I recently came to a new installation of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 at one of my Mindsharp private summits that another person installed for me. I didn’t like the password that had been created for me, so I simplified the domain password requirements (this was a classroom setup without internet connectivity) and proceeded to teach my class.
When I changed the password for the sqlservice account, I had to re-do the password for each service on each server in the farm. That was easy.
What I did not expect was this: I had implemented a medium server farm and had moved the indexing services to a new server before I had changed the SQLService account password on that server. Since the password had not been saved on that server, all of the SharePoint services were not started. The combination (or timing, depending on how you look at it) of joining the Index server to the farm and assigning it the Index/Job role without it's SharePoint services started resulted in unanticipated consequences.
For example, when I tried to create a new content source, I received an error message that said, essentially, the indexing server is not available, even though it had been added to the farm.
So I changed the sqlservice account passwords on the server, started the services and ensured all of the application pools were running and still, I was unable to connect to the indexing services on the indexing server to create a new content source.
Hmmm.
So, I removed the indexing server from the farm, reinstalled the binaries, then reconnected it to the farm with all the services running and I was able to create a new content source.
So, the moral of the story is that if you plan to move your server farm roles, ensure that the services are running on those servers first. If you move the farm roles on servers where services are not running, SharePoint will allow you to do this, but even starting the services thereafter will likely result in the code not working properly and the roles assigned to those servers not being fullfilled by the servers.
Bill English
Mindsharp