Upgrading to SharePoint 2010 Products includes many steps that must be performed during the appropriate phase of the upgrade process.
I) Before upgrade
I) Before upgrade
Before you attempt an upgrade, perform the following steps:
1) Run the pre-upgrade checker to identify and fix potential upgrade issues in your environment.
The pre-upgrade checker is a command-line tool that you run in the previous version environment to find any potential issues for upgrade and to review recommendations and best practices.
STSADM.EXE -o preupgradecheck [[-rulefiles "rule file name"] | [-listrulefiles]] [-localonly]
By using the pre-upgrade checker, you can find information like the following:
1. A list of all servers and components in the farm, and whether the servers meet requirements for upgrading (64-bit, Windows Server 2008).
2. The alternate access mapping URLs that are being used in the farm.
3. A list of all site definitions, site templates, features, and language packs that are installed in the farm.
4. Whether there are customizations in the farm that are not supported (such as database schema modifications).
5. Whether there are any database or site orphans in the farm.
6. Whether there are missing or invalid configuration settings in the farm (such as a missing Web.config file, invalid host names, or invalid service accounts).
7. Whether the databases meet requirements for upgrade — for example, databases are set to read/write, and any databases and site collections that are stored in Windows Internal Database are not larger than 4 GB.
2) Choose an upgrade approach: in-place, database attach, or a hybrid of the two.
In-place upgrade approach
Upgrade occurs on the same computer on which Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is installed.
Database attach upgrade to a new farm approach
Content and SSP (Office SharePoint Server only) databases are backed up on SQL Server. A new SharePoint Server 2010 farm is created, and then the databases are attached to the new farm to upgrade the data
Hybrid approach
You can combine aspects of an in-place and database attach upgrade to get better upgrade performance and mitigate downtime.
3) Identify all customizations in your environment.
Use the pre-upgrade checker and a comparison tool such as WinDiff on a test farm to identify all customizations. For more information, see the Test Your Upgrade Process model
4) Back up all databases by using SQL Server tools before you begin the upgrade process.
Use the SQL Server tools to back up all databases before you perform an upgrade.
5) Test your upgrade process on a virtual or physical test farm, and address any issues that you find.
Before you perform an upgrade, be sure that you have tested the upgrade process and addressed any issues that you found during testing.
6) Optional Restructure your content or farms.
II) During upgrade
After you finish the pre-upgrade steps and have tested the upgrade process for your environment and addressed any issues, you are ready to upgrade the production environment.
In-place upgrade
For an in-place upgrade, perform the following steps:
1) Run Setup to install SharePoint 2010 Products on all servers in your farm.
· Run Setup to install SharePoint 2010 Products on all servers in your farm. Start with the server that is hosting the SharePoint Central Administration Web site. Do not run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard until you have run Setup on all front-end Web servers and application servers in the farm.
2) Install any language packs required for your farm.
3) Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard to begin the upgrade process.
· Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard to begin the upgrade process. Again, start with the server that is hosting Central Administration. Pause at the page that notifies you to run the wizard on other servers in the farm. Run the wizard on all front-end Web servers and application servers in the farm, pausing at the same page on each server. When all servers are at the same point in the wizard, complete the wizard on the first server in the farm. This begins the upgrade process for all data in the farm. When the upgrade is complete on the first server in the farm, continue the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard on the remaining servers.
4) Optional: Use Visual Upgrade to convert site collections to the SharePoint 2010 Products look.
Database attach upgrade
· Create a new SharePoint 2010 Products farm.
· Back up the databases on the previous version farm.
· Attach the databases to the new farm to begin the upgrade process.
III) After upgrade
After you run the upgrade, take the following steps to identify and fix any issues:
After upgrade, you need to verify that the upgrade finished, verify that the sites have been upgraded correctly, and identify and fix any issues. These steps are the same whether you are performing a test or production upgrade.
1) Review the log files to check for issues and to verify that upgrade finished.
Review the following log files to find any errors or warnings and address the issues before you allow users access to the upgraded sites:
· The SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard log file.
· The upgrade log file.
2) Review upgraded sites and fix any issues.
Review the upgraded sites to make sure that all custom elements in the sites appear as expected.
3) Optional: Restructure your content or farms.
4) Optional: Use Visual Upgrade to convert site collections to the SharePoint 2010 Products look.
IV) Before or after upgrade (Optional)
Restructure content and farms
Restructuring tools and techniques
Restructuring during upgrade is a common activity. There are third-party tools available to help you move documents, lists, and sites between site collections or server farms. There is also the mergedb operation for Stsadm to move entire site collections into a different database or the import/export and backup/restore commands to move site collections to a different farm.
1) Choose mergedb when you need to rebalance the number of sites in your databases to increase upgrade performance for the databases.
2) Choose import/export when you are restructuring the organization of your content. You can restructure content in either the previous version or your SharePoint 2010 Products farm.
3) Choose site collection backup/restore to move individual site collections in either version.
Considerations for merging farms
If you are merging several farms (such as moving from several divisional farms to a central corporate farm, or from several smaller farms to a single large farm), you must determine your approach for the following:
1) Currently, you have several URLs pointing to the different farms. Do you keep that structure, or do you merge URLs in addition to farms?
2) For the best experience, Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with the April 2009 cumulative update is recommended. This update, along with Service Pack 2, includes the ability to store alternate access mapping settings in each content database so that Web applications can exist on the same farm without merging URLs.
Use Visual Upgrade to convert site collections to the SharePoint 2010 Products look
A new feature that is available with upgrade allows the IT administrator or site owner to determine when and whether the new look for SharePoint 2010 Products will be used for a particular site collection. IT administrators can make a choice to either adopt the new look for all sites during upgrade, leave the choice to site owners after upgrade, or retain the old look for all sites. If the IT administrator chooses to allow the site owners to decide, after a site has been upgraded by using an in-place upgrade, an option is available in the site user interface to preview the SharePoint 2010 Products look for the site.
1) If the owner likes how the site looks and functions, the owner can finalize the visual upgrade.
2) If the owner wants the site to retain the old look, the owner can revert to the previous version look.
By default, the previous version look is retained.
Migration Tools
There are several Microsoft partners who have brought out tools for migrating site content across SharePoint versions. Some of them include Tzunami, Metalogix, Avepoint etc. Each of these tools has different sets of functionality and capabilities.
Some of these tools could be considered in specific situations such as:
- Integrating content from multiple instances into a single instance
- Building a SharePoint 2010 installation from scratch and migrating only specific pieces of content from other SharePoint instances.
- Side-by-side co-existence of multiple versions of SharePoint. (SharePoint 2010 and MOSS 2007)
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