{"id":901,"date":"2015-05-06T17:54:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T17:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myfatblog.co.uk\/?p=901"},"modified":"2015-05-06T18:03:59","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T18:03:59","slug":"sharepoint-2016first-impressions-from-ignite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.myfatblog.co.uk\/index.php\/2015\/05\/sharepoint-2016first-impressions-from-ignite\/","title":{"rendered":"SharePoint 2016 – First impressions from Ignite"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unfortunately I couldn\u2019t get over to Ignite to get hands on with the latest build of vNext SharePoint, but that didn\u2019t stop me watching as Bill Baer introduced us to the new addition to the SharePoint family, named (somewhat predictably) SharePoint 2016.<\/p>\n

Bill started by pointing out the development history and the symbiotic relationship between the original on-premises versions of SharePoint and the latter cloud versions as they appeared. During the early stages of it\u2019s life, the on-prem versions of SharePoint led the development of capabilities of the cloud version. It hasn\u2019t been until SharePoint 2013 and the increase in scale of Office 365 that this relationship has switched and the development of the on-premises version of SharePoint is now being firmly led by the developments in Office 365.<\/p>\n

One of the key drivers for some of the improvements that we\u2019re seeing, is that Microsoft are now responsible for deploying and maintaining the largest SharePoint implementation in the world, and that experience has taught them a lot.<\/p>\n

SharePoint 2016 Server edition<\/h2>\n

The current code base for SharePoint 2016, started life as a point in time snapshot of SharePoint Online in Office 365. This has then been built on and those workloads that don\u2019t exist in the cloud have been back-ported into the new code base for delivery. E.g. PerformancePoint.<\/p>\n

From an infrastructure standpoint, the initial hardware requirements look very similar to SharePoint 2013 with farm servers requiring between 12-16Gb of memory and a 4 core CPU. Installation will be available on Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 10 and will work with 64bit SQL 2014 SP1 or SQL vNext.<\/p>\n

There is NO support anymore for standalone mode with the built in SQL database, every install must have a full version of SQL behind it. One thing that wasn\u2019t clear is if SQL express is supported if installed as a separate install.<\/p>\n

Another call out is support for App Fabric 1.1, this is still a requirement for SharePoint and although support for the product is being removed from Windows, it WILL still be supported for the life of SharePoint 2016.<\/p>\n

Upgrade Paths<\/h2>\n

Upgrade for SharePoint 2016 follows the same Database migration process that SharePoint 2013 had, although the product team did briefly look at the possibility of N-2 upgrades that idea was dropped. Therefore you will need to copy your content databases across and database attach them.<\/p>\n

If you have any site collections running in SP2010 mode still, the Must be upgraded to the full 2013 experience before you can upgrade.<\/p>\n

From a migration standpoint, there\u2019s been great advances in the codebase to support migrations and a new Data migration API has been made available. In addition there will be the usual support from third parties who will also be making use of the new APIs.<\/p>\n

Identity<\/h2>\n

SAML becomes a first class citizen in the SharePoint world as part of the big push to the cloud model although Windows Identity is still supported. Moving away from domain based authentication to cloud based authentication is seen as the preferred route to take.<\/p>\n

Performance and Reliability<\/h2>\n

One of the biggest changes so far is the change to SharePoint Roles. whilst they were available in SharePoint 2013, the role of the server was very much defined by the services that had been started on that server. In SharePoint 2016, these roles are now enforced in code and very much a part of the architecture, with new health analyser rules to help identify compliance failures.<\/p>\n

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During the install through the GUI, this role can be selected, although there is support for PoSH\/Command line installs with the new \u2013IsServerRole switch.<\/p>\n

The roles are tuned accordingly, with the Web Front End focussing on reducing transaction latency and the search\/application roles being optimised for throughput.<\/p>\n

Patching<\/h2>\n

For me, this is one of the greatest improvements that could possibly have been made, We now have ZERO downtime patching.<\/p>\n

This has been achieved by reducing the number of MSI and MSP packages in each update, thus reducing the chance of regression issues, the overall footprint and time to deploy. The second part is the change to Build2Build upgrades now being done ONLINE! These can be done during the day transparently to the user.<\/p>\n

Boundaries and Limits<\/h2>\n

None of these are set in stone yet, but Bill highlighted some of the changes coming:-<\/p>\n