Showing posts with label SharePoint 2016. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SharePoint 2016. Show all posts

Sunday 1 November 2015

SharePoint 2016 Preview - Min Role

Overview:  SharePoint 2016 Min Roles before the public betas.  Things are going to change and this only obviously applies to SP2016 Preview on-prem.

"Min Role is basically a topology assistance service"

Installation:  The services are pretty similar to SP2013 and most of the PowerShell from AutoSPInstaller will work with SP2016.  Excel services has been removed.  The difference in the UI install is the ability to have server install min roles for a multi-server.  Min roles are collections of services installed on a machine.  I'd lean towards installing full/custom roles and then converting the specific servers to the specific min roles.

Using the min roles, SharePoint can verify the roles are in compliance and can be used to managed the farm.  In effect you'd need all 4 roles to have all the services on a SharePoint farm and you shall need 2 instances of each for high availability.  So excluding SQL you shall need 8 VM's for a High Availability (HA) farm.  If you install extra services on a min role server, SharePoint timer job shall stop the service on a daily basis (not proven).

There are 4 server roles:
  1. Web Front end,
  2. Distributed Cache (also has a witness/quorum),
  3. Application,
  4. Search
Servers can be changed from Custom to specific min roles or the other way around. 

Note:  FULL High Availaibility
Min 2 times each role (extra quorum for dist cache roles) plus 2 more for Search HA, so 11 for core SP.  Plus SQL AOAG 3 servers, plus WCA/OOS 2 + SP workflow + K2/AvePoint + SSIS


Sunday 18 October 2015

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

Thursday 7 May 2015

SharePoint 2016 Points from the Ignite Conference

6 May 2015


SharePoint 2016 new features (from the Ignite conference 06 May 2015)
http://www.learningsharepoint.com/2015/05/07/sharepoint-2016-new-features-and-enhancements/

 
Notes:
  1. Office Graph and Delve are important in SP2016.
  2. MS are releasing a search add-on for SP2013 later in 2016, this will be part of SP2016 (vNext). The add-on stores the index on o365. allows seemless indexing of on-prem and O365 using AD to AAD sync.

Download all the Ignite Videos and Slides:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/all-the-Ignite-Videos-and-b952f5ac