I recently had the pleasure of updating a client's SharePoint
Portal Server 2003 environment to Microsoft Office SharePoint
Server 2007. If any of you have evern upgraded a SharePoint
environment, you know that it's hit or miss - I've had some
upgrades go without an issue, and I've had some that have resulted
in hours of troubleshooting... I dare say I have even had to call
Microsoft for their support on occcasion - every upgrade is
different.
This particular upgrade went very smoothly, and below are a few
pointers to follow to ensure yours does, too.
1. Take an inventory of your site collections, their sites, and
their web parts. This will come in handy for testing after your
upgrade is complete.
2. For custom web parts, be sure to find comparable web parts
written in .NET 2.0 (this may mean custom development for those web
parts written in-house). We have used Bamboo Solutions for
many of our standard web parts (they have some excellent
roll-up web parts available)... definitely check them out.
<plug>Did I mention that we also develop custom web parts? Check us out,
too.</plug>
3. Create an account in Active Directory that has administrative
priveledges that you will use to run all MOSS 2007 related services
as well as for database access.
4. When creating your MOSS 2007 databases, use a consistent naming
convention on all databases... in other words, don't use all
default names. This is what I typically use in my installs - feel
free to use them.
- MOSS_MySite_Content - content database for the
personalized sites.
- MOSS_WSS_Content - content database for all of your
portal sites that was migrated/upgraded from the SPS 2003
environment.
- MOSS_SharePoint_Config - config database for the
Central Administration site.
- MOSS_SSP_Content - the content database for the sites
associated with the Shared Service Provider.
- MOSS_SSP_DB - this is the config database for your
Shared Service Provider.
- MOSS_SSP_SEARCH_DB - search database that stores the
indexed content from the Shared Service Provider content
sites.
- MOSS_WSS_SEARCH - search database that stores the
indexed content from the portal sites.
4. Pay attention to the PreScan and research any warnings and
definitely errors. A little leg-work up-front can keep you from
spending many hours troubleshooting an unsuccessful upgrade.
5. Back up every SPS 2003 database in case of catastrophe.
6. Use the Database Migration method if at all possible... The
In-Place and Gradual upgrades are incredibly risky due to their
being performed on live data. The Database Migration method allows
both SPS 2003 and MOSS 2007 environments to run side-by-side so
comparisons can be made between the two.
7. If using the Database Migration method, set your SPS 2003
content database to Read Only after running the PreScan (setting it
to Read Only before the PreScan will cause the PreScan to fail).
This allows users to still view their SPS 2003 sites and keeps them
from adding/updating content in your live envinroment as you
perform the upgrade.
8. After the upgrade is complete, check each of the sites that you
inventoried in tip #1, paying close attention to the security
settings in each - MOSS 2007 will upgrade the Security Groups you
had in your SPS 2003 environment, but verify your users have the
appropriate access to their sites.
As I stated before, every upgrade is different - if you
customized your SPS 2003 environment, you may hit a few snags but
following my tips will keep you organized, prepared for disaster
recovery, and help lead you to a successful upgrade.