SharePoint 2016

SharePoint 2016 IT Preview First Hand Knowledge

1 - Minimum Hardware & Software Requirements for On-Premises Deployments

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Database and SharePoint Servers: 64 bits, 4 Cores with 12-16GB RAM
                                                            System Drive : 80GB
                                                            Other Drive(s) : 100GB

Minimum Software Requirements

• Operating System: Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server Technical Preview
• .NET Framework: .NET 4.5.2 Framework for Windows Server 2012 R2
                                   .NET 4.6 Framework for Windows Server Technical Preview
• Database Server:    SQL Server 2014
• Pre-requisites:        Similar as SP 2013 and all prerequisites can be installed manually or by                                      SharePoint 2016 prerequisite installer itself if not installed earlier.                                                Following are the required prerequisites
• Application Server or Web Server (IIS) Role 
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client
• Microsoft ODBC Driver 11 for SQL Server
• Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64)
• Windows Server AppFabric 1.1
• CU Package 1 for Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server (KB2671763)
• Microsoft Identity Extensions
• Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client
• Microsoft WCF Data Services 5.0
• Update for Microsoft .NET Frameworj to disable RC4 in Transport Layer Security (KB2898850)
• Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio 2013

2 - SharePoint Server Roles

SP 2016 IT Preview introduced MinRole feature so in SharePoint 2016 IT Preview can specify the SharePoint Server Role at the time of creating a new farm topology or at the time of joining an existing farm. All the required services will installed and configured automatically by SharePoint as per defined server role in an optimized way.

SharePoint 2016 IT Preview currently 5 types of server roles for an enterprise topology

• Front End / Web Front End - For Web Front End related components
• Application - For Background Services and Service Applications
• Distributed Cache - For Distributed Caching
• Search - Search Components, Services and Service Application
• Custom - For all custom services that can't integrate in MinRole

Also MinRole also introduced a new parameter for PSConfig Command named LocalServerRole to specify the role at the time of SharePoint Configuration. The available values for this new parameter are

• WebFrontEnd
• Application
• DistributedCache
• Search
• SpecialLoad
• SingleServerFarm

3 - PSConfig Command Example

PSConfig.exe -cmd configdb  -create –server Name of Database Server –database Name of SharePoint 2016 Configuration Database –user SPFarm Service Account –password SPFarm Service Account Password –passphrase SharePoint 2016 Farm Passphrase                                      –admincontentdatabase Central Admin Database Name -localserverrole WebFrontEnd


There is also a user-interface option available for this configuration using PSConfigUI.exe

4 - Upgrade and Migration

SharePoint 2016 supports Database-Attach upgrade method from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016. The steps for the Database-Attach upgrade method are

• Build and Configure SharePoint 2016 Farm
• Copy all the content and service applications databases
• Create Web Applications and Site Collections
• Attach previous copied databases with the new web applications

and you upgraded them to SharePoint 2016.

Note:
More knowledge-base articles for SharePoint 2016 are coming. Stay tuned.

Happy SharePointing