SharePoint 2013: create Search service for single-server dev farm

Introduction

This procedure deploys a Search Service Application to a single-server SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise farm primarily used by a SharePoint developer who also needs Search capability. The server has just one drive, the system drive.   It also leaves the crawl default, or the Search service account, but you can always change this later through Central Administration.

Procedure

To get started, you first need to collate the values for some standard parameters:

Parameter	Value	Comment
$svr	dev	server name
$SvcAcct	DOMAIN\spSearch	Search service identity
$SSAName	Search Service	Search service name
$DBPrefix	Search_	search service database name prefix
$IndexLocation	C:\SSAIndex	path to the location of the index

Once you have these constants defined, open an elevated SharePoint Shell and execute the following script:

$Svr = "dev"
$SvcAcct = DOMAIN\spSearch
$AdminAcct = Get-SPManagedAccount -Identity $SvcAcct
$QueryAcct = $AdminAcct
$SSAName = "Search Service"
$DBPrefix = "Search_"
$IndexLocation = "C:\SSAIndex"
$SSISvr = get-SPServiceInstance -server $Svr |?{$_.TypeName -eq "SharePoint Server Search"}
$err = $null
Start-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -Identity $SSISvr
$AdminAppPool = new-SPServiceApplicationPool -name $SSAName"_AppPool" -account $AdminAcct 
$QueryAppPool = $AdminAppPool
$SearchApp = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Name $SSAName -applicationpool $AdminAppPool -databasename $DBPrefix"_AdminDB"
$SSAProxy = new-spenterprisesearchserviceapplicationproxy -name $SSAName" ApplicationProxy" -SearchApplication $SearchApp
$SearchTopology = $SearchApp.ActiveTopology.Clone()
New-SPEnterpriseSearchAdminComponent -SearchServiceInstance $SSISvr -SearchTopology $SearchTopology
New-SPEnterpriseSearchContentProcessingComponent -SearchServiceInstance $SSISvr -SearchTopology $SearchTopology
New-SPEnterpriseSearchAnalyticsProcessingComponent -SearchServiceInstance $SSISvr -SearchTopology $SearchTopology
New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlComponent -SearchServiceInstance $SSISvr -SearchTopology $SearchTopology
New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent -SearchServiceInstance $SSISvr -SearchTopology $SearchTopology -RootDirectory $IndexLocation
New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryProcessingComponent -SearchServiceInstance $SSISvr -SearchTopology $SearchTopology
$SearchTopology.Activate()

That's it. You're done. Now you can fire up Central Administration, navigate to Farm Search Administration and see everything.

References

• Primary
• State service and session state cmdlets in SharePoint 2013
• New-SPStateServiceApplicationProxy
• New-SPStateServiceApplication
• SharePoint 2013: How to deploy a search service application using PowerShell
• Related
• SharePoint 2013: Search Service Application and Common PowerShell Commands
• SharePoint 2013: How to completely remove Search service application

Notes

• If you need to remove the Search service application, be sure to review the reference on completely removing it as it provides helpful steps to ensure you get all of it off the server before trying to re-install it again.