SharePoint 2016 for IT Professionals
Yesterday morning Microsoft Ignite conference, Microsoft Senior Technical Product Manager for SharePoint Bill Baer took the stage to show off some of the exciting features and improvements coming to SharePoint 2016.
There are many huge improvements to SharePoint coming in the next release. Here are some of the highlights that we can look forward to:
SP 2016 Build : 16.0.4021.1201 (1.21 GB)
| Hardware Requirements | |||
| Memory | Processor | Disk Space | |
| Single Server | 16 or 24 GB | 64 bit | 80GB |
| Farm Server | 12 or 16 GB | 64 bit | 80GB |
Software Requirements
Operating Systems
| Windows Server 2012 R2 (.Net 4.5.2) |
| Windows Server 10 (.Net 4.5.6) |
Prerequisites
- Windows Management Framework 3.0
- Application Server Role
- Web Server (IIS) Role
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2
- Update for the .NET Framework 4 (KB2898850)
- Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client
- Microsoft Identity Extensions
- Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64)
- Windows Server AppFabric 1.1
- Windows Identity Foundation v1.1
- Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client
- Microsoft WCF Data Services
Database Servers
- 64-bit edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Service Pack 1 or Later
Auth N-Z
Authentication in SharePoint 2016 is going to begin to standardize around SAML and OAuth. Both SAML and OAuth are open standards. While both of these authentications methods are currently available in SP2013, we will see more standardization around their use in SP2016.
- Windows identity over SAML claims
- Normalizes on OAuth and JWT/SAML with WSFED
Upgrade and Migration
This is one of those things that all IT Pros need to know. SharePoint 2016 is targeting direct upgrade paths from SharePoint 2013. That upgrade will be able to be done through an in-place upgrade or a database attach. For those with a SP2010 farm, you’ll need to upgrade first to SharePoint 2013 before you can upgrade to 2016.
| Upgrade | Migration |
| Upgrade 14.5 mode site collections to 15 mode Attach SharePoint 2013 databases to SharePoint 2016 | Migrate content to SharePoint 2016 |
Roles And Services – during installation
SharePoint 2016 is taking a very different approach to roles and services. In 2013, whether your server was a “search server” or a “distributed cache server” was all determined by what services you ran on it.
In 2016, that get a new wrinkle added to it through the use of MinRoles. MinRoles apply a set of services to a server based on the role you assign it during installation.
| Web Front End | Services end user requests. Servers assigned to this role are optimized for low latency. |
| Application | Services backend jobs or the requests triggered by backend jobs.Servers assigned to this role are optimized for high throughput. |
| Specialized Load | Reserved for services that needed to be isolated from other services.3rd party applications, etc. |
| Distributed Cache | Serves distributed cache for the farm. Servers assigned to this role can load balance end user requests among the web front ends. |
| Single Server Farm | Single Server farm is still an option for SharePoint 2016, but you don’t get SQL Server Express included in the installation. If you want to create a single server farm, you’ll need to install SQL Server independently of the SharePoint installation. |
Boundaries And Limits
| Content Database Size | Site Collections per Content Database | List Threshold | Max File Size | Indexed Items |
| Content database sizing into TB’s | 100,000 site collections per content database | Increased List Threshold >5000 | MaxFile Size increases to 10GB and removed character restrictions. 2GB to 10GB | 2x increase in Search scale to 500 million items |
Fast Site Creation
One of the things that takes the longest during site collection creation is the provisioning of all of the site features. This is something that doesn’t happen if you simply clone an existing site collection, because all of the provisioning has already taken place.
In SharePoint 2106, the site collection process will rely much more on the cloning of existing site collections, which increases the speed that they can be deployed and also extends more options for setting default site collection templates and master copies.
Team Sites
- SharePoint 2016 and Office 365 distributed sites
- Follow Sites, Documents, and People across on-premises and cloud (documents are mastered in Office 365)
- Managed Metadata
- Promoted Sites
- Self-service site creation across on-premises and cloud.
Scenario Picker
- Hybrid deployment automation
- Enables scenario selection (I.e. Search, OneDrive for Business, etc.)
- Automated configuration of prerequisites and core infrastructure
- UI-based configuration
Hybrid Search
Searching SharePoint gets easier with results shown from cloud and on-premises farms, no matter where you search from.
Hybrid Profiles
A single profile experience so your followed documents are shared between your on-premises farms and the cloud.
Summary
SharePoint Server 2016 is a comprehensive solution for connected information work that preserves structured processes, compliance, IT investment optimized for the way people work through an easily-managed and integrated platform.
Reference MSDN