SharePoint 2016 has introduced a new feature “MinRole”. This version is currently in preview at the time of writing this article. The MinRole feature will be helpful to administrators while configuring the SharePoint farm.
Let’s see some basics of MinRole.
Why MiRole
SharePoint server performs multiple roles for providing multiple features during the lifecycle of SharePoint application. The different roles include: content management at core, service applications (Search, Excel services, managed metadata service, business connectivity service etc.), and database role. The services used for providing these features have huge impact on performance of the application and SharePoint environment. Hence services instances needs to be configured correctly on correct server for performance optimization. With MinRole feature SharePoint automatically configures the service instances on each server based on server role.
Finally we can see the following advantages of MinRole:
- Pre-configured deployment option tuned for performance.
- Reduced latency.
- Better performance for application.
- SharePoint administrators don’t have to worry about the service instances. They only need to plan the farm topology and service applications in the farm.
SharePoint administrators don’t have to worry about the service instances. They only need to plan the farm topology and service applications in the farm.
What MinRoles are available?
At present the following six roles are available while configuring SharePoint on any server.
| Server Role | Description |
| Front End | Service application, component that server user requests. These servers are optimized for low latency. |
| Application | Server optimized for high throughput e.g. Service applications that server backend tasks (Search crawl, jobs). The Application role and Application Server term used in previous versions of SharePoint are different. |
| Distributed Cache | Components required for distributed cache. |
| Search | Search application related components. |
| Custom | Custom service application or components that don’t belong to MinRole are configured on this server. Farm administrators can control what services run on this server and MinRole doesn’t control that. |
| Single Sever Farm | This is mainly for development purpose where all services run on a single server. This mode is replacing Standalone install mode of previous SharePoint release. |
How to configure MinRole
- First time install
When a SharePoint administrator run the SharePoint configuration wizard, SharePoint 2016 gives an option to choose the server role as in the following screenshot:
![Specify server role]()
As per the role selected SharePoint enables required services for the role and additional services required on that server. Also SharePoint checks what service applications are enabled in the farm and what service applications are required for the current selected role on the server. Those service instances will also be started for the server role.
- Change in Services in farm
When any service is enable or disabled in the farm after configuration, MinRole will configure start or stop the service instance on respective server in the farm.
The MinRole can be enabled by:
- SharePoint Product Configuration Wizard.
- PowerShell
If one doesn’t want to configure MinRole for any reason then it can be done by choosing Custom Role while configuration. In custom role SharePoint administrator manages which service instances should run on which servers.
These are few changes for monitoring and changing the role of the server in SharePoint 2016 that will be discussed in next part.