We are trying to publish service applications like Search and User Profile across farms. Our farms are multi-server load balanced farms. When I try to publish the Search Application from Publishing farm, it gives me a URL something like

urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:service:9c1870b7ee97445888d9e846519cfa27#authority=urn:uuid:02a493b92a5547828e21386e28056cba&authority=https://server1:32844/Topology/topology.svc

However sine the service service is running on multiple application servers, don't we require to provide a generic url irrespective of the server name? What will happen if server1 goes down? Will my service be unavailable on consuming farm?

Hi,

The https://server1:32844/Topology/topology.svc is the LoadBalancerURL of the topology service application in the publishing farm, and it provides a list of published shared service applications that are available for consumption.

You can get this URL by running the following PowerShell command: Get-SPTopologyServiceApplication.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607960.aspx

In the consuming farm, when we connect to the remote service application, it will connect to the topology service in the publishing farm first and then selecting the shared service application to consume from it.

And in the consuming farm, there is an Application Address refresh timer job which connects to remote Services farms topology service to fetches changes (Added\Removed URLs of the shared service applications).  

If the server1 is down, then the topology service will be offline and the Application Address refresh timer job will not be able to get the list of the shared service applications and the services cannot be consumed in the consuming farm.

More reference about publishing service application across farms:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/russmax/archive/2010/05/06/sharepoint-2010-shared-service-architecture-part-2.aspx

Thanks,

Victoria

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