Best of... Upgrade and Deployment Guides for WSS v3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Here's my "best of" links, tips and tricks on Migration & Upgrade including some links to deployment, so I've included that...
Before you think this post doesn't have anything on WCM or CMS check out the MSDN upgrade center. It's the opposite, tons of CMS stuff for IT Pros and developers. One of the cooler things on their is the CMS Assessment Tool. Knowing what you have is a good thing.
What to do now to Prepare:
Here's a *key* article on what to do now in your SPS 2003 world to ensure you'll be supportable... “Best Practices for Ensuring Application Reusability and Upgrade in Windows SharePoint Services”
After reading that, start thinking about your environment. Site Definitions, Site Templates, Custom web parts, WSS Application Templates, language, plus pack or templates you've used, have them handy... don’t forget third party as in off the shelf add ons for SharePoint. After you've viewed the upgrade presentation from Brad Stevenson & Keith Bankston delivered at the SharePoint Conference 2006, this will make more sense....
Also, please review some of MS IT's learnings and tips and tricks. More to come on that front. I'll be working with them to ensure there are whitepapers and webcasts on this topic prior to RTM.
Here's the gist of it...
In-Place Upgrade
Updates existing databases and servers
Easiest approach, environment offline while it runs
Not the best approach for customized or large with SLA sensitive environments
Example: Acme 100 person company: Small out of box environment that can be down for the couple of hours/evening or weekend it takes to upgrade
Gradual Upgrade: Upgrade Site Collections
Granular control: one or more site collections at a time
Run old & new versions side-by-side
Rollback to v2/SPS 2003 supported
More complex & resource intensive
Example: CompanyX has a medium farm they just bought 10 months ago and wants to use the same environment. Some sites are “highly” customized, and they may need to exist on v2/2003 for longer than the rest of the sites.
Database Attach/Content DB Migration
Upgrade Into Separate Farm
Attach WSSv2/SPS2003 content db to v3/MOSS 2007 farm & upgrade runs
WSSV2/SPS2003 stays available and untouched by upgrade
Content only, requires new farm, has many manual steps
Example: CompanyY has been running WSS for 3 years and is ready to purchase new hardware for their medium farm. They want to deploy x64 SQL 2005 servers and dual core systems and do this all at the same time.
You may even figure out a creative combination between the "In Place upgrade" and content "Db attach upgrade" method. For example, what if you mirrored your farm with web parts and everything... on new hardware. Then detatched your databases and did an in place upgrade making upgrade succeed really fast. Then you attach the databases and watch as they are upgraded. In this way, you know it was working prior to upgrade and you have all your web parts and such working.
As with any approach, make sure you backup your originals, and backup as soon as upgrade it complete so you have a snapshot in time to recover to.
This table helps illustrate what options you have around customizations and sites that used .stp or site templates with the different methods.
|
Method |
Default |
Options |
|
In Place |
Doesn't Undo Customizations |
Command line option |
|
Gradual |
Reverts Customizations to Site Definition |
Options in UI |
|
Database Attach |
Doesn't Undo Customizations |
Post Upgrade command line, SharePoint Designer or Site settings option |
Reverting the customizations to site definition can be a good thing or bad thing. You need to decide if it's the right thing for you. I totally recommend practicing your upgrade on a separate box.
Optionally you can upgrade your SQL boxes to SQL 2005. MS IT found SQL FTS on WSSv2, backup, and upgrade were 2-3x faster on SQL 2005. (FYI: SQL FTS is not used by WSSv3 or Office SharePoint Server 2007) You may want to consider x64 if you have any memory constraints.
Run the prescan.exe and use Keith Richie's SharePoint Utilities SpSiteManager tool to identify your orphans and optimize your databases. Quotas and Locks – Increase quotas temporarily (recommend at least 5 %) - SpSiteManager tool has ability to unlock and increase quotas. SharePoint911 has some recommendations here and here. Note, the Prescan is different for upgrade of SPS 2003... there is an extended XML schema for the Portal template PREUPGRADESCANCONFIG.XML (Prescan.exe can be found in the /bin directory (example: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN). Same directory as stsadm.
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>prescan
V3 preupgrade report.
PRESCAN [/C file] /ALL | [/V] urls
/C Specifies the configuration file.
file Specifies the file path to the configuration file for custom templates.
Add custom templates to this configuration file if you do not want the tool to mark these templates as custom.
/ALL Entire farm scan mode.
/V Virtual server scan mode, otherwise SPSite mode.
urls Specifies a list of one or more SPSite or virtual server URL's to scan.
Upgrade to WSS SP2 & SPS SP2 including the .NET framework 2.0. You won't regret these. Lots of good stuff in them. Then start testing your custom web parts on .NET 2.0. When you're ready... install Windows Workflow Foundation. Make sure you actually use the one recommended by the setup/readme. This has been changing from beta to beta.
Before you actually kick off ANYTHING. Make sure you backup EVERYTHING, and I'd even recommend a restore to a standby if you can afford it. I hope you can. Virtual Servers are wonderful things... wink wink, nudge nudge.
Oh, and a.... make sure you don't have all your documentation of your farm on the only farm your upgrading. Thanks Sean for this tip.
If you've copied the out of the box site definitions and built your own check out the Upgrade Definition Files for mapping your lists/features to the new site defs. You basically need to upgrade your site custom definitions.
IT Content for 2007 Office System Beta 2
There is some great content (the best content) behind a wall that is being released in the 2nd half. In order to get access now, you need to either be running 2007 Office System beta 2 or install the online beta control. I highly recommend it.
* Office Online Beta control
To gain access to the Microsoft Office Online Beta site from a computer other than the one that has the 2007 Microsoft Office system client applications installed, you will need to install the Microsoft Office Online Beta Control.
To install the control
|
1. |
Download AuthInstall.msi. |
|
2. |
When prompted, click Open. |
|
3. |
On the File Download - Security Warning, click Run. |
|
4. |
When the installation finishes, restart Microsoft Internet Explorer. |
|
5. |
You will now be able to browse to the Office Online Beta site and the other sites where I've noted the *. |
Info on Upgrade:
WSS/SPS2003 upgrade to WSSv3/SharePoint Server 2007, by Keith Bankston & Brad Stevenson
Real World Upgrade by MS IT (best practices based on Beta 2), by Andre Heymann and Sean Livingston
Upgrade and Migration Guide for Office SharePoint Server 2007 (* Requires Office 2007 beta 2 or control see above)
Upgrading to Windows SharePoint Services version 3 * - Operations Guide
MSDN Migration Center for WSSv2 -> WSSv3 and SPS 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Lots of good resources here, with more coming...
Administrator documentation for MOSS 2007 (Guides for Evaluation, Planning, Security, Upgrade, and Deployment) *
Administrator documentation for WSS V3 (Guides for Evaluation, Planning, Upgrade, and Deployment) *
MSDN Dev Center for Office SharePoint Server 2007
MSDN Dev Center for WSS
Office Online IT Center for MOSS 2007 *
Office Online IT Center for WSS V3 *
Info on Office SharePoint Server Deployment:
Planning Guide for Office SharePoint Server 2007 Part 1 (for application administrators) *
Planning Guide for Office SharePoint Server Part 2 (for IT professionals) *
Planning Security for Office SharePoint Server *
Deployment Guide for Office SharePoint Server *
Info on WSS Deployment:
Planning for Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) technology *
Deployment for Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) technology *
Product Evaluation for Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) technology *
Model's for Upgrade (Awesome Visio digrams) (download a free viewer)
Model: Upgrading Office SharePoint Server Products *
Model: Upgrading SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Office SharePoint Server (1 of 2) *
Model: Upgrading SharePoint Portal Server Version 2 to Office SharePoint Server (2 of 2) *
Upgrading Windows SharePoint Services Version 2 to Windows SharePoint Services Version 3 *
Windows SharePoint Services Base Topologies *
* Requires Office 2007 beta 2 or control see above
Last but not least… (This is not a commercial…) If you are planning your upgrade and investigated the various approaches and are looking for tools or you simply want more. You may want to consider our various partners and ISVs. I’ve seen demos of all the partners listed below. The Metalogix tool is awesome for web migrations, the Tsunami deployer tool is great for documents from a wide variety of platforms like file shares, public folders, etc… Quest has a great discovery tool that I used once. Great tree control. Casahl specializes in Notes/Domino to SharePoint & Exchange. Binary Tree is a Notes to SharePoint tool as well, very nifty.
Migration Partners
