Starting with SharePoint 2010 Central Administration

Those who have worked on SharePoint 2007 will quickly realize that the user interface of SharePoint 2010’s Central Administration has changed dramatically. Figure 16.1 shows the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration home page.

Figure 16.1. SharePoint 2010 Central Administration

As you can see, the various settings in SharePoint 2010 Central Administration are divided into eight major categories:

• Application Management

• System Settings

• Monitoring

• Backup and Restore

• Security

• Upgrade and Migration

• General Application Settings

• Configuration Wizards

SharePoint 2010 Central Administration is itself a SharePoint site. Being a SharePoint site provides a uniform experience in terms of usability, such as the ribbon interface, site actions, and navigation. The following sections take a look at the various parts of SharePoint 2010 Central Administration.