SharePoint 2016 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.
In Part 1 of this series we discussed some basics of MinRole. Let’s see some administration options for MinRole in this article.
Configuration
MinRole can be configured by the following options:
- SharePoint Product Configuration Wizard
- PowerShell
- PSConfig.exe
MinRole Administration
The following links in Central Administration has been updated for changes in MinRole administration.
- Manage Severs in the Farm
- Manage Services in this farm
- Manage Services on Server
Let’s have a look at each of them:
a. Manage Servers in this farm
This page shows the servers participating in the farm. Two new columns are added on this page
Role &
In Compliance.
![Manage Servers in this farm]()
Role Column displays the server role (MinRole) in the farm.
In Compliance: This column displays whether the server configuration is in compliance with its server role. If server configuration is not in compliance with the role, then a
Fix button will be displayed to correct the configuration in compliance with the server role.
b. Manage services in this farm
This page has the following three new columns:
Auto Provision, Action, and In Compliance. ![Manage services in this farm]()
Auto Provision: This column displays whether the service is enabled in the farm.
Action: This column can have the following three possible values:
- Manage Service application: This indicates the service is associated with the service application.
- Disable Auto Provision: This link disables the service in the farm and stops the service instance in the farm.
- Enable Auto Provision: On click of this link service instance of service will be started on the appropriate server.
In Compliance: This column displays whether the current service is in compliance on every server in the farm. If not then a Fix button will be displayed to correct the configuration.
c. Manage Services on the server
This page shows the service instances on the server. This page has two new columns “In Compliance” & Action.
![Manage Services on server]()
We can see in the screenshot above that the role of the server is displayed next to its name.
In Compliance: This column displays whether the service instance is in compliance with the role of the server. If not, a Fix button will be displayed to correct the configuration.
Action: In this column if the server is managed by MinRole then the link to start or stop will not be displayed. Only Restart option will be available. Servers with custom role will display the Start & Stop links in this column.
Other changes
A health monitoring rule has been added to validate the current MinRole configuration. This rule runs every night to check all service instance on each server for compliance. If any service instance is out of compliance then health rule will automatically correct the configuration.
The automatic correction by health rule can be disabled by SharePoint Admin.
Change a server role
If one wants to change the server role in the farm then it can be done at the following path.
Central Administration -> System Settings -> Convert server role in this farm.
On the Role Conversion page, in the New Role area, click the drop-down box to select the appropriate new role.
The role can also be changed with the help of PowerShell by using command
Set-SPServer -Role <SPServer role>
Where:
<SPServer Role> is the name of the server role which accept the values: WebFrontEnd, Application, DistributedCache, Search, SingleServerFarm, or Custom.