SharePoint 2016 Preview - Going Hybrid

With SharePoint 2016 Preview being released today one of the big new items in the list (Besides MiniRole) is Hybrid functionality. I, like everyone else, just had to jump in, take a look and setup Hybrid mode.

Accessing via CA

Microsoft made sure this was right on our landing page in CA and very easy to access.

A quick click on "Configure hybrid OneDrive and Sites Feature" and you are on your way to becoming a true (Or sorta of true) hybrid.

MY Site URL

Before you begin configuring anything you will need to give it your MySite URL.

The URL is http://ift.tt/1Ei2O2B. It does not need your user name and password as it will only be using this to redirect users and will use their authentication.

Select your Audience

Good news here is that we do not have to send everyone over to OneDrive we can send an audience. However you do have to have an audience compiled in the User Profile to add one here. If you are going to go use an audience then head over to your user profile application and compile one just like you would in SharePoint 2013.

Note* - With out relying on FIM 2010 anymore SharePoint 2016 User Profile Sync is much smoother. (IE. No User Profile Sync service = No stuck on starting) More on this in another blog.

Select Hybrid Features

Now that we have our people chosen (or everyone) now all we have to do is decide which features we want to Hybrid.

We can either redirect them for their OneDrive only or we can redirect them for OneDrive and Sites.

OneDrive Only

SharePoint places the new url on the user for their My Sites which in effect creates a redirect from on premise to Office 365 OneDrive when a User clicks on their One Drive.

OneDrive and Sites

Same as above but with the Hybrid Sites feature turned on. When this is enabled SharePoint redirects the Followed Sites list to Office 365. Every time a user follows a new site that Followed information is sent up to Office 365 using the users credentials via a web call to place it in their Followed List.

Conclusion

SharePoint has under gone some changes in this version behind the scenes even if the GUI's look the exact same. These also include some great Hybrid capabilities with search as well. With redirects and syncs this does allow a user to seamlessly move back and forth between the environments and this becomes even smoother if you are using a Web Application Proxy and ADFS to do SSO.

by Jeff Adkin via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community