How to manage more than a Metadata Service Application?

Question

We have configured two managed Metadata services in our SharePoint 2010 Farm, named MMS1 & MMS2 and both has its own proxy service.

Question:1
MMS1 has a termset group - MMS1_TG1
MMS2 has a termset group - MMS2_TG1

If I open any of the MMS, it shows both MMS1_TG1 & MM2_TG1. How is this possible as both of those are in different DBs.

Question:2
MMS1 is associated with Default proxy group.
MMS2 is associated with Custom proxy group.

Default proxy group is associated with a Webapplication - MyDemo. If I open a Metadata management tool in Mydemo webapplication, I could see again both the Termset Group MMS1_TG1 & MMS2_TG1.

How is this possible, The Webapplication Mydemo is just connected only with MMS1 through the proxy group default and how I could see both the termset group from two different MMS?

Question:3
As per the Microsoft article, User should be able to view his local & global (associated with the webapplication).

If I want to hide a global termset group from the enduser, what has to be done?

Question:4
Should I need to give Read permission to All authenticated Users in the MMS Administrator section?

Note: I have only one service account in my entire Farm. Application pool uses the same service account used as a Farm account.

Answer 1

Sorry, but I do not have unlimited time to answer multiple sets of questions, but I will attempt the first one:

When I have multiple Managed Metadata service applications I get the behaviour one would expect in Central Administration. In Site Settings, it seems to pick the one that is set to be the default storage location for keywords, and not necessarily the default connection for that web application. You can get a particular one by appending the GUID (e.g. /_layouts/termstoremanager.aspx&tsid=a8778dd-d98f-9d8f-...etc.). But I don't get them both in one Term Store Management Tool page as you describe, so I was unable to reproduce the problem. Are you sure you have configured this correctly?

Answer 2

Question 1:
You can associate more than one Metadata Service to a Web application, and a Metadata Service to more than one web Application. From what you're describing I would guess both Services are in the Default Proxy group, this would explain both term sets being accessable from the Term Store management page. It's also possible that if the associations are like this, you may have inadvertently created both TermSets in the same service?

Question 2:
See Question 1

Question 3:
Not sure, I'm not sure if you can hide TermSets.

Question 4:
Users don't need permission at the service level in order to access terms, or to add them. So in my opinion no, users shouldn't get read permissions at the service level.