KCOG October Meeting: Upgrading Sharepoint (2007 to 2010)

After my fourth day of training in SQL Server 2005 (at the New Horizons Computer Learning Center in the Metro South Mall in Overland Park), I stayed in the area to attend the October meeting of KCOG (Kansas City Office Geeks) held at yet another training facility (Centriq on State Line Road).

The presenter was Karthik Venkataraman of Rishi Solutions and he gave a short presentation and demo on upgrading SharePoint 2007 to 2010.  The demo failed (of course) because the prerequisites for upgrading are steep, including Windows 2008 64-bit along with MOSS 2007 SP2.

The most promising avenue of upgrade I witnessed was the Database Attach method.  This may coincide with our plans at work to stand up brand new servers (especially since 64-bit architecture is required) and re-install/re-configure OneView in parallel with our production SharePoint system.  A second learning/preparing step includes running the command STSADM -o preupgradecheck on the 2007 system and documenting all your customizations (especially those that do NOT reside in the database, but rather live in the file system on your SharePoint server).

The basic steps for the Database Attached method include:

  • Backup and Restore your SharePoint database (using a different name for the restored copy, so you don’t overwrite, unless you literally intend to detach/attach to a different SQL Server)
  • Run PowerShell command: Test-SPContentDatabase on an empty web app in SharePoint 2010 and fix issues.  (basically, you setup new servers and install SharePoint 2001 new, then create a web app but do NOT create a site collection)
  • After fixing the issues reported from the last command, run either STSADM -o addcontentdb (with appropriate command line switches for your SharePoint database) or the PowerShell command Mount-SPContentDatabase

The list above is not comprehensive so please do your research (learn and prepare) and test, test, test!

And don’t forget the five steps to any upgrade process:  Learn, Prepare, Test (the most important step), Implement and Validate.

It will be several months before I get to learn this method in a test environment, but I’m so looking forward to SharePoint 2010.