metadata keywords and stores them in the content DB.

What a query is

A query is nothing but a search of information by the end user in a search page, there you can see the text box for entering your query. And we can call that a query component.

So I hope now you understand the principle of indexing, crawling and querying. We will now see how a search service applications works.



Based upon the preceding figure we can understand how a search service application works in SharePoint 2010. When the user has entered the query, that request first reaches the search service application proxy. There only the service instance knows which server should be contacted. Based on that it crawls and indexes the metadata keywords and displays it in the search page.

So can we search for the details only from SharePoint sites? Absolutely not, we can create a SharePoint search application that crawls and indexes the network drive, custom sites, an external database and/or business data.

Let's see here how to create a new search service application instance in SharePoint 2010 using Central Administration. Before you begin creating a domain user to manage the search service application and register in the managed account.

First open the Central Administration then go to application management and then the service application and click manage service application. On the ribbon you can see the new control icon using that click search service application. It pops up the configuration page.



Next provide a name for the search application, here I gave a new search and assigned a domain user to manage the search application then created a new application pool by the name of search.



And created an application pool to search the admin web service and search query content and site setting web service and assigned the domain use for both and clicked OK. After configuring it creates a new search service application instance with application proxy.



Open the newly created search service application to add a content source and configure the crawl and indexing timing. Before that we need to assign a domain user as an administrator for the search service application as in the following:



Then provide full control for that domain user.



From the preceding figure you can see the searchable item is zero and the status is in Idle. Let's start the search application to crawl the content. Click the content source from the left quick launch bar, here I will crawl the local SharePoint site only. So edit the Local SharePoint Sites.



Create a new schedule to increment and do a full crawl, assign it to run every 5 minutes and check the start full crawl and click OK.



Once the full crawl has finished successfully you can see the searchable item and status in the search administration page.



Now let we check whether we can search the content using the enterprise search page. Now create one enterprise search page. Go to the destination web application and click site action.



Then choose the search template and click enterprise search and provide a name and URL then click OK. Then search your content using the query component.