What exactly is the “Data Sharing service” in Windows Server 2016

windows-server-2016

Windows Server 2016 (and Windows 10) contain the mysterious "Data Sharing service", which

What is it? What will break when it is disabled? Can event log messages about it crashing be safely ignored?

Best Answer

Without directly answering the "what is it" question (since I don't personally know), there was a blog post about fixing the crashes at https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcorejp/2016/12/22/collision-between-user-access-logging-service-and-data-sharing-service/ with translation notes at http://www.neighborgeek.net/2017/05/server-2016-data-sharing-service.html that basically comes down to running this service and another service in isolated service processes:

sc config ualsvc type=own
sc config dssvc type=own