Karthic Mohan's Blog

Enabling Expertise Search & User Profile Replication in SharePoint 2010

Posted on May 27, 2015 Updated on May 27, 2015

I assume if we have enabled the Enterprise Regional Search in all the regional farm then enabling expertise search / people search is very simple by adding the sps3://contoso.com in the Content Source in Search Service application. The next crawl will index all the profile in the current User Profile Store. but the issue here is the other regional farm user my profile data like Skills, Project etc.. is not available in the current farm because they always update or access their profile in their regional my site. The same issue will occur in Central Enterprise search if we have provisioned one common enterprise search.

The above issue can be resolved by replicating the other regional user my profile date in to other regional farm and central farm.

1. The EMEA farm my profile date should be replicate to AsiaPac and americas farm.
2. The AsiaPac farm my profile date should be replicate to Americas and EMEA farm.
3. The Americas farm my profile date should be replicated to AsiaPac and EMEA farm.

How we are going to achieve the above list of activities? Yes, we are going to use User Profile replication engine to replicate the my profile data between user profile services.

User Profile Replication Engine:

The User Profile Replication Engine is an optional component of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and is part of the SharePoint Administration Toolkit. The User Profile Replication Engine enables an administrator of a User Profile Service application to replicate user profiles and social data, such as social tags, notes, and ratings, between User Profile Service applications. This replication can be one-way or bidirectional. For more information see User Profile replication engine.

Types of replication

The following table describes the differences between full replication, incremental replication, and recovery, all of which can be run by using the User Profile Replication Engine. For performance purposes, you can specify the maximum number of replication threads allowed on a server that is running the User Profile Replication Engine.

Type	When to use
Full Replication	When you want all user profile information and all social data replicated from an existing User Profile service application, such as with a new User Profile service application deployment. Where user profile data or social data is lost or corrupted and a copy exists in another User Profile service application profile database or social database. When incremental replication has stopped responding over time, full replication is used to update destination User Profile service application profile databases and social databases in order to catch up incremental replication.
Incremental Replication	After full replication is complete, start incremental replication within 14 days to make sure that individual changes are being detected and replicated.
Recovery	To fully replicate a specific user or set of users whose information did not replicate correctly. For profiles that fail to replicate fully, the user name is logged in a .rcv file located in the log folder in the User Profile Replication installation directory. To replicate user profile information and social data for a user or set of users by specifying account names. To replicate user profile information and social data for a user or set of users outside a regularly scheduled replication.

Can I User Full replication to achieve my goal?

No, The full replication is not required in our scenarios  because all user profiles are imported from AD in all the regional Farm and we need to replication only the changes done by the end user via My site like Skills, school, project & etc..

In our scenarios we will be using Incremental Replication to replication the my profile date between the user profile service.

Incremental Replication:

Incremental replication also uses the trusted My Site host locations list to determine the My Site host location for a user. This identifies the primary profile for a user. The User Profile service that hosts the personal site for a user is also considered to have the primary profile record for that user. Audiences are used to identify and group related users and associate those users who have particular My Site hosts. For additional information about trusted My Site host locations, see Add or delete a trusted My Site host location (SharePoint Server 2010).

The incremental replication process depends on the trusted My Site host locations list to avoid cyclical replication. For example, if a user updates his or her AboutMe property in User Profile store A, the User Profile Replication Engine synchronizes that change to User Profile store B and the change log will capture that as a change. The instance of the User Profile Replication Engine running against User Profile Store B will attempt to replicate that same change back to the User Profile Store it came from (User Profile Store A) as something that changed since the last replication. However, before replicating it, the User Profile Replication Engine will check the trusted My Site hosts locations list to determine whether the user’s profile is the primary profile in the User Profile Store B. If it is, then the User Profile Replication Engine will replicate the change.

Power shell script to run the Incremental Replication

Start-SPProfileServiceIncrementalReplication : Replicates changes for selected profile properties from the source User Profile service application to the destination User Profile service application using the Replication Engine Windows service.

Start-SPProfileServiceIncrementalReplication -Destination <String[]> -Source <String> [-ActiveDirectoryDomains <String[]>] [-Credential <PSCredential>] [-DoSocialReplication <SwitchParameter>] [-DoUpgrade <SwitchParameter>] [-EnableInstrumentation <SwitchParameter>] [-FeedProperties <String[]>] [-MatchSubtype <SwitchParameter>] [-NumberOfRetry <Int32>] [-Properties <String[]>] [-ReplicationInterval <Int32>] [-Timeout <Int32>] [-WaitTimeBetweenFailures <Int32>]

Parameter	Required	Type	Description
Destination	Required	System.String[]	Specifies the URL of the My Site Host to where the user profiles are replicated, for example, http://euro.contoso.com:8081/my.
Source	Required	System.String	Specifies the URL of the My Site Host from where the user profiles are retrieved, for example, http://hq.contoso.com:8081/my.
ActiveDirectoryDomains	Optional	System.String[]	Specifies the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) accounts to be replicated, for example, “headquarters” or “Europe”.The default value returns all AD DS domains.
Credential	Optional	System.Management.Automation.PSCredential	Specifies the User Profile Replication Engine Windows service credentials the first time you run this cmdlet or anytime you want to change the Replication Engine service credentials. To get the User Profile Replication Engine Windows service credentials, use the Get-Credential cmdlet. For more information, see Get-Credential (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=113311).
DoSocialReplication	Optional	System.Management.Automation.SwitchParameter	Enables replication of social tags, notes, and ratings. Only use this parameter when both the source User Profile service application and the destination User Profile service application are Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010-based.
DoUpgrade	Optional	System.Management.Automation.SwitchParameter	Enables the replacement of invalid characters in the social taxonomy. This attribute must be used if the source is a Office SharePoint Server 2007 User Profile SSP and the destination is a SharePoint Server 2010 User Profile service application.
EnableInstrumentation	Optional	System.Management.Automation.SwitchParameter	Enables detailed logging by using the instrumentation log.
FeedProperties	Optional	System.String[]	Specifies that the trusted My Site host locations list should be ignored when replicating changes for the specified user profile properties.
MatchSubtype	Optional	System.Management.Automation.SwitchParameter	Prevents mismatches between source and destination profile properties by using the destination profile properties as a filter. For performance reasons, we recommend that you only use this parameter if most of the user profile properties are mismatched between the source User Profile service application and the destination User Profile service application.
NumberOfRetry	Optional	System.Int32	Specifies the number of times that the User Profile Replication Engine should attempt to restart in the event of a failure, for example, a network disconnection. The default value is 10.
Properties	Optional	System.String[]	Specifies which user profile properties to replicate, for example, “FirstName” or “AboutMe”. You can also use the Get-SPProfilePropertyCollection cmdlet to return a collection of all user profile properties. The default value returns all user profile properties.
ReplicationInterval	Optional	System.Int32	Specifies the amount of time, in seconds, between each replication iteration. The default value is 5.
Timeout	Optional	System.Int32	Specifies the amount of time the User Profile Replication Engine should wait for a response from the Web service before timing out. The default value is the Web service timeout.
WaitTimeBetweenFailures	Optional	System.Int32	Specifies the amount of time, in seconds, that the User Profile Replication Engine should wait after it fails to replicate a user profile before the Start-SPProfileServiceRecoveryReplication process begins. The default value is 300.

Thee below script will replicate the my profile changes from EMEA farm to ASIAPAC and americas farm.

start-spprofileserviceincrementalreplication -source https://mysite.emea.contoso.com -destination [https://mysite.americas.contoso.com,https://mysite.asiapac.contoso.com%5D -EnableInstrumentation -Credential $mycredential -Properties “Specifies the list user profile properties to replicate”