Improved SharePoint Health Analyzer (with December 2017 PU)

First published on TECHNET on Dec 12, 2017
December 2017 PUs for SharePoint 2013/2016 have been released today and bring some good changes to the SharePoint Health Analyzer. I've had a lot of discussion with customers about how useful some Health Analyzer rules really are, for that reason these feature fixes are a good decision from the Product Group. SharePoint Administrators often ended up in disabling rules, but this is not how the Health Analyzer was meant to be used.

Good to know: Disabled Health Rules generate findings in Microsoft Premier Risk Assessments .

Some might think: "Why did it take so long to get these particular things improved?". Unfortunately I can't answer this. What I can do is to point to the Uservoice Feedback System for SharePoint , that everybody can use to vote for certain product improvement suggestions.

SharePoint Health Analyzer Changes

The December PU brings about a dozen feature fixes to SharePoint. Let's have a look at the changes related to the Health Analyzer:

Health Analyzer rule improvements:

1. Microsoft improved the list of services shown for the health rule report that show services using a built-in service account, so the services are more easily understood. The health rule will now list the service’s display name instead of the shorter service name if a display name is available.

1. Microsoft improved the SharePoint Health Analyzer algorithm that checks the free space in drives to better handle large drives. The algorithm will now report a warning if the amount of drive space is less than 10 GB, or report an error if the amount of drive space is less than 4 GB.

1. Microsoft improved the Health Analyzer rules to include additional international languages.

Removal of Health Analyzer rules:

Following health rules are removed completely

• Database has large amounts of unused space

• Alternate access URLs have not been configured

• People search relevance is not optimized when the Active Directory has errors in the manage reporting structure

• One or more crawl databases may have fragmented indices

• Validate the My Site Host and individual My Sites are on a dedicated Web application and separate URL Domain

Renamed Health Analyzer rules (SharePoint 2013 only):

• "Health Analyzer: Databases exist on servers running SharePoint Foundation" is renamed to "Health Analyzer: Databases exist on servers running SharePoint"

• "Health Analyzer: Some health analyzer rules do not have associated timer jobs" is renamed to "Health Analyzer: Some Health Analyzer rules are enabled but do not have any associated timer Jobs"

How to get these changes?

Download and apply the December 2017 PU for SharePoint 2013 / SharePoint 2016. Make sure to plan any changes or updates to your farm thoroughly*.
What if I do not plan to install the December PU? Future CUs include these changes as well.
* Expect some great guidance about how to plan and apply Updates to your SharePoint Farm on this blog soon!

December 2017 Public Update: Download and KB links

SharePoint 2016 - December 2017 Public Update: Download / Information (KB)

SharePoint 2013 - December 2017 Public Update: Download / Information (KB)

Final Note

Please share your thoughts & experiences in the comments. Any feedback to this post is highly welcome.
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