What’s New for IT Professionals in SharePoint 2016 by Bill Baer

Notes:

  • Prerequisites:
    • Will support Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 10
    • Windows Management Framework 3.0
    • App Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role
    • .NET Framework 4 (KB2898850) – 4.5.2 or if on Win10 4.5.6
    • SQL Server 2012 Native Client
    • Microsoft Identity Extensions
    • Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64)
    • Windows Server AppFabric 1.1 – will continue to support it
    • Windows Identity Foundation v1.1
    • Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client
    • Microsoft WCF Data Services
  • Standalone installations will no longer be supported; No more SQL Server Express
  • Upgrade from 2013 but not 2010
  • Same shared services will be available (those services that are not available in Online were backported)
  • Any backward compatible site collections will have to get brought to 2013 mode and then upgrading to 2016
  • Database attach to upgrade or Data Migrate
  • SAML auth becomes the default and first class citizen because it is cloud-ready; Windows Identity still supported; moving away from domain-based authentication
  • Supports STARTTLS encryption to improve messaging security so you can run on non-default ports
  • 3 Roles
    • User – “any request initiated by an end user is processed by that machine that is defined as a user role or a web server”; Any end user request should be managed end-to-end by a single machine
    • Robot Request – not user initiated – provisioning, timer jobs, search
    • Caching Services
  • New minRole topology
  • New grey wizard “Specify Server Role” screen
    • Special Load – custom definition; Reserved for services that needed to be isolated from other services; recommended for 3rd party services
    • Web Front End – Services end user requests. Servers assigned to this role are optimized for low latency
    • Search
    • Application (robots services role) – Services backend jobs or requests triggered by backend jobs. Servers assigned to this role are optimized for high throughput
    • Distributed Cache – Servers assigned to this role can load balance end user requests among the web front ends
    • Single Server Farm – no more SQL Server Express
  • Can still use psconfig or powershell -islocalserverrole
  • Health Analyzer Rules scans every role except Special Load; will define if server is “In Compliance” with role definitions
  • CA look-and-feel is mostly the same
  • Patches getting consolidated and will be smaller, execute faster and with zero downtime.
  • Patches will run online, not offline.
  • New Boundaries and Limits
    • Db – into the TB’s
    • Site Collections per Content Db – 100k site collections per content Db
    • List – Greater than 5000
    • MaxFile Size – increased to 10GB
    • Indexed items – 2x increase to 500 Million items
  • Moving away from file sync via soap over http by utilizing bits
  • Fast Site Creation – uses spsite copy command at the Db level bypassing feature activation
  • Traffic Management – Platform Resiliency – new endpoint running on web servers, establishes affinity between web and load balancers, intelligent routing based on variables
  • User Profile service no longer baked in – removed built-in FIMS, supports external now.
  • Project Server Db consolidated into Content Db
  • Durable Links – Url remains instact with rename or move using Resource Id’s. Enables discrete Url on visibility. Move file between site collections and link will still work. Renaming file does not change link since it’s based on resource id.
  • Advanced data analysis and reporting, real user monitoring.
    • SLAPPY
  • ODF support in document libraries
  • Classification ID’s for eDiscovery. Supports hybrid connectivity.
  • eDiscovery works across both on-prem and cloud
  • Cloud Search Service Application – unifies both indexes and search across retrieving a blended resultset instead of separate result blocks so Delve and OfficeGraph can be accessible from online but include on-prem results
  • Extranet Site publishing – publish internal sites to Internet, leverages O365 identity federation services
  • Hybrid Team sites
  • Follow doc online and it gets represented on prem
  • Hybrid configuration wizard type of functionality via a new resource center instead of Powershell mountain
  • Still a year left of development. Public preview at end of year. Hybrid search from o365 available later this year.