Wednesday, July 14, 2010

FAST Query and FAST Content Search Service Applications in a SharePoint 2010 deployment Explained

After FAST for SharePoint 2010 (FAST4SP) is installed and configured, there are 2 search service applications associated with FAST4SP: FAST Query Search Service Application and FAST Content Search Service Application (Your search service application name could be different). It took me a while to realize the differences between those 2 service applications. The following blog entry helped me a lot learning those 2 service applications.

The two types of Search Service Applications (in a SharePoint 2010 deployment with FAST Search Server) - On The Search - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

In summary, FAST Query is used to service all search queries and crawl People content, i.e., User Profiles. So under the Search Administration page for FAST Query, there should be one and only one Content Source defined, with Start Addresses with only one entry, like sps3://hostname. Also search scopes should be defined under FAST Query service application. This blog entry demonstrates how to create a search scope in FAST Query from content source defined in FAST Content.

FAST Content is used to crawl all other content sources other than People. Out of the box under the Search Administration page of FAST Content, we should remove the entry of sps3:// from the content source's start addresses text box. Also note there is no search service application proxy for FAST Content.

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