How to I setup search on SharePoint Farm A to use the query server on Farm B?

Question

We have two farms. Farm B handles all indexing of content and has the query server. We have sites on Farm A, and we want all of their searches to be run on the query server in Farm B. How can we set this up? Is there something we can setup at the webapp or farm level?

Answer 1

I've never had to do this, but I believe the answer is to have an SSP that is shared by the 2 farms. Here is a technet article discussing inter-farm shared services: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262179.aspx

And a blog post that talks specifically about having one farm control the search for another using inter-farm SSP: http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2008/12/04/sharing-an-index-between-sharepoint-farms.aspx

Answer 2

Here are the basic steps I performed to share search accross two farms.

On the parent farm:

• Navigate to Central Administration
• Click Application Management
• In the “Office SharePoint Server Shared Services” click “Grant or configure shared services between farms.”
• Check “This farm will provide shared services to other farms.”
• Select the SSP Name that has the search service.
• Add the Central Administration service ID of the child farm(s)
• Click OK

On the child farm

• Navigate to Central Administration
• Click Application Management
• In the “Office SharePoint Server Shared Services” click “Grant or configure shared services between farms.”
• Click “This farm will consume shared services from another farm.”
• Enter the database server from the “Success” page of the parent farm.
• Enter the database name from the “Success” page of the parent farm.
• Use Windows authentication as recommended.
• Ignore Excel Services.
• Click OK.