SharePoint Server 2016 Central Administration

Central Administration is a special SharePoint Web Application and it is automatically provisioned during the configuration of SharePoint through the SharePoint Product Configuration Wizard.

There should be a single central administration site for the entire farm, where farm administrators can manage the service applications, sites, securities and deployments. In SharePoint 2016, the central administration is categorized into ten sections and we will see summary about each of the item below,

1. Application Management
2. System Settings
3. Monitoring
4. Backup and Restore
5. Security
6. Upgrade and Migration
7. General Application Settings
8. Apps
9. Office 365
10. Configuration Wizards

                  Figure 1: 10 Sections of SharePoint Server 2016 Central Administration

The summary about each section of Central Administration is listed below,

Application Management: http://<servername:port>/applications.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there the administrators can manage the web applications, site collections, content databases, and service applications.


                                                Figure 2: Application Management

System Settings: http://<servername:port>/systemsettings.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there the administrators can manage the servers, services on server, features, solutions, email configurations, mobile configurations and farm-wide settings


                                                            Figure 3: System Settings

Monitoring: http://<servername:port>/monitoring.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there administrators can track the jobs, view the reports, manage the logs, and view the health and status of your SharePoint farm


                                                         Figure 4: Monitoring

Backup and Restore: http://<servername:port>/backups.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there administrators can perform a backup or restore operations for Site Collections, sites, lists, or view history and status details.


                                                   Figure 5: Backup and Restore

Security: http://<servername:port>/security.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there administrators can manage user settings, policy settings and general security settings.


                                                                  Figure 6: Security

Upgrade and Migration: http://<servername:port>/upgradeandmigration.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there administrators can view the status of upgrade, patch installation, database and also have the options for upgrade SharePoint, manage licenses, enable Enterprise features and more.


Figure 7: Upgrade and Migration

General Application Settings: http://<servername:port>/generalapplicationsettings.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there administrators can configure general application and feature settings


                                             Figure 8: General Application Settings

Apps: http://<servername:port>/apps.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there administrators can manage and monitor your Apps


                                                                  Figure 9: Apps

Configure Office 365: http://<servername:port>/office365configuration.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there administrators can configure settings to access or bind to the office 365 features


                                                      Figure 10: Office 365

Configuration Wizards: http://<servername:port>/configurationwizards.aspx

This page contains the links to the pages, there administrators can use wizards to help configure advanced scenarios


                                                   Figure 11: Configuration Wizards

Each section in Central Administration can do different operations and this feature of controlling the entire SharePoint Server is not available in SharePoint Online.