Presented at SharePoint TechFest 2016. All rights reserved.

1. MinRole and SharePoint 2016
Roy Polvorosa

2. Roy Polvorosa
• Managed Services & Support Manager at Imaginet.
• Rich experience architecting and deploying SharePoint
solutions for a wide variety of business verticals.
• Specialize in: Office 365 and Azure, ADFS, SharePoint,
SQL, Exchange and Active Directory
• Twitter: @rpolvorosja
• E-mail: royp@imaginet.com

3. Imaginet
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4. Agenda
• What is MinRole?
• SharePoint Server Roles
• How does it work in SharePoint 2016?
• The Benefits
• MinRole topologies
• Using MinRole in your SharePoint 2016 Farm
• MinRole Administration
• Opting out of MinRole

5. MinRole
A SharePoint 2016 feature “Built from the cloud up”.

6. What is MinRole?
• Exclusive to SharePoint 2016.
• Administrators define each server’s role in the farm topology when a new farm is created
or when a server is added to an existing farm.
• SharePoint automatically configures the services on each server based on the server role
specified and optimizes performance of the farm based on the topology.

7. SharePoint Server Roles
Front-End
• Service applications and
components that serve
user requests. These
servers are optimized
for low latency.
Application
• Server optimized for
high throughput e.g.
Service applications
that serve backend tasks
(background jobs).
Distributed Cache
• Service applications
and components that are
required for a distributed
cache belong on Distributed
Cache servers.

8. SharePoint Server Roles
Search
• Service applications and
components required for
search.
Custom
• Custom service applications,
services and components
that do not integrate
with MinRole belong on
Custom servers.
Single Server Farm
• Service applications and
components required
for a single machine
farm.
List of Services: http://tinyurl.com/jtknksz

9. How Does MinRole Work?

10. How does it work?
• Starts a base set of service instances that are required for the server’s role
when a new farm is created or when a server is added to an existing farm.
• Detects which additional services have been enabled and starts services as
appropriate for the server’s role.
• Starts and stops corresponding service instances in the farm.
• In the past, SharePoint administrators had to manually define roles and
services on each server.

11. What does this mean for architecting
SharePoint 2016 environments?
Benefits of using MinRole in your SharePoint 2016 farm

12. Simpler Deployments
• SharePoint Administrators no longer need to worry about which services have been
enabled on which servers.
• Administrators reduce the risk of slight misconfigurations during installation by
leveraging a template-type deployment.
• Administrators can focus on what functionality to enable in the farm and let SharePoint
take care of the rest.

13. Improved Performance and Reliability
• Microsoft has been operating SharePoint online since 2011 and has analyzed key
performance characteristics of operating SharePoint at an internet scale such as CPU,
memory, disk I/O and network latency.
• SharePoint services have been optimized for the MinRole topology based on that
analysis.
• Improved service application load balancer services requests from local service
instances instead of going across the farm to another server.

14. Simpler Capacity Planning and Farm
Scalability
• In SharePoint 2016, Microsoft bases capacity planning on the MinRole topology
• Leverage predictable and perspective capacity-planning guidance by deploying a farm
based on the MinRole topology.
• As SharePoint needs grow, easily add more servers to the farm and SharePoint will
automatically configure the additional servers.

15. MinRole Topologies
What to expect in SharePoint 2016

16. Typical SharePoint 2013 Topology
• SharePoint Administrators manually configure services on
each server to fit these roles.
• As features and services are added, Administrators have to
determine where these components should run based on
best practices, current server load, etc.
Web Front-ends
Application Servers
SQL Servers

17. SharePoint 2016 Minimum MinRole
Topology
• The supported minimum MinRole configuration
requires a server with each role.
• If SQL is included - need at least 5 servers for MinRole.
• Minimum configuration does not have any resiliency.
Front-end Distributed Cache
Application Server Search
SQL Server

18. Highly Available SharePoint 2016 MinRole
Topology
• Two of each server role is recommended
• Three servers required for Distributed
cache in a cluster quorum
• Add SQL availability groups to achieve HA in
the SQL layer.
• Potentially requires 11 servers
• Added Office Online Servers totals 13
Servers
Front-end
Application Server Search
SQL Server Office Online Servers
Distributed Cache

19. Custom 3 Tier MinRole Topology
• Front end servers benefit from MinRole.
• Configure custom servers to run majority of SharePoint
service applications and reduce number of servers.
• Manual configuration of services and monitoring
required on custom servers.
• SharePoint Administrators determine which custom
server will run which services.
Custom Servers
SQL Servers
Front-End Servers

20. Custom HA Topology with Search
• Two load balanced servers with Front-end
role.
• Two custom servers running distributed
cache, User Profile Sync, Secure Store.
• Two servers with Search server role.
• SQL servers configured with always on
availability groups.
Front-End Servers
Custom Servers
SQL Servers
Search Servers

21. How Does This Impact My SharePoint 2016
Upgrade?

22. SharePoint 2016 Upgrades and MinRole
• You still need to plan and design.
• MinRole Topology is recommended but not the only option.
• If you’re upgrading from SharePoint 2013, database-attach method is available
• Versions prior to SharePoint 2013 will need additional planning.

23. Using MinRole in your SharePoint 2016
Implementation

24. Configuring SP2016 for the first time
• See MinRole when running the SharePoint
Configuration Wizard for the first time or when
joining a server to an existing farm.
• There is no order in which server to configure
first - start with any server role.
• Also use the SharePoint Management Shell or
PSConfig.exe command line tool

25. MinRole and the Management Shell
• New LocalServerRole parameter allows a server’s role to be specified when using the
management shell or PSConfig.exe command line tool.
• Existing deployment scripts may have to be updated with this new parameter.

26. Service Applications and MinRole
• A minimum MinRole topology or custom topology needs to be setup first before
deploying any service applications.
• MinRole doesn’t automatically create service applications when a server’s role is defined.
• When configuring a new Search Service Application, MinRole detects which server in the
farm holds the Search Server role, turns on the search services and configures the
search topology appropriately.
• MinRole also stops service instances automatically if you delete a service application.

27. MinRole Administration

28. Central Administration Changes
• Updated Farm Servers page shows a server’s role and MinRole compliancy status along
with currently running services.
• The compliant column will also display a “Fix” link if a server does not meet compliancy.

29. Central Administration Changes
• Updated manage services
page in Central Admin has
been updated to display the
state of each service in the
farm and current MinRole
Compliancy status.
• Enable or disable auto
provisioning of services.

30. Central Administration Changes
• Updated Services on Server page now
displays current MinRole compliancy
status for each service.
• Action column has changed. Start and
stop links removed for services managed
by MinRole.
• To start or stop a service, go back to the
Manage services farm page.

31. MinRole Compliancy
• Once a Server’s role is configured, only those services appropriate for that role can run
on that server.
• SharePoint 2016 has a new set of Health Analyzer rules and timer jobs to identify when a
server isn’t MinRole Compliant.
• If a service is accidently turned on and shouldn’t be running on that server, SharePoint
will automatically turn it off.

32. Custom Server
Services Running:
Central Administration
Claims to Windows Token Service
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Incoming E-mail
Microsoft Foundation Web Application
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer Service
Search Administration Service
Application
Server
Services Running:
Central Administration
Claims to Windows Token Service
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Incoming E-mail
Microsoft Foundation Web Application
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer Service
MinRole Compliancy
Search Administration Service

33. Changing a Server’s Role
• Minrole isn’t set in stone. SharePoint Administrators can change a Server’s role through
Central Admin or through the SharePoint Management Shell.
• To avoid MinRole compliancy warnings in the Health Analyzer, decommission existing
service applications before changing the roles.
• Plan your SharePoint 2016 farm appropriately and not have to change roles.

34. What About 3rd Party Apps?
• Answer – Custom Server Role.
• 3rd party SharePoint applications like PerformancePoint or Nintex Workflows would best
fit the custom role.
• The Custom Server Role is excluded from the MinRole Compliancy checks as it can run
any service the Administrator configures.

35. Opting Out of MinRole
• SharePoint 2016 supports backwards compatible behavior of previous versions of
SharePoint with the custom role.
• SharePoint farm administrators can assign zero, some or all servers to the Custom Role
and manually manage service instances on these servers.
• Specify the ServerRoleOptional parameter when creating a new SharePoint farm if
existing deployment scripts need to remain intact.
• This is done using the PSConfig.exe command line tool or Powershell cmdlet.

36. Thank You
Let's Continue the Conversation!
Email me at royp@imaginet.com.
Twitter: @rpolvorosja
www.imaginet.com

37. What's Next?
Q&A with Roy
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