Migrating from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft released the SharePoint Server 2010 beta recently. Also Microsoft states that migration process from SharePoint 2007 to 2010 is fairly easy and straightforward, however as far as my knowledge goes migration process from SharePoint 2003 to 2007 is difficult and painful with several incompatible elements to be dealt with.

The SharePoint 2007 site presented in this blog is using Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit (which is minimum requirement for SharePoint 2010) with SQL Server 2008 Express Edition 64-bit as underlying operating system and database.

First, let's look at the SharePoint 2007 site we migrate. For this demonstration I created a simple MOSS 2007 Enterprise environment based on the Collaboration template, which contains some generic web parts we'll test on SharePoint 2010, Document Center and Search Center. I setup and double checked the search, because I wonder if the migrated SharePoint would be able to use the search database crawled in the previous, 2007 version of SharePoint. Search is an important issue for migrating SharePoint installations with large amount of data where a full crawl of the content may take weeks.

Now, install SharePoint Server 2010 right on the existing installation. In the Setup window, we can view the server requirements, installation guide etc. We will skip this part and proceed straight to the Installation.

First we need to install software prerequisites. We may already have all required components since we are already running MOSS 2007, but to be sure, we'll go select this option.

The preparation tool window that launches checks our server for the required components, and installs them if needed. The components that will be updated are:

• Application Server Role and IIS Role
• SQL Server 2008 Native Client
• Microsoft "Geneva" Framework Runtime
• Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0
• Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET

Let's open the preparation tool. After reading the short tool description and accepting the terms, the preparation tool will start updating the server immediately.

After successful configuration, the summary screen will be displayed and the tool will likely request a  reboot of the system.

When Finish button is clicked the system will reboot automatically. After the reboot, the Preparation Tool launches again and finishes the rest of the steps. Now our system is ready to install SharePoint Server 2010, so select that option from the setup pane.

We will be prompted to enter the license key (which is necessary even when SharePoint 2010 is in Beta):

After the key we have to read and accept license terms. Next screen advise that MOSS 2007 was detected.

As advised in the above screen we need to run the stsadm command now to ensure our intranet can be successfully migrated. Open cmd.exe console in administrator mode.

Navigate to the MOSS 2007 Bin Directory, which is located by default at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin directory.

Enter stsadm -o preupgradecheck. This command does  not perform any repairs, but \only checks for and reports issues with possible solutions to apply before the migration. As the command executes we will see the output continuously displayed on the screen with different status notifications. In this check, some notifications were "Aborted due to internal error". We will ignore this for now as the overall check was successful.

The browser will then open  to display the html document with the summary of the output and details of every issue. As all components passed the test  we are ready for the migration.

Go back to our SharePoint Server 2010 Setup window and click the Install Now button.

After the installation, we'll see the final screen where we are informed that we must launch the SharePoint configuration wizard in order to update our content to latest SharePoint version.

Click Close to run SharePoint Configuration wizard. If you were expecting a wizard similar to the SharePoint 2007 wizard, you will be disappointed . We have now entirely new environment for Sharepoint 2010 version and hence a new Configuration Wizard.

Click Next, and the below warning will be shown:

Click Yes and we will see a new feature of Sharepoint 2010  -  Farm Passphrase.

The Farm Passphrase will prevent server administrators from changing any data in  our SharePoint 2010 installation when no password is provided. Administrations won't be able to use content or configuration databases even if  full database backups are obtained. Enter a password and continue with the configuration.

The next step is the Visual Upgrade.

Here we decide the look and feel of the SharePoint site. You can upgrade all your farm to the SharePoint 2010 design right now. However we will not do this in this demonstration in order to be sure that everything will run fine in 2010 before modifying the design. SharePoint Server 2010 allow me to preview the look and feel of sites before switching to the new SharePoint design, so  select "Preserve the look and feel of existing SharePoint sites" option, which will maintain the original SharePoint Server 2007 design.