Shared MinRoles in SharePoint 2016 Feature Pack 1

MinRole was an exciting new feature introduced in SharePoint 2016. In Simple words, based on the MinRole you select during setting up your Farm, SharePoint 2016 automatically takes care of services to run on that server and optimizes it to deliver better performance and reliability. However, the downside is: You need Eight SharePoint servers to have a highly available SharePoint 2016 farm!

So now, with Feature pack 1, You can combine Web Front End and Distributed Cache roles – Application and Search roles together! And you just need Four servers to have a highly available SharePoint 2016 farm instead of Eight! Apart from MinRoles enhancement, Feature pack-1 also brings features such as Central Administration Administrative Actions Logging, Custom Tiles in the SharePoint app launcher, Hybrid Auditing, Hybrid Taxonomy, OneDrive API, etc.

If you have installed Feature pack-1 before creating SharePoint 2016 farm, this is what it looks like in the farm creation wizard:

If your SharePoint farm is already created, you can switch the MinRoles from SharePoint 2016 Central Administration site: How to switch Server’s MinRole in SharePoint 2016?

How to Install Feature Pack 1 in SharePoint 2016?

Download and install November 2016 CU, which brings the Feature pack 1 for SharePoint 2016. In addition, If you have language packs installed on your farm, you need to download and install the November 2016 CU Language pack fix (Optionally, you can download and install all other updates from Technet – SharePoint 2016 Updates