Coming up on today's show we'll introduce SharePoint Server 2016 with a first look
for IT Pros from hybrid configuration responsive design to performance
enhancements informed by running SharePoint at hyper scale and we'll look at
new zero downtime updating to the servicing model
Microsoft Office
Office Mechanics
I'm joined today by Bill Baer welcome. Thanks it's great to be here. So SharePoint Online has had a lot of attention
lately and a lot of focus but what does that mean from an on-premises standpoint for
SharePoint Server 2016? You know when you think about it
Office 365 and our experience running SharePoint at scale as SharePoint
Online is really what's let's let us to deliver SharePoint Server 2016. By that what
we're looking at is our first ever converged codebase between on-premises
and cloud. There's some exciting new things around
integration of cloud services with on premises but we really do a lot of work
in terms of actually collecting your feedback through UserVoice to get all of
these things built in the SharePoint, right? Indeed and as you can see here on the
screen we're actually focusing on a majority of the items that our customers have asked
us to work. UserVoice is an important facility for us to understand
how our customers are leveraging SharePoint and what capabilities they
need. So from the different perspectives that we see what are we looking for an
end-user, IT pro developer perspective? Starting with end users, we really want
to deliver a familiar experience that's intuitive and built around the way that
they work and for our IT professionals it's about speed reliability and scale and
secondly hybrid experiences that are compelling meaning experiences that
involve Delve or the Office Graph your experiences that bring data loss
prevention capabilities from office 365 back to SharePoint Server 2016 on
premises and then lastly for developers it's really built behind a building once
deploy twice mantra. Meaning you should be able to build one application and
deploy both online and on premises. Really great stuff coming so when we start with
end-users and really what the changes there will be. Sure let's go ahead have a
look at one of these key changes that we're making, its really around
responsive design and a touch mobile experience. So as you can see here we're
within a Fabrikam site collection. I can quickly browse my applications and
subsites. So for example I can navigate into documents and from my document
library I can actually see documents that have been uploaded, I can share
those documents, I can create new files and I can create new folders so in this
case we can navigate into Fabrikam documents as you can see here I have a
couple of PowerPoint presentations in addition to some brand and
typography I can click on that presentation itself, see whose modified
it and if I cared to do so I can also open up the document and begin to work
with it from my mobile device. I can also quickly navigate to OneDrive or I can
navigate between sites that I'm a member of and lastly if I wanted to I could switch
to a full PC screen is well as I move between devices. Really great things
these look almost like their native apps for really responsive to that form
factor. Beyond what we're doing for end-users though, I know we have a lot of great
things coming for IT Pros So why don't you show us what's coming there. Indeed let's go ahead
and take a look at one of the early investments we're making around
deployment. ok. It's a concept that we call MinRoll so let's go ahead we'll
jump into a demo real quick. Basically what we've been able to do is take the
best practices that we've long documented and actually bake those into
code. So for example we have a new role based configuration wizard I'm going to go ahead
and step through this very quickly. So you can see here on the screen we're
navigating a typical Windows Server moving across you can see your general
SharePoint items, you know you can see our new products and configuration
wizard. So this looks very much as it did in SharePoint 2013 or in SharePoint
Server 2007. Some of the new changes you'll see in a moment, so for example I
can go ahead and I can create a new server farm environment, I can specify my
configuration database settings as typical or customary with prior versions
of SharePoint
I'll then enter the database access account information into my form, from there we'll
go ahead and establish our farm pass phrase that protects an authorized
servers from joining a server farm environment. So that's just a unique
layer of protection that we actually added in prior versions of SharePoint
but the key change your gonna see here is this new role based configuration
wizard. We're now asking you to specify a server role. This is the area that
used to be guidance that we baked into code. So for example a front-end role is
optimized for fast performance an application server role is actually
optimized for high throughput. As we move deeper we can look at our distributed
cache roll and that was optimized for high throughput as well
moving down we also have a new role called search and this one defines what
your search service should look like and then we also have what we call a
specialized role that you can see here on the screen and that's effectively
those roles or you're looking for service application isolation
and then lastly I can configure a single server farm and that's kind of what used
to be our standalone server farm. So in this case I'm gonna go ahead and select
a web frontend and we're gonna provision it, we're going to specify as typical
with prior versions of SharePoint our port number for central
administration from there were actually can configure our security settings and then
we're going to go ahead and let the products and configuration wizard run. So
now it's performing all of those typical actions that you used to see as a
component of installing SharePoint, provisioning service applications,
creating the configuration database, securing resources.
The difference is we're optimizing it or all of code paths have been optimized this time
for that particular front end roll. This front end roll that were configuring
right now has been optimized to respond to an end users request end to end. Once
we're done configuring it'll programmatically open up central
administration and we can see some of the new compliance capabilities that
we've actually built around this. So what you can see once we arrived at central
administration is that we can actually determine whether or not a server is
within compliance or outside of compliance. That meaning perhaps a
service application was inadvertently added to a front-end web server that
wasn't designed for that particular role. Which means those code paths are no
longer optimized for that particular role. So we're just about done
configuring SharePoint at this point in time. As soon as we finalize the
configuration will go ahead and jump into central administration take a look
at some of these compliance reporting concepts. So here we go we're just go
ahead and click Finish. After we click finish as typical for SharePoint we're
gonna open up central administration so we're gonna wait for that to load. It's going to
ask me to participate in the customer improvement program we'll go ahead and
just say yes i'm willing to participate. We'll click OK.
We're not gonna run the farm configuration wizard today. we're just
gonna dive right into the reporting so we'll configure everything ourselves by
clicking Cancel. Once were within the screens here we're gonna go ahead and
choose managed services in this server farm. So go ahead and click on that. Once
were inside of that, as you can see here we have our new compliance reporting. So
as you can see we have a new server with the role of front end and it's actually
within compliance and it has a number of services running. Really good so we've
got a lot of new flexibility in terms of
being able to use SharePoint on various hardware shapes, sizes, capabilities if you've got a
lot of disk or a lot of CPU or a lot of processor power required based on the
different roles that you have. Beyond just the setup and deployment aspect of
SharePoint we've done a lot in terms of servicing as well right? I think one of the big
pain points has always been around updating SharePoint either incurring
downtime or perhaps it was just due two regressions. One of the things that we're
doing to resolve those issues is if you think about a SharePoint patch today
it's comprised of a number of different MSIs and MSPs, effectively 37 of those
and then each additional language pack introduces another 18 MSIs and MSPs
so in theory you could end up with hundreds of patches and this is a
challenge that we referred to as entropy or the number of different ways the
system can be arranged. We test across all of the patches holistically however
when it arrives at our customer, perhaps they only have a subset of services that
we've tested across. So that's kind of the atrophy issue to which a patch
doesn't apply to their environment so wastes away there's just a number of
variables that were under unable to test so that leads to a lot of the quality
issues he may see today as a result of SharePoint patching
We're actually reducing the scope of those patches down to one MSI and one MSP in
addition to one additional patch per language pack so they become
substantially smaller a much smaller footprint which reduces atrophy which
reduces entropy and at the same time we're incorporating a new technology we
call zero downtime patching. Effectively we've re-instrumented all of our
upgraders to run online. So we no longer need to take services online in order to
rev assemblies or update libraries those are all online operations now so it's a
really great improvement for our customers and in respect to patching
Beyond just what we're seeing from and IT Pro that set up the matter of perspective
I know there's a lot of great developer work that's really, again accruing some
of the Office 365 innovation back on to on premises. Indeed extensibility has
been one of the key items as related to SharePoint in terms of its success and
in terms of why customers love it because you can do so many things around
SharePoint through customization. Let's go ahead and take a look at one of the
examples that were actually working on for our developers. So in this case we're
actually doing is we're incorporating the app launcher into our on-premises
installations as well. So SharePoint Server 2016 will feature an app launcher
that you may be familiar with from Office 365. So as you can see here we're
back at our Fabrikam site that we looked at the Mobile demo, I can click on
the app launcher as you can see we have our news feed OneDrive and site. The
app launcher itself is extensible in two different ways; one power users can
actually pin apps to the app launcher that they frequently use and developers
can actually build applications and then deliver them through an app launcher
experience as a component of SharePoint Server 2016 and then coming back to that
consistent codebase, some of the other things that we're doing is we're
bringing Office 365 API back to SharePoint Server 2016 on premises which
means developers can now extend applications across on premises and
Office 365, they can create applications using common consent, subscription
apps and a number of different capabilities that they're familiar with
in the cloud.
Lots of great things coming end users, IT pros, developers, a lot of that
cloud work in all of things we've been learning running the service at hyper
scale really coming in to on premises SharePoint but where do I get started
how to actually start testing this out? I think it's great, we want all of our customers
to experience SharePoint 2016 just because it is representative of the way
that we operate SharePoint at hyper scale. So the best way to get started
today is definitely download the preview and then continue to provide us your
feedback on UserVoice because it's an important asset for us to understand the
capabilities you're looking for the customer. And of course we're just
scratching the surface today so all of this news and all things that are coming
to SharePoint Server 2016 will be on the Office blogs so stay tuned there also stay
tuned to Office Mechanics on Wednesdays or as news breaks. Thank you for watching
and goodbye for now.
Office Mechanics
Office.com/Mechanics