Forum Discussion
Installation of SharePoint Server 2016 with HA
Hi Everyone,
Posting this installation plan/step here to get some clarity.
I have referred to the below links which has detailed installation steps but the farm configuration is still unclear and hence I am starting this conversation.
My test environment will have a total of 6 VM servers with the Windows 2012 R2 OS. My goal is to use the Small High Availability (HA) MinRole farm where I will have 4 servers with two shared roles:
- Two Front-end with Distributed Cache Servers
- Two Application with Search Servers.
Here's my plan for the pre-installation.
- Have the SQL server installed and ready. Hoping to have SQL Server 2016 but might have to make do with 2014. I will have two of them.
- Have all the pre-requisites installed on the four SharePoint Servers.
Here's a rough outline of my SharePoint Server installation and this is where I need confirmation.
- Install SharePoint Server 2016 on the four servers.
- Install SharePoint Server Feature Pack 1
- Run the SharePoint 2016 Products Configuration Wizard on the 1st sever and select 'Application with Search' Shared Role. This server will host the Central Administration as well.
- Run the SharePoint 2016 Products Configuration Wizard on the 2nd sever and select 'Application with Search' Shared Role
- Run the SharePoint 2016 Products Configuration Wizard on the 3rd sever and select 'Front-end with Distributed Cache' Shared Role
- Run the SharePoint 2016 Products Configuration Wizard on the 4th sever and select 'Front-end with Distributed Cache' Shared Role.
Are these SharePoint Server installation steps I should follow for a HA enviornment? My goal is to test the zero down-time patching, DLP, configuration of service applications and migration from SharePoint Server 2013.
The SQL servers will be mirrored. I'm open to ideas and suggestions to better utilize the SQL servers. I am considering using one SQL server for application database and the second for only content databses. I welcome feedback.
Links
- Installing SharePoint across multiple farms.
- Install a software update for SharePoint Server 2016
- Planning for MinRole server deployment in SharePoint Server 2016
Thanks in advance for all your feedback.
On the SharePoint side you're fine. On the SQL side, you should be using SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups (if using Enterprise) or SQL Clustering (if using Standard). Mirroring is a deprecated technology.
I would not separate the SQL server purposes. Until you have a large enough environment and high enough load to warrant having multiple SQL server instances serving SharePoint content (and even then, try to scale up as much as possible rather than out to reduce management overhead).
3 Replies
I see no mention of a Load Balancer in this mix. In order to provide users with Zero Downtime you must be able to fail over your FrontEnds that are serviing web traffic. In your particual case since your loading this onto App Tier box you should expect your portal sites to remain up but CA will probably be down till patching is complete
On the SharePoint side you're fine. On the SQL side, you should be using SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups (if using Enterprise) or SQL Clustering (if using Standard). Mirroring is a deprecated technology.
I would not separate the SQL server purposes. Until you have a large enough environment and high enough load to warrant having multiple SQL server instances serving SharePoint content (and even then, try to scale up as much as possible rather than out to reduce management overhead).
Thanks Trevor!
