SharePoint 2016 Fast Site Collection Creation using PowerShell

In this post, we will discuss how we can use SharePoint 2016 fast site collection creation feature using PowerShell. SharePoint is already released and if you have not yet installed you can try installing SharePoint 2016 as well as you can check out few SharePoint 2016 new features also.

One of the new features of SharePoint 2016 is fast site collection creation. Previously when you are trying to create site collection it usually takes time to create a site collection, to reduce this performance issue, in SharePoint 2016 Microsoft provides fast site collection w feature which is supported now by PowerShell only, meaning you can create using PowerShell only, through UI is not supported yet.

Also, read:

– SharePoint 2016 Create a web application and Site collection using PowerShell

– Get All Attachments From SharePoint 2013 List Item using Rest API

– App Step in SharePoint 2013 Designer Workflow

On a high level, this works at the SQL Server level which reduces round trips required between SharePoint and SQL Server. It simply copies at the sql server level directly.

SharePoint 2016 provides few PowerShell commands to work with fast site creation.

Get-SPWebTemplatesEnabledForSiteMaster:

This PowerShell command display list of template IDs which are enabled for SharePoint fast site creation.

PS E:\Users\Administrator> Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Get-SPWebTemplatesEnabledForSiteMaster 

Name	CompatibilityLevel
SPSPERS#2	15
SPSPERS#6	15
SPSPERS#7	15
SPSPERS#8	15
SPSPERS#9	15
SPSPERS#10	15

When you run the above command, you can see the templated ids enabled for fast site creation.

Enable-SPWebTemplateForSiteMaster:

By using this PowerShell command you can enable a template for fast site collection creation. Suppose you want to enable team site template id for fast site collection creation, then you can use the below PowerShell command. STS#0 is the template id for the team site. You can check a very good article by Vlad in Absolute-SharePoint to see all the template ids.

Enable-SPWebTemplateForSiteMaster -Template “STS#0” -CompatibilityLevel 15

Once you run the above command you can see the team site template is now enabled for fast site creation.

PS E:\Users\Administrator> Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Enable-SPWebTemplateForSiteMaster -Template “STS#0” -CompatibilityLevel 15

Get-SPWebTemplatesEnabledForSiteMaster 

Name	CompatibilityLevel
SPSPERS#2	15
SPSPERS#6	15
SPSPERS#7	15
SPSPERS#8	15
SPSPERS#9	15
SPSPERS#10	15
STS#0	15

Get-SPSiteMaster:

This command will display the site master information, it is something like this information will be used when we create a site collection using fast site creation process.

Get-SPSiteMaster -ContentDatabase WSS_Content

By default it will provide information like below when you run the above command:

PS E:\Users\Administrator> Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Get-SPSiteMaster -ContentDatabase WSS_Content

ContentDatabase          : SPContentDatabase Name=WSS_Content

SiteId                   : bb743227-37ac-404c-8ab3-e6e293313b38

TemplateName             : SPSPERS#10

Language                 : 1033

CompatibilityLevel       : 15

FeaturesToActivateOnCopy : {0ee1129f-a2f3-41a9-9e9c-c7ee619a8c33|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           f661430e-c155-438e-a7c6-c68648f1b119|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           e9c0ff81-d821-4771-8b4c-246aa7e5e9eb|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           fa8379c9-791a-4fb0-812e-d0cfcac809c8|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;…}

It looks like below:

sharepoint 2016 new feature fast site creation

New-SPSiteMaster:

We can use this PowerShell command to new site master using any template. Like for our requirement we will create site master for team site template.

New-SPSiteMaster -ContentDatabase WSS_Content -Template STS#0

This command will take sometime to add to site master. After this if you will run Get-SPSiteMaster powershell command you can see our team site template will be added to the site master like below:

PS E:\Users\Administrator> Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Get-SPSiteMaster -ContentDatabase WSS_Content

ContentDatabase          : SPContentDatabase Name=WSS_Content

SiteId                   : ab6df6d4-6b48-4a54-97a8-4dac0f23443c

TemplateName             : STS#0

Language                 : 1033

CompatibilityLevel       : 15

FeaturesToActivateOnCopy : {4c42ab64-55af-4c7c-986a-ac216a6e0c0e|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           8581a8a7-cf16-4770-ac54-260265ddb0b2|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           3bae86a2-776d-499d-9db8-fa4cdc7884f8|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           3cb475e7-4e87-45eb-a1f3-db96ad7cf313|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;…}

ContentDatabase          : SPContentDatabase Name=WSS_Content

SiteId                   : bb743227-37ac-404c-8ab3-e6e293313b38

TemplateName             : SPSPERS#10

Language                 : 1033

CompatibilityLevel       : 15

FeaturesToActivateOnCopy : {0ee1129f-a2f3-41a9-9e9c-c7ee619a8c33|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           f661430e-c155-438e-a7c6-c68648f1b119|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           e9c0ff81-d821-4771-8b4c-246aa7e5e9eb|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;,

                           fa8379c9-791a-4fb0-812e-d0cfcac809c8|00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000|;…}

create site collection using PowerShell

New-SPSite:

Now we can create a site collection from site master by using the PowerShell command below:

New-SPSite http://mypc/sites/MyFastSiteFromPowerShell -ContentDatabase “WSS_Content” -CompatibilityLevel 15 -CreateFromSiteMaster -Template “STS#0″ -OwnerAlias”MySP\Administrator”

This will create the site collection in less time.

You can visit the site url to see the site collection created successfully.

Fast site creation feature SharePoint 2016

Disable-SPWebTemplateForSiteMaster:

Microsoft also provides below command to disable site template from site master.

Disable-SPWebTemplateForSiteMaster -Template STS#0

The above command will disable team site template from site master.

Remove-SPSiteMaster:

This PowerShell command will remove site master from the content database.

Remove-SPSiteMaster -ContentDatabase “WSS_Content” -SiteId

SiteId: You can get the SiteId by running Get-SPSiteMaster -ContentDatabase WSS_Content command.

You can also see various SharePoint 2016 PowerShell commands here.

Hope this will be helpful.