New features in SharePoint 2016

I am listing down some of the import new features for SharePoint 2016, i believe you find this interesting, all the references are from MSDN

·        Fast site collection creation using PowerShell command "SPSiteMaster"

·        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 un-provision 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

·        Windows PowerShell cmdlets:

New-SPCentralAdministration

Remove-SPCentralAdministration

·        The psconfig.exe -cmd adminvs operation

The SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard

Hybrid sites features

This feature 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.

Large file support

·        Previous versions of SharePoint did not support uploading or downloading files larger than 2,047 MB. SharePoint 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.

·         

SharePoint Foundation

SharePoint Foundation is no longer available in the SharePoint Server 2016 release.

Standalone Install mode

SharePoint Server 2016 doesn't support the standalone install option, so it is no longer available in the setup program. Use the MinRole during installation and choose one of the available install options. The Single Server Farm option where everything is installed on the same computer is supported for dev/test/demo purposes. When you use this option, you must install SQL Server yourself and then run the SharePoint Server 2016 farm configuration wizard

ForeFront Identity Manager client (FIM)

Earlier versions of SharePoint used ForeFront Identity Manager client (FIM) to synchronize between Active Directory and SharePoint. SharePoint Server 2016 no longer uses FIM as the synchronization client. The default process is Active Directory Import. You can also use any synchronization tool such as Microsoft Identity Manager 2016, or any third-party tool.

Excel Services in SharePoint

Excel Services and its associated business intelligence capabilities are no longer hosted on SharePoint Server. Excel Services functionality is now part of Excel Online in Office Online Server (this is the next version of Office Web Apps Server), and SharePoint users can use the services from there

If you currently use Excel Services in SharePoint 2013 and upgrade to SharePoint Server 2016 you must also deploy Office Online Server with Excel Online to ensure Excel Services functionality remains available.

Mini Roles

By using the new MinRole feature in SharePoint Server 2016, SharePoint farm administrators can define each server’s role in a 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's role, and the performance of the farm is optimized based on that topology.

Server role	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 backend 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 searching 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.