Microsoft has recently announced public preview of SharePoint 2016 on-premises server product. There are many enhancements and critical cloud ready features added into new release making it very compelling investment for organizations continue interested in hosting by themselves.
Here is the complied list of key features and list of annoucements released for new SharePoint 2016 server product for reference.
Key Information
- Timeline – Preview released August 2015, RC will be released in Q1 2016, GA and RTM availability in Q2 2016
- First ever cloud-down codebase based on SharePoint Online, backported capabilities for on-premises differentiators (e.g. PerformancePoint)
- Hardware Requirements – Not changed at all – 64 bit OS, 12-16GB RAM, 1xQuad Core CPU, 80GB OS Drive
- Software Requirements – Windows Server 2012 R2 with .Net Framework 4.5.2 or Windows Server 10 with .Net Framework 4.6, SQL Server 2014 SP1 and later
- Continue support for embedded version of Windows Server AppFabric 1.1 for distributed cache and social features despite it’s still supported for Windows OS anymore, windows team is still committed to support embed version in SharePoint through product lifecycle even though it’s not supported in GA Windows servers.
- No plans to deprecate any features from SharePoint 2013 for vNext including InfoPath Form Services, SharePoint Social, Full Trust Farm Solutions, and Sandbox Solutions
New/Enhanced Features
- Upgrade Scenario – Upgrade only from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016 using database-attach upgrade method, not supported direct upgrade from SharePoint 2010 or earlier
- Auth Protocol Support – SAML as first class citizen as Authentication protocol, both NTLM and Kerbros Windows Identity will continue be supported
- SMTP Encryption Support – SMTP can use non-default ports and supports sending emails to SMTP servers using STARTTLS connection encryption
- New MinRole topology – designed based on SPO learning and SP2013 streamlined topology, option to choose during installation wizard to optimize user services, robot services, and caching services – Front-End, Application, Distributed Cache, Search, and Specialized Load, support for specialized load for existing SharePoint installation patterns, support for SharePoint health analyzer to enforce min-role topology – scans all role except special load, new cmdlets would be released to support automation of these services configurations, MinRole will change search topology, core limitation of SpecialLoad is that it is excluded from compliance and reporting capabilities
- Simplified Patch Management – Zero-downtime patching, not sure what this really means yet except it will have smaller update footprint with reduced number of MSI and MSP, I personally think it will be still require downtime but reduced to minimal with smaller patches
- Improved Boundaries – Content DBs can be in TB’s (no specific figure released), List Thresold >5000 (no specific figure released), Max FileSize is increased from 2 GB to 10 GB (Document BLOBs still be stored in the content database and leverage Shredded Storage feature introduced in SharePoint 2013), and 2x increase in Search Scale with 500 million items
- Improved files upload/download performance – BITS protocol support to upstream and downstream document response replacing existing FSS over HTTP and Cobalt to reduce IO between servers and bandwidth to the end user, BITS will optimize upload and download chunking, uploads will use BITS instead of Cobalt, byte-range HTTP GETs for download, and BITS specific block-based upload protocol for uploading files
- User Profile Sync Service Update – Support for only unidirectional AD Sync for read-only, removed built-in FIM based User Profile Sync service, still supports external FIM service including Microsoft Identity Manager to support both read-write scenarios
DocID based Durable Links, it remains same even with document move - New Cloud Search Service Application – Support for crawling both SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2010 on-premises environment and pushing it out to the Office 365 as cloud index to surface on-premises data in SharePoint online Search and Delve.
- Durable Links – Files shared via durable links will reference a site ID and document ID to avoid broken links if files are renamed or moved, requires a WOPI binding to Office Web Apps 2013 or probably Office Online Server
Removed/Deprecated Features
- There will be no SharePoint Foundation 2016
- There will be no SharePoint Designer 2016, SPD 2013 along with InfoPath Designer 2013 will work with SharePoint 2016
- InfoPath Form Services 2010 without any features added to SharePoint 2016 server product, InfoPath 2013 will continue to be supported (End of life is April 2023)
- SharePoint Server 2016 no longer support the standalone install option which installs SQL Express, SQL must be installed and running prior to installation even for single server farm scenario
- As mentioned above, SharePoint Server 2016 no longer uses FIM as the synchronization client for profile synchronization
- There will be no Excel Calculation services in SharePoint server product, Excel Services functionality is now part of Excel Online in Office Online Server Preview
- The Tags and Notes feature is deprecated in SharePoint Server 2016 and SharePoint Online. Users can no longer create new tags and notes or access existing ones. However, an administrator can archive all existing tags and notes by using the Export-SPTagsAndNotesData cmdlet.
References
- How SharePoint 2016 Durable Links work? – http://thesharepointfarm.com/2015/08/sharepoint-2016-durable-links/
Enjoy!!!
Filed under: SharePoint 2016
