Create a farm wide timer job...is it ok?

Question

I'm following this http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc406686%28office.12%29.aspx and have successfully created a TimerJob that is WebApplication wide.

this line

foreach (SPSite siteCollection in this.WebApplication.Sites) 

appears that sometimes, its enumerating all the sites except the Central Administration...do I need to change it to be scoped to the farm level?

or I guess at better question is...'how do I enumerate every site in a farm?'

Answer 1

SPJobDefinition has two constructors

One for web applications:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms427704.aspx

And one for services:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms461120.aspx

You can attach to the central admin service (like the Health Analysis Job)

Or the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Timer service (check http://bnedgsp06:8080/_admin/ServiceJobDefinitions.aspx) as it has most of the inbuilt timer jobs

A good example of a farm wide job is: Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.WSSProfileSyncJob

which has an Execute like this:

public override void Execute()
{
    foreach (SPWebApplication application in SPFarm.Local.Services.GetValue<SPWebService>(string.Empty).WebApplications)
    {
        if (base.JobState.ShouldStop)
        {
            break;
        }
        if (!UserProfileServiceProxy.ServiceProxy.ExcludedWebApplications.Contains(application.Id))
        {
//do stuff
        }
    }
}

You can find other global job definitions type names using this powershell:

((get-spfarm).Services |? {$_.TypeName -eq "Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Timer"}).JobDefinitions | select TypeName