Sunday, October 6, 2019

New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016

SharePoint 2016 Overview shows the following Hardware and Software Requirement:
SharePoint 2016 Minimal Hardware Requirement
Processer: 4 cores 64 Bit Processer
RAM: 12GB to 16GB
Hard Disk: 80GB
SharePoint 2016 Minimal Software Requirement:
OS: Windows Server 2016/Windows Server 2016 R2
Framework: .net Framework 4.6/4.5.2
Database: SQL Server 2014/SQL Server 2016
Here is the some of the high lights about new features
Central Administration is no longer provisioned on all servers by default

MinRole farm topology

Document Library accessibility

Encrypted connections

Fast Site Collection Creation

File names - expanded support for special characters

Hybrid in SharePoint Server 2016 
          Hybrid sites
          Hybrid OneDrive for Business
          Cloud hybrid search

Identify and search for sensitive content in both SharePoint Server 2016 and OneDrive documents

Image and video previews

Large file support

Mobile experience

Project Server 2016

SharePoint Search Service application

Simplified SSL configuration for Central Administration site

Use SMTP ports other than the default (25)
Central Administration is no longer provisioned on all servers by default
SharePoint Server 2016 Central Administration is now provisioned on the first server in a farm by default when using the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. Central Administration is not provisioned on additional servers in a farm by default.
You can provision or unprovision Central Administration on individual servers in a farm, no matter what the server role is by using the following methods:
·       The Services on Server page on Central Administration > System Settings
·       Microsoft PowerShell cmdlets:
·       The psconfig.exe -cmd adminvs operation
·       The SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard
 Note
The state of Central Administration does not affect whether a server is considered compliant with MinRole. The MinRole health rule will not attempt to provision or unprovision Central Administration.

MinRole farm topology
The role of a server is specified when you create a new farm or join a server to an existing farm. SharePoint automatically configures the services on each server based on the server role, optimizing the performance of the farm based on that topology. There are eight predefined server roles that are available, as shown in the following table.
Server 
                                                                                  Description
Front End
Service applications, services, and components that serve user requests belong on front-end web servers. These servers are optimized for low latency.
Application
Service applications, services, and components that serve back-end requests, such as background jobs or search crawl requests, belong on Application servers. These servers are optimized for high throughput.
Distributed Cache
Service applications, services, and components that are required for a distributed cache belong on Distributed Cache servers.
Search
Service applications, services, and components that are required for search belong on Search servers.
Custom
Custom service applications, services, and components that do not integrate with MinRole belong on Custom servers. The farm administrator has full control over which service instances can run on servers assigned to the Custom role. MinRole does not control which service instances are provisioned on this role.
Single-Server Farm
Service applications, services, and components required for a single-machine farm belong on a Single-Server Farm. A Single-Server Farm is meant for development, testing, and very limited production use. A SharePoint farm with the Single-Server Farm role cannot have more than one SharePoint server in the farm.
Important:
The Standalone Install mode is no longer available in SharePoint Server 2016. The Single-Server Farm role replaces the Standalone Install mode available in previous SharePoint Server releases. Unlike Standalone Install, the SharePoint administrator must separately install and prepare Microsoft SQL Server for SharePoint. The SharePoint administrator must also configure the SharePoint farm services and web applications, either manually or by running the Farm Configuration Wizard.
Front-end with Distributed Cache
Shared role that combines the Front-end and Distributed Cache roles on the same server.
Note:
This shared role was introduced in the November Public Update for SharePoint Server 2016 (Feature Pack 1).
Application with Search
Shared role that combines the Application and Search roles on the same server.
Note:
This shared role was introduced in the November Public Update for SharePoint Server 2016 (Feature Pack 1).
Document Library accessibility
The following features are now available for working in SharePoint Server 2016 document libraries:
·       Landmarks to a page make it easier to navigate, and there are alt text improvements for all major navigation links.
·       Keyboard shortcuts are provided for the following document tasks:
o   Alt + N - N ew
o   Alt + E - E dit
o   Alt + U - U pload
o   Alt + M - M anage
o   Alt + S - S hare
o   Alt + Y - S y nchronization
·       Focus improvements, such as keeping focus on prior elements and focus trapping.
·       Announcements for upload progress.
·       Announcements for file name and file types when browsing folder and file lists.
·       Improved callout reading.
·       Fixed use of color issues for views switcher.
·       Updates to the Help documentation.
Encrypted connections
When you set up an SSL binding in Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager to host your web application, SharePoint uses TLS 1.2 connection encryption if your client application supports it. SharePoint also supports TLS 1.2 connection encryption when connecting to other systems, for example when crawling websites.
 Note
A security vulnerability was identified in the SSL 3.0 protocol that can allow an attacker to decrypt data. For enhanced security, some SharePoint features now disable SSL 3.0 connection encryption by default, as well as certain encryption algorithms (for example RC4) with known weaknesses. SharePoint disables SSL 3.0 connection encryption by default for some, but not all features. To ensure that SSL 3.0 is disabled for all features, you should disable it in Windows by editing the Windows Registry. For more information, see the "Disable SSL 3.0 in Windows For Server Software", and "For Client Software", workarounds in Microsoft Security Advisory 3009008.

Fast Site Collection Creation
This new feature provides templates that work at same level as SQL Server, which reduces the round trips required between the SharePoint and SQL servers. Use the SPSiteMaster Microsoft PowerShell cmdlets to create sites and site collections quickly.

File names - expanded support for special characters
SharePoint has historically blocked file names that included the &~{, and } characters, file names that contained a GUID, file names with leading dots, and file names longer than 128 characters. These restrictions are removed in SharePoint Server 2016 and are now available to use.
 Important
Restricted characters such as % and # are still not allowed in file names. Page file names, such as wiki pages, may not contain the following characters: " # % * : < > ? \ / | nor can they begin with a leading dot (period) character.

Hybrid in SharePoint Server 2016
In SharePoint Server 2016, new hybrid features are available to enable hybrid solutions.
Hybrid sites
Hybrid sites features allows your users to have an integrated experience while using SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online sites:
·       Users can follow SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online sites, and see them consolidated in a single list.
·       Users have a single profile in Office 365, where all of their profile information is stored.
For more information, see SharePoint hybrid sites and search.
Hybrid OneDrive for Business
Hybrid sites features are used in concert with Hybrid OneDrive for Business (introduced in SharePoint Server 2013 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)):
·       Users can sync files with Office 365 and share them with others.
·       Users can access their files directly through Office 365 from any device.
Cloud hybrid search
Cloud hybrid search is a new hybrid search solution alternative. With cloud hybrid search:
·       You index all of your crawled content, including on-premises content, to your search index in Office 365. You can set up the crawler in SharePoint Server 2016 to crawl the same content sources and use the same search connectors in Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2010, and SharePoint Server 2013.
·       When users query your search index in Office 365, they get unified search results from both on-premises and Office 365 content.
For more information about cloud hybrid search, see the public Microsoft cloud hybrid search program on Microsoft Office connection.
For more information, see Plan for hybrid OneDrive for Business.
For more information about the hybrid solutions available today, please visit the SharePoint Hybrid Solutions Center.

Identify and search for sensitive content in both SharePoint Server 2016 and OneDrive documents
With this new capability, you can:
·       Search for sensitive content across SharePoint Server 2016, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.
·       Leverage 51 built-in sensitive information types (credit cards, passport numbers, Social Security numbers, and more).
·       Use DLP Queries from the eDiscovery site collection to discover sensitive content relating to common industry regulations from the SharePoint eDiscovery Center, identify offending documents, and export a report.
·       Turn on DLP Policies from the Compliance Policy Center site collection to notify end users and administrators when documents with sensitive information are stored in SharePoint and automatically protect the documents from improper sharing.
Information on configuring and using this feature is documented in SharePoint Online and Office 365. For more information, see:
Image and video previews
In SharePoint Server 2016 when you post images and videos to a document library, you can see a preview by hovering the mouse over the image or video, or by clicking on them.

Large file support
Previous versions of SharePoint did not support uploading or downloading files larger than 2,047 MB. SharePoint Server 2016 now allows you to upload or download larger files. You can configure the desired maximum file-size limit on a per-web application basis in your SharePoint farm.
Mobile experience
When you use a mobile device to access the home page for a SharePoint Server 2016 team site, you can tap tiles or links on the screen to navigate the site. You can also switch from the mobile view to PC view, which displays site pages as they are seen on a client computer. This view is also touch enabled.

Project Server 2016
Project Server 2016 for SharePoint Server 2016 has many new capabilities and features, including:
·       Resource Engagements: Now project managers can request needed resources from resource managers to complete their projects. Also, resource managers can use the new heat map functionality to see where resources are spending their time.
·       Multiple Timelines: Project and Portfolio managers can now create richer timelines that display multiple timelines in a single view.
·       Simpler administration: Project Server now has multi-tenant storage capabilities and has combined data storage with SharePoint. This greatly reduces IT overhead by eliminating the dedicated Project Server database and improves backup and restore capabilities.
·       Cloud grade performance and scale: Many performance and scalability improvements that have been added to Project Online have also been added to Project Server 2016.

SharePoint Search Service application

Simplified SSL configuration for Central Administration site
We've simplified the process for configuring Central Administration to use SSL bindings. The following command parameters are now available to use:
·       New-SPCentralAdministration -Port <number> -SecureSocketsLayer
·       Set-SPCentralAdministration -Port <number> -SecureSocketsLayer
·       Psconfig.exe -cmd adminvs -port <number> -ssl
You must assign a server certificate to the Central Administration IIS web site by using the IIS administration tools. The Central Administration web application won't be accessible until you do this.
If you specify port 443, it will automatically create an SSL binding instead of an HTTP binding even if you don't include the SecureSocketsLayer or SSL parameters.
The Central Administration public AAM URL will be automatically updated to use the appropriate protocol scheme, server name, and port number.

Use SMTP ports other than the default (25)
To configure SharePoint to use a non-default SMTP port open SharePoint Central Administration, browse to System Settings > Configure outgoing email settings, and set the SMTP server port to the port number of your SMTP server. To configure SharePoint to use a non-default SMTP port in PowerShell, use the Set-SPWebApplication cmdlet with the SMTPServerPort parameter. For example:




SharePoint 2016 Upgrade Scenarios
  • Direct Upgrade from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016 not possible
  • Support’s Database attach upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016
  • Support’s only Upgrade from SharePoint 2013 Mode (15 hive) to SharePoint 2016
  • Not support’s upgrade from SharePoint 2010 Mode (14 hive) to SharePoint 2016