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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

"SharePoint 2007 to 2010 Upgrade" online project (part 3): "Theory"

Before to get a "hands-on" experience with an  upgrade, I have decided to delve into the "theory of upgrade SharePoint 2007 to 2010".

  To be completely honest, I actually have participated in the  upgrade of a SharePoint staging farm several times with a successful result. But now, I want to start with a "beginner's mindset". Theory first, the lab exercises later...

   Here are some highlights from the book Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administrator's Companion for those who wants to know a little bit about the SharePoint Upgrade process:

  To perform an upgrade to SharePoint 2010, you must have SharePoint 2007 with Service Pack2 (SP2) installed.


There are 2 upgrade options: in-place and a database attach upgrade.

In-place - an actual upgrade of an existing environment to SharePoint 2010 (all farm setting stay in place).
A database attach upgrade is a migration upgrade (the server and farm settings are not upgraded. You must manually transfer settings).
The database attach upgrade is considered a safer upgrade option.

You can't facilitate in-place upgrade if:

 - you want to upgrade from a stand-alone installation to a farm installation or vice versa.  To perform such a upgrade, the additional steps are needed. (Refer to Migrate a stand-alone installation to a server farm installation (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

 -  current version is running on 32-bit hardware.(Refer to Migrate an existing server farm to a 64-bit environment (Office SharePoint Server 2007)



  >> do you want to know which upgrade is chosen for "SharePoint 2007 to 2010 Upgrade" online project ? - visit  "SharePoint 2007 to 2010 Upgrade" online project (part 2) : (Hybrid approach)

10 Best Practices for Upgrading to SharePoint 2010:

   1. Before upgrade install SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 (Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologies)
   2. Ensure that the existing SharePoint 2007 is functioning properly
   3. Migrate 32x to 64x before the Upgrade
   4. Run the pre-upgrade checker
   5. Perform a trial upgrade on a test farm
   6. Plan for the hardware capacity
   7. Perform a full backup of prod (including hive, config files, IIS)
   8. If you are performing a database attach upgrade, set them read-only
   9.  Avoid adding servers to the new farm during the upgrade
   10. Review logs after the upgrade

It's extremely important that you test the rollback strategy prior to performing an upgrade. Backup all related to SharePoint databases, wsp files, web.config and other web server files that is not included in wsp files.

It's highly recommended to duplicate the prod environment (web server and sql server) and test the roll backup process on there including installation all other web server files. If the recovery process is successful is a good indicator that backup\rollback process is suitable to proceed with the upgrade.

If you have decided to perform an in-place upgrade, make sure that the current servers meet the requirements of SharePoint 2010. Use the pre-upgrade checker for these needs.

In a multiple server farm, it is extremely important to run the prerequisite installer and SharePoint 2010 Setup.exe on ALL servers in the farm before running the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard on any server in the farm!

For a migration update option refer to Prepare the new SharePoint Server 2010 environment for a database attach upgrade
For an in-place upgrade refer to Perform an in-place upgrade (SharePoint Server 2010)
You may want to consider a hybrid approach proposed by Joel Oleson. Please refer to the post Joel Oleson's Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 Best Practices

In the in-place upgrade as soon as you run Configuration wizard, SharePoint 2007 is no longer available.You cannot pause or roll back this upgrade process.


The biggest post-upgrade task it the configuration of BCS. (Business Connectivity services applications is a replacement for Shared Services Provider)

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