SharePoint 2010 Upgrade and Migration Q & A

This webinar included several live demonstrations discussions about:

• Who should upgrade, why & when
• How to assess existing SharePoint deployments and identify upgrade risks and opportunities
• Specific tasks that need to be done to prepare for SharePoint 2010
• How to identify and upgrade existing 2007 customizations
• Best Practices for supporting parallel environments, migration & preserving the investment in your existing SharePoint deployment
• Avoiding Pitfalls

This webinar provided information, guidance, tips and techniques for upgrading to SharePoint 2010 and was presented by ShareSquared's SharePoint MVP's & Certified Master Candidates Paul Stork and Dave Milner.

• Question: Will a recorded version of the webinar be made available?
  
  Answer: Yes, it is available here, and the slides here
  Note, if you experience issues with the low-res recording, please try the hi-res version for best viewing.
  
  
• Question: In my production environment, the Fab 40 template 'Knowledge Base' is being used. After a database attach methodology upgrade, 'Knowledge Base' based websites did not upgrade and are not accessible. Ours is a live website and this 'KB" website is heavily used. How do we upgrade this template in 2010?
  
  Answer: The Fab 40 are a set of custom site templates that Microsoft created as samples of what could be done with SharePoint 2007. About half are implemented as Solutions (WSPs) and half as Site Templates (STPs). The Knowledge Base template is an STP. Unfortunately, STPs are no longer supported in SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft has chosen NOT to update the Fab 40 to SharePoint 2010. Your only real choice to address this issue is to do an “In-Place” upgrade which will upgrade existing Fab 40 sites. Once you’ve upgraded you can take an upgraded site and save it as a Site Template in 2010 (which are now WSPs). If doing an In-place upgrade of your live site is not practical you could create a small test environment in a lab, create a site using the Knowledge Base, and then upgrade that environment. Once you are done you can save the site as a WSP and transfer that to your upgraded 2010 environment. You will then need to re-create your KnowledgeBase website using the upgraded WSP.
  
  
• Question: What counts as "minimal" configurations or customizations?
  
  Answer: “Minimal” customization is not really something that can be quantified exactly. Any customization can cause an issue when using the In-Place upgrade methodology and there is no way to predict how much customization is too much. The only way to verify that is by doing a trial migration in a lab environment. For an In-place upgrade, the less customization the better. If possible, remove customizations like custom master pages, etc. before upgrading and re-apply them after. One strategy that has proven effective is to segment your upgrades into separate pieces that have content databases with site collections that contain a higher number of customizations to be upgraded separately from your more standard collaboration site collections.
  
  
• Question: What does "server farm settings not upgraded" mean?
  
  Answer: This is one of the main differences between and In-place upgrade and a Database Attach upgrade. A Database Attach upgrade only upgrades the content databases. It does not upgrade the farm configuration database. Any configuration settings stored in the configuration database will need to be set in the destination 2010 farm manually. For example, to do a Database Attach upgrade you first need to re-create Web applications in your 2010 farm, then attach your content databases to the new Web Applications. Web application configurations are stored in the farm config database.
  
  
• Question: What is an example of a farm level configuration that needs to be configured in the Database Attach approach?
  
  Answer: As mentioned in the previous
  
  Answer anything stored in the configuration database will need to be re-created when doing a Database Attach upgrade. This includes things like Web Applications, Service Applications, general application settings, oncoming and outgoing email settings,etc..
  
  
• Question: Should the Admin Content Database be offline for a Hybrid 2 Upgrade?
  
  Answer: A Hybrid 2 Upgrade is a variation of the In-Place Upgrade. Content databases are taken offline to shorten the amount of time the sites are down for upgrade. But since the Central Admin web site is created/updated during the core upgrade processing, we would not recommend taking the Admin Content Database offline. Doing so would create a new Admin Content Database for the Central Admin web site.
  
  
• Question: On the Pre-Upgrading Planning slide, what type of existing problems are you referring to? SharePoint Configurations? Server Issues?
  
  Answer: BEFORE trying to upgrade a SharePoint environment, it is essential that the existing 2007 environment be stable. People often hope that upgrading to a later version will fix existing issues... this is almost never the case. Any existing errors being reported by your SharePoint 2007 environment should be fixed before the upgrade. This could be underlying server OS issues or configuration issues in SharePoint itself. If there are design issues or performance problems in your 2007 environment architecture or configuration, some of these can be fixed as part of the upgrade however, these changes will add to the scope and effort of the upgrade process.
  
  
• Question: We have some custom workflows developed in SP Designer. Will the Database Attach or Hybrid 1 upgrade option transfer over these custom workflows?
  
  Answer: Yes, everything stored in the content database, including SharePoint Designer workflows, will be upgraded when doing a Database Attach upgrade. That said, the workflows may need to be edited in the new environment to make them fully functional. There is also one known issue with workflows either upgraded or created in SharePoint 2010 not publishing correctly. Please see the Microsoft Site for more information and a workaround.
  
  
• Question: We are running WSS 3.0 on windows server 2003 and building new web and database servers. Would it be best to upgrade to Windows SharePoint Foundation and perform the Database Attach Upgrade?
  
  Answer: If you are already planning to build new web and SQL servers than you should plan to use the Database Attach or Hybrid 1 Upgrade methodology. Remember, you should still fix any errors in your existing system, make sure that SharePoint is at the right Service Pack level, and document/move any customizations before you do the upgrade.
  
  
• Question: One slide said to apply the August 2009 Cummulative Update and another said to use the October CU, can this be clarified?
  
  Answer: Sorry, there is a typo on the Pre-upgrade planning slide. Both slides should say the October 2009 CU. The updated preupgradecheck command was originally included iin the August 2009 CU, but problems with that CU were fixed and redistributed in October 2009. You should use the October 2009 CU.
  
  
• Question: Do you need Windows 2008 Enterprise if SQL Server is clustered?
  
  Answer: Yes! Microsoft does not support SQL clustering on Windows 2008 standard edition. You need either Enterprise or Datacenter. Please see the Preinstall Checklist for SQL Server clustering for details at and pay attention to the matrix table.
  
  
• Question: We are in a situation where we have upgraded to 2010 for the SharePoint server, but are still using a SQL2005 SP3 database. We will eventually build a new SQL 2008 server for the SP database. What is the best way to move the database from the old database server to the new one?
  
  Answer: This is why installing SharePoint using SQL aliases is always a best practice. If you installed 2010 using SQL aliases you can simply backup and restore all your databases to the new SQL2008 server and then just change the aliases to point at the new server. If you did not use SQL aliases then you can still move all the content databases by updating the settings in the farm that point to each content database. You can also move the config database to a new server by creating an alias that is equal to the old SQL server name that points at the new server. If you do this you must remove the old SQL server before trying to use the alias. You can find more specifics in this Technet article.
  
  
• Question: For SQL server preparation, are the requirements the same if SharePoint will run virtual (App, WFE and SQL)?
  
  Answer: You will need to pay special attention to the SQL server if you plan to virtualize, but this is true of any virtualized SQL server not just SharePoint. Please see this whitepaper for more detailed guidance. Otherwise there are no special patches or procedures that need to be followed to run SharePoint servers in a virtualized environment. They are configured the same way physical SharePoint servers are configured.
  
  
• Question: Can you talk about the upgrade process for admin IP forms?
  
  Answer: This Technet article provides information on how to upgrade InfoPath forms when doing a SharePoint 2007 to 2010 upgrade.
  
  
• Question: If the system is highly customized and the users are upgraded to Office 2010, how would you proceed?
  
  Answer: If your current SharePoint 2007 environment is highly customized you will almost certainly need to upgrade using one of the database attach methodologies. This will require identifying, updating, and moving all your customizations to the new 2010 environment. Since this can be a very complex and time consuming task I would really recommend you find a partner (e.g. ShareSquared) who has experience doing this kind of upgrade to help you. This is not the kind of upgrade you want to try on your own.
  
  
• Question: When would you suggest redeveloping the whole system with SP2010?
  
  Answer: This is a judgment call, but its essentially balancing the time required to upgrade a highly customized site versus the time required to migrate existing content to a new environment. Sometimes migration rather than upgrade is also preferred if you want to change your underlying site architecture or taxonomy. Migrating content allows for more flexibility in designing a new hierarchy and taxonomy than upgrading an existing farm will allow.
  
  
• Question: What role do you see a governance plan having and do you see that as a parallel activity or an activity to follow the actual upgrade?
  
  Answer: We would never recommend putting off creation of a governance plan until after you upgrade. As the previous
  
  Answer suggests, things in your governance plan will drive decisions on whether you upgrade the farm or migrate data to a new farm. Remember however that a governance plan should be a living document. Developing it should be part of your planning activities, but revising it should be an ongoing activity that runs in parallel with your upgrade project and long after you finish your upgrade.
  
  
• Question: Do histories like document and workflow histories come over with a Database Attach or Hybrid 1 upgrade?
  
  Answer: Yes, everything stored in the content database will be upgraded when doing an upgrade based on the Database Attach methodology. This includes workflow histories that are stored as XML in a hidden list.
  
  
• Question: What will be the best approach for migrating WSS 3.0 to SharePoint 2010, since WSS 3.0 uses SQL express?
  
  Answer: Not all installations of WSS 3.0 use SQL express. Stand-alone installations use SQL express and farm installations use full SQL server. If you are on a WSS 3.0 stand-alone environment you cannot upgrade directly to a SharePoint 2010 farm environment. The only supported upgrade path for a WSS 3.0 stand-alone environment is to upgrade to SharePoint 2010 stand-alone. If you want to upgrade to a full SharePoint 2010 farm you would first need to migrate your WSS 3.0 stand-alone environment to a WSS 3.0 farm environment. Instructions for that migration can be found here.
  
  
• Question: What is the rationale behind deprecating STPs?
  
  Answer: WSPs provide a better model for extending existing site templates using Visual Studio. Microsoft decided to drop the use of STPs for custom site templates.
  
  
• Question: Are content migration tools from Quest, Avepoint, Metalogix, etc still useful and do you see these tools being used by customers?
  
  Answer: Yes we do see these tools in use by customers, but we do not recommend one specific vendor over the others at the current time. Also as general guidance these tools can be helpful in addition to solid upgrade and farm creation practices, but cannot totally replace experience with planning, design and implementation of an upgrade from what we have observed.
  
  
• Question: What about using Alternate Access Mapping (AAM) URL Redirection as part of the Upgrade Process?
  
  Answer: If you are doing a Database Attach upgrade you cannot build live web applications on the same URLs as the existing ones in 2007. AAMs can be used either in the 2007 environment or the 2010 environment to avoid conflicts between the two environments during the upgrade process. Just remember that the default AAM is used exclusively by some processes like SQL reporting services so you will need to plan your AAMs carefully. In general it is a better approach to use network hardware and/or software for planning the migration of your URL’s.
  
  
• Question: Did I understand correctly that if I deploy a custom wsp from 2007 to 2010 that I do not have to upgrade all master pages/site definitions until I am ready for the Visual Upgrade? Will this work?
  
  Answer: This will always depend on the specific WSP involved but yes, the Visual Upgrade feature of SharePoint 2010 will allow the continued use of 2007 based master pages in an upgraded environment. However, this is only meant to be a temporary fix, not a permanent solution.
  
  
• Question: I ran the preupgrade check on our existing SP2007 farm and no issues came up. Unfortunately the new SP2010 environment has errors (Example: 0x80070005) regarding a custom template, especially in regard to publishing features. Any ideas?
  
  Answer: The preupgradecheck is not guaranteed to identify all of the issues that may prevent an upgrade. That’s why it is important to run a trial upgrade first. The preupgradecheck will identify many issues that will prevent a successful upgrade making it easier to fix those issues before moving to a trial upgrade. We would need more information to be able to troubleshoot your upgrade issue. Please feel free to contact us.
  
  
• Question: Is there already plans for a SharePoint 2013 or similar?
  
  Answer: Microsoft is already working on the next version of SharePoint but they haven’t announced an official name or timing for its release. Right now most people simply refer to it as vNext, or Office 15 / O15.
  
  
• Question: One of our customers is using SQL 2000 32-bit. To upgrade to SharePoint 2010, what should be the approach for database. Is it possible to upgrade the database from SQL 2000 32-bit to SQL Server 2008 R2 64-bit? Similarly for SharePoint Servers... Converting them to SharePoint 2007 64-bit.
  
  Answer: Yes you can update your SQL server from SQL 2000 32 bit to SQL 2008 r2 64 bit (assuming the hardware meets all the requirements for SQL 2008 r2). You can also update the OS on the SharePoint servers. This would be a pre-requisite for an In-Place Upgrade.
  
  
• Question: Does the site collection in SP2010 work the same way it is in 2007?
  
  Answer: Although SharePoint 2010 has a lot of new features and functionality the basics of a SharePoint site collection are still the same.
  
  
• Question: Is there any tool available to take care of custom list views?
  
  Answer: We are not aware of any 3rd party tool that will directly upgrade custom list views from 2007 to 2010.