Upgrading a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Shared Services Farm with NLB and Forced SSL to MOSS 2007

How's that for a blog posting title!

Oh, and I'll add IIS redirect virtual servers into the mix.

I've been working with a customer on detailing all the steps necessary to make this a reality, and I've seen quite a few posts out on some internet searches where a ton of folks are asking this exact same question.

"How and what is the procedure for upgrading a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Shared Services Farm with Network Load Balancing and Forced SSL to MOSS 2007"

This is certainly a loaded question, and there are important aspects you really need to understand about your current deployment and take into consideration before you just install the bits and start running. Also, this doesn't even consider the state of your sites, i.e. how many custom site definitions, site templates, or web parts, etc, etc, etc.

As well, I discovered one important piece about your current environment you need to be aware of that boils down to what URL and name you bound your portal/wss sites on to begin with. My team has been harping on me to document and explain this specific “What’s in a name” piece for a very, very, very long time, and I don’t see how I can get by with explaining this whole upgrade process without starting with it.

Unfortunately, you’re not going to get all your answers in “This” blog post, so consider this a teaser trailer for a series of blog postings on this subject coming to an aggregator near you!

More to come

- Keith Richie