sharepoint 2013 Basic Concepts

Sharepoint 2013 Basic Concepts

SharePoint Central Administration(SPCA)


SPCA is a website based on the SharePoint engine; it’s designed to administer and monitor a SharePoint server farm. When you deploy a new farm, by default the first server takes the role of SPCA host. Nevertheless, in a well-defined SharePoint server farm, you should deploy at least two servers hosting SPCA, for better availability and business continuity of the farm.

The following list describes the main areas of SPCA:

Application Management : Here, you can manage existing web applications, as well as create new web applications, site collections, and content databases.

Monitoring : From this area, you have access to a set of tools for monitoring the farm, checking for issues, and solving problems.

Security : Here, you can manage administrative accounts and services’ accounts of the farm, and configure all the security-related features.

General Application Settings : This is the area where you manage general settings, such as site directory and search engine settings, content deployment features, form services, and more.

System Settings : From this area, you can manage servers in the farm, the farm topology, services on servers, and farm customization features.

Backup and Restore : This area provides access to all the tools for managing and handling disaster recovery tasks.

Upgrade and Migration : Here, you can manage upgrade and patching tasks.

Apps : This area provides access to the app configuration and management tools. You can configure and monitor installed apps and apps licenses, as well as your corporate catalog of apps.


Configuration Wizards : This area provides a wizard to configure the farm from scratch.



Information courtesy: Microsoft SharePoint 2013:Developer Reference