Creating a new Service Application Proxy Group in SharePoint 2010

As you create and manage service applications in your farm, you may decide to create additional services for different web applications. In my case, it was rather simple. I wanted a web application that didn’t use FAST, just the basic search functionality. This was on my development workstation and I wanted to keep some of the flexibility of being able to support customers on either version of search. Anyway, I created a new service application for basic search.

I went to manage my web application and clicked Service Connections, and saw that I could only select default or custom. For this single case, custom would be fine and I could just check off all of the services I wanted. I then thought larger scale, with a farm with several web applications on it, wanting to manage unique and separate services for the bunch.

There is no interface in Central Admin to create and manage additional service application groups. So a quick search online revealed Brian Cartmel’s article “Create a new Service Application Proxy Group with New-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroup”. I suggest reading it. I took his scriptlets and made me a script which created an entirely new group and assigned all of the services I wanted. See below.

New-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroup "SERVICEGROUP"

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Access Service" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Business Data Connectivity Service" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Excel Services" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Managed Metadata" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "PerformancePoint Service" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Basic Search Service Application" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Secure Store" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "WSS_UsageApplication" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "UserProfileService" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Connection to Visio Graphics Service" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Web Analytics Service Application 1" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

$serviceAppProxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where { $_.Name -eq "Word Automation" }
Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember "SERVICEGROUP" -Member $serviceAppProxy

To use this:

• Open Notepad and copy the contents.
• Find and replace SERVICEGROUP with your desired group name, in my case it was NotFAST.
• Go to Central Admin > Manage Service Applications and walk through and specify the service applications you want to include.
• Save the file as CreateServiceAppGroup.ps1.
• Open SharePoint PowerShell (Start > All Programs > Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products > SharePoint Management Shell)
• Navigate to where you file lives and enter .\CreateServiceAppGroup.ps1
• Go to Central Admin > Manage Web Applications.
• Click your web application and click Service Connections.
• You will now see your new group listed.