TechTips - How and Why to Update the SharePoint 2007 Farm Administrators Group

When you have a SharePoint 2007 Farm you might have many different administrators for that farm and you will want them all to have the proper credentials that should allow them to get their jobs done. Well SharePoint 2007 Farm's have a section where you can add and delete people from the Farm admin group. This group is where you will control all of your "God" level users; if you add them here they will own your farm and can change anything about it. In this guide I will go over how to add users, why you might want to add users, and some tips that help me administer my SharePoint 2007 Farm using this Administers group through SharePoint 2007.

So first thing you need to know about the Farm Administrators group is that it's the top level group for all SharePoint 2007 Farm level permissions. If you put a user account in this group they can pretty much do anything they want in SharePoint 2007 administration. So make sure the users you put in this group should have the privileges and know how to administer a SharePoint 2007 Farm. I say that because there are a lot of things you can do that can really break SharePoint 2007 and it gets even messier when you are playing with an entire SharePoint 2007 Farm.

What I tend to like to do is to create a group in Active Directory (mine is called SP_admins) and put any and all users who will administer the SharePoint 2007 Farm in this group and then add that AD group to the SharePoint 2007 Farm Administrators Group. This way I only have to administer the AD group object and add/remove users from there. When they are in the group they have the rights when I take them out they don't have the rights. You don't have to do it this way I just find it easier, you can add groups or users to the SharePoint 2007 Farm Administrators Group.

You can also setup your own groups within the SharePoint 2007 Farm Administrators Group; you can create groups and add different users to each group. Again you can develop whatever security model works best for your setup, for me it's the AD group added directly to the SharePoint 2007 Farm Administrators Group.

So how do you add users to the SharePoint 2007 Farm Administrators Group, just follow these steps:

1. Open Central Admin
2. Click on Operations
3. Click on Update Farm Administrators Group (Security Configuration Section)
4. Click New (Drop Down)
5. Click Add User (Single User Addition)
6. Type User name in Text Box (you can click small book icon to search AD for users)
7. Click Check User Icon (small person with Check mark on chest)
8. Give Permissions (Usually Set to Farm Admin, but you can limit the permissions here)
9. Uncheck Send Email to User (If you have SMTP setup you can leave this but I always uncheck it)
10. Click OK

It might take a few seconds for the user(s) to be added but once they are you will be taken back to the SharePoint 2007 Farm Administrators Group and the user should be listed in the window as an administrator. That is all there is to it, you can set the permissions somewhat when you add a user, but they still will have most rights to administer the farm so make sure the users are people you can trust.

Well I hope this guide helps you to add and update your SharePoint 2007 Farm Administrators Group.