Web Front end Servers and Application Servers are the two sets of Servers, which form a fully functional and scalable SharePoint Farm. Application Server is the primary Server, where the Service Applications and Central Administration are hosted. Web front end Server along with the load balancer will help in scaling up SharePoint Farm installation to Service page requests by distributing the load across to the Web front end Servers. In order to create and add a Web front end Server to SharePoint Farm, the user doing this activity should be a Farm Administrator. Moreover, the database Server name, configuration database name and the passphrase for adding the Server to the Farm should be known in advance.
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As far as SharePoint 2016 is concerned, in order to create and add a Web front end Server, we should assign the appropriate Mini Role to the Server. Mini Role is a new feature introduced in SharePoint Server 2016. It optimizes the functioning of the Servers in a SharePoint Farm, based on the role; they have been assigned. Hence, when you are configuring the Server, depending on the intended functionality, you may choose the appropriate Mini Role, as shown below.
| Mini Role |
Functionality |
| Custom |
Custom Service Applications, Services and components that do not integrate with Mini Role, belong to Custom Servers. The Farm administrator has full control over which Service instances can run on Servers assigned to the custom role. |
| Web Front End |
Services end user requests, optimized for low latency. |
| Single Server Farm |
Provisions all the Services on the Server for a single Server deployment. This role is provided for the evaluation and development purposes. |
| Search |
Reserved for search Services. |
| Application |
Services the backend jobs or the requests triggered by backend jobs, optimized for high throughput. |
| Distributed Cache |
Services distributed cache for the Farm. Optionally, the Server assigned to this role can load the balance end user requests among the Web front ends. |
Table Source - Microsoft MSDN
We will be using the Mini Role “WebFrontEnd” to configure the front end Server. The current SharePoint Farm has one Application Server , where the main Service Applications and Central administration are configured. We will be adding a Web front end Server to this farm.
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Make sure that the initial Server was not created as a ‘Single-Server Farm’ Mini Role. We won’t be able to extend the Single Server Farm and add more Servers to it.
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Once we have the Server in hand, install SharePoint Server 2016 in the Server. You can get the installation files here. Click on Install software prerequisites to install the software, which is required for the functioning of SharePoint. Once the prerequisites are installed, click on ‘Install SharePoint Server”.
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This will kick start the installation of SharePoint Server 2016.
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Add either of the license keys, given below to proceed.
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I have added the enterprise license key (NQGJR-63HC8-XCRQH-MYVCH-3J3QR).
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Accept the agreement and proceed.
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Specify the location, where SharePoint 2016 will be installed to and click on ‘Install’.
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The installation is in progress.
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Once the installation is completed, the products and configuration wizard will open up. This wizard will be used to add SharePoint Server to the farm.
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Select the option “Connect to an existing Server Farm”.
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Specify the database Server name and click on ‘Retrieve database names”. It will auto populate the configuration database name.
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Click Next.
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Enter the passphrase, which was specified when the Farm was created in the ‘Passphrase’ text box. This is required to add the new Server to the Farm.
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Now, comes the major part, where we will assign the specific Mini Role to the current Server. Select ‘Front-end’ and click on next.
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We have reached the final Window before the configurations can be checked for one last time.
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On clicking next, the Server will be assigned the Mini Role ‘Front-End’ and will be added to the farm.
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Thus, the configuration has completed successfully.
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Heading over to the ‘Servers in Farm’ page, we can see the new front end Server listed out.
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Summary
Thus, we saw how to create, configure a front end Server and add it to the SharePoint 2016 farm.