Following Sites from another SharePoint farm in the same AD domain

Question

I have two SharePoint Enterprise farms in the same domain. Farm 1 is hosting the intranet and the User Profile Service Application and Farm 2 is hosting all the "project sites".

They both are using Claims Based authentication. Users want to be able to follow these projects sites, but their My Site and user profile is on Farm 1 and whenever they try to follow a project site they get this:

InternalError : Could not follow the item .

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

looks like you have to configure crossfarm service

• You have to build the trust between both farm.
• the farm with UPA and Mysite will become publishing farm and Project sites farm will be consuming.
• You will published the UPA and consume it in 2nd farm.
• Then associate the UPA proxy with project sites web app.
• Now you can use all social feature.

Follow this technet guide and execute all steps. Share service applications across farms in SharePoint 2013

Answer 2

It will fail according to SharePoint internal mechanism. As of December 2017 CU, they still treat my site as it is on local farm using SPSite to open it! (http://www.codeovereasy.com/2016/05/setmyprofilepicture-fails-on-cross-farm-mysites-host/)

The only way to solve this problem is creating replicate UPA, which is quite overkill! (http://steve.thelineberrys.com/following-sites-across-farms-with-sharepoint-2013-mysites/) Just follow the step of cross farm Service Application (if you've done that) and create local UPA. Then, setup UPRE as described (select my site url, and language stuff in case you use search service).

PS. I've found somewhere in MS document stating that you should disable "Follow" on the consumer farm. It may imply that this is unsupported scenario.

I've found a similar issue. I get to the point that the there is a CSOM call from consumer farm to publishing farm. I face with the following message on ULS.

GetUserInfoFromMembershipProvider: Returning result. WebApp: '{WebApp_GUID}', LoginName: '{ClaimLoginString}', bIsRole: 'False', UserFound: 'True', UserKey: '{ClaimSID}'.

Failed to add the user to the database hr=0x80070050

Request does not have SPBasePermissions.UseRemoteAPIs permission. Need to check it when each API is accessed

serviceHost_RequestExecuting

The request does not have required permission to access SP.UserProfiles.FollowedContent..ctor

Exception occured in scope Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.FollowedContent.ctor. Exception=System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Attempted to perform an unauthorized operation.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ServerStub.CheckRequiredResourceRight(ProxyContext proxyContext, String memberName, ResourceRight right)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ServerStub.CheckBlockedMethod(String methodName, ProxyContext proxyContext)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.FollowedContentServerStub.InvokeConstructor(XmlNodeList xmlargs, ProxyContext proxyContext)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ServerStub.InvokeConstructorWithMonitoredScope(XmlNodeList args, ProxyContext proxyContext)

I've app management and subscription settings in place. The sts is setup to allow OAuthHttp.