SharePoint 2016 Preview (Public Beta 1) on-prem Notes

Disclaimer:  This notes I made from workshops, what I have heard and the Unity Conference in Amsterdam 12-14 Oct 2015.  A lot of this information is from the workshop with Neil Hodgkinson and Spencer Harare), this is my takeaway summary.

Notes for Sp2016:

• Same HW req as 2013.  Farm servers min still Mem 12-16 CPU x64 1x4 Disk, Disk 80GB
• Pre-reqs: Win 2012 R2, Win Mgmt Framework 3.0 gives us DSC, .NET 4.5.2 ..., DSC can be used to pre-bake the VM image.
• Same DB rules as recommended by MS, loosing dbs from 2013;  No new DBs, need SQL 2012 or 2014 (except project Server DB which is not part of SP).
• Need Win 2012 standard or higher, not web edition, also dev can support windows 10
• Still no support for VMWare dynamic memory
• End-point encryption for SMTP

 - Upgrades and Patching

• No Foundation edition, SP2013 found to Sp2016 Server
• Path SP2013 > SP2016
• SC must be in 15 mode to upgrade
• Service Apps need to go SP2010 > SP2013 > SP2016
• SP2010 to SP2016 need to go to 2013 RTM baseline
• Changed patching, smaller packages and fewer restarts
• PSConfig not locking farm, can run multiple psconfigs and lower/zero down time patching (with HA farms)

 - Roles & Services

• Consider moving low impact services onto the traditional WFE role, keep the long running/batch processing (Crawl, search, MTS,  et al) on the app servers.
• WFE (Access services, SSS, Subscription Services, UPS)
• Distributed Cache has a quorum so need 3 not 2 for NA.
• Health Analyser rule for min role enforcement:  Puts min role in the correct state.
• Min Role does not manage the search topology
• Watch, switching min roles as index would be lost unless it is replicates (2 instances of each index)
• Services in Farm overrides the starting of services in the Min Roles,  so can never start "Request Management" in the "Services in Farm" but still use "Distributed Cache" min role.
• Can always switch min roles "Convert server role" or create custom roles (watch as needs multiple instances to keep running and index could disappear).

 - Key Thresholds for 2016:

• CDB sizing
• 100K SC per CDB
• Max file size 10GB
• Search index up to 50 million items

  - User Profile Sync:

• UPS Sync (FIM) is not Microsoft Identitiy Management (MIM)
• 2 modes: Active Directory Import (light weight, not useful for most large enterprise clients, e.g. Can't import pics or use BCS) or MIM 2016
• AD Import: faster than 2013, can only use AD, no profile picture. 
• MIM 2016 was FIM - Standalone product, only using the sync engine part for SharePoint (free if only use this service, does need Win 2012 and SQL Server licence)
• Using MIM management agent map AD properties to SP user Profile properties
• Syncing is driven by MIM not by SharePoint (UPS sync)

- What's New:

• Post to yammer from SP2016 doc library
• Improved integration
• Image and Video Preview (changed)
• Doc Lib accessibility (improved keyboard short cuts, VI user experience improved)
• SC creation faster on SP Site template using SPSite.Copy
• Project Server is part of the SP binaries/install, project server using it's own project db and adds 4/5 tables to the content database.  Project Server affects 3 DB (Project db, content db and config db)
• Save and share email attachments in SP2016

- Release Dates

• Preview = Beta 1 Aug 2015
• Beta 2 RC  = +- Nov/Dec 2015
• RTM Q1/Q2 2016