Upgrading to SharePoint 2010 : Performing an In-Place Upgrade (part 2) - Configuring the In-Place Upgrade

6/13/2011 9:33:05 AM

2. Configuring the In-Place Upgrade

After performing the in-place upgrade, you can begin the configuration. In this phase, you will see major differences in the prompts that are presented to you and what configuration tasks are performed when compared to an installation. You will find that you perform substantially fewer tasks during an upgrade than during a complete installation.

Note:

You can choose to clear the Run The SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard Now check box on this page and begin the Configuration Wizard graphical interface at a later time. You can start the Configuration Wizard by executing the Psconfigui.exe file located in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN directory.

Click Close on the Run Configuration Wizard page of the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard (or when you run Psconfigui.exe). You are presented with the Configuration Wizard Upgrade Welcome page, shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. SharePoint Upgrade Welcome page
Click Next on the Configuration Upgrade Welcome page, and you will see the page shown in Figure 10 , indicating that the installation may require the restart of these three services: Internet Information Services, SharePoint Administration Service V4, and SharePoint Timer Service V4. This should not present issues for your SharePoint users, because the in-place upgrade already requires that no SharePoint users be connected during the upgrade process. However, if your server is currently serving other websites, then restarting the Web services will disrupt services, which may be unacceptable during certain time periods. If this is the case, you’ll need to perform this upgrade during off-hours.

Figure 10. Configuration Wizard Service Restart page
A new option during the installation of SharePoint 2010 is the request for a passphrase, as shown in Figure 11 . This passphrase is used to encrypt SharePoint configuration information and is also required when adding or removing servers from the farm. This is a critical password and should be documented and secured for future farm configurations. This password can be changed using Windows PowerShell, so as a reminder, you want to limit the number of users who have farm administration permissions. Enter the passphrase and confirm it by entering it a second time. Then click Next.

Figure 11. Enter a passphrase on the Specify Farm Security Settings page.
You will see the Visual Upgrade options page, as shown in Figure 12 . This allows you to choose whether the site owners, site collection administrators, or farm administrators can change to the new SharePoint 2010 interface at a later date. This reduces the anxiety of your SharePoint users about having to adapt to a new environment overnight. This default setting gives site owners and administrators more control over the look and feel of the sites by providing more of a gradual upgrade approach to SharePoint 2010.
Note:

New sites that are created after an upgrade has completed will automatically use the new SharePoint 2010 interface. Only sites that existed prior to the upgrade will have the option to upgrade the user interface at a later date.

Alternatively, the administrator can choose to upgrade to the new user interface immediately after the upgrade to SharePoint 2010 completes. Furthermore, if the administrator decides to perform the user interface upgrade during the upgrade process, she can also choose to retain any custom pages that have been deployed or remove custom pages by resetting them back to their original templates.

Figure 12. Visual Upgrade options page
Click Next. The last screen of the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, shown in Figure 13 , presents you with summary information about the associated SharePoint SQL database server and the name of the SharePoint configuration database that is going to be upgraded to SharePoint 2010.
Note:

After you run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, SharePoint Server 2007 will no longer be available. You cannot pause or roll back this upgrade process. Always be sure you back up your environment before you perform an upgrade to SharePoint 2010.

Figure 13. Completing the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard
Click Next on the Completing the Upgrade Configuration Wizard page. You then will see an informational message displayed, as shown in Figure 22-19 . This message reminds you that each server in the farm has to run the same SharePoint products and patches before you perform the upgrade to SharePoint 2010. It also reminds you to run both Setup.exe and the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard on each server in your farm to complete the farm upgrade.
Note:

Setup.exe has to be run on all farm servers prior to running the SharePoint Products And Technologies Configuration Wizard on the server hosting Central Administration. This is not obvious from the information given in the dialog box shown in Figure 14 . Only click OK in this dialog box if you have run Setup.exe on all servers in the farm, or if you are running a single-server farm.

Figure 14. SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard Upgrade reminder message

During the upgrade process, a page similar to the one shown in Figure 15 will display to provide you with information on the progress of the upgrade. Ten tasks are performed during the upgrade process, and this screen keeps you abreast of the status of these tasks.
After the 10 tasks have been completed, you will see a message that tells you the farm configuration has been successfully updated, as shown in Figure 16. However, the server farm upgrade has not finished. The SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard actually creates a timer job that continues to perform the upgrade of your content and service databases and site. This upgrade process is performed on each individual content database and site collections sequentially, causing it to take more time to complete. Click Finish and then the Upgrade Status page from within Central Administration will display, providing you with information about the upgrade. This page automatically refreshes every 60 seconds to keep you current on the progress of the upgrade.

Figure 15. The SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard upgrade progress interface

Figure 16. Successful Configuration screen

Note:

If you want to view the Upgrade Status page after closing it, you can open the page from the home page of Central Administration by clicking Check Upgrade Status. For more detailed information, you can view the upgrade logs located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS. The title of the log file will begin with Upgrade and it will have a timestamp naming convention.

3. Performing a Hybrid Upgrade Approach

A hybrid approach combines an in-place upgrade with the process of detaching and attaching databases to allow you to upgrade multiple databases at the same time—and possibly even on separate hardware—while still preserving some settings. You use this approach to simultaneously upgrade multiple content databases, thereby completing the upgrade more quickly than a standard in-place upgrade. These hybrid upgrades use the following upgrade techniques.

Detach and upgrade multiple databases in parallel.
Perform an in-place upgrade on your farm and settings.

3.1. Hybrid Approach 1: Read-Only Databases

When you choose to use a read-only databases hybrid upgrade approach, your users will continue to have access to their SharePoint content, but they will be unable to make changes to the content during the upgrade. This approach minimizes the perceived downtime while you are upgrading to a new farm. This approach also allows you to move to different hardware and to perform multiple content database upgrades in parallel.

The hybrid upgrade does require you to manually transfer settings and customizations to the new farm, however. It also can make your content outdated if the upgrade takes too long. The size of your content databases will have a major impact on how long the upgrade process will take for each database.

3.2. Hybrid Approach 2: Detach Databases

When you perform an upgrade using a detach databases hybrid approach, you detach your databases during the upgrade. You perform the following two steps in SQL Server.

Detach your content databases prior to running Setup.exe.
Attach your content databases after running the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.

This approach allows you to perform an in-place upgrade of your farm settings as well as all customizations. However, because you are detaching the databases, you are able to upgrade multiple databases at one time. In this approach, be aware that you must not allow users to access SharePoint content during the upgrade. The size of your content databases will have a major impact on how long the upgrade process will take for each database.

Both of these hybrid approaches have some advantages and disadvantages, but they do provide you with an opportunity to expand on the two primary upgrade options available. The upgrade approach you choose will depend on what your upgrade requirements are and whether or not your current farm meets the minimum hardware and software requirements.

4. Upgrading from SharePoint Portal Server 2003

You may need to upgrade a Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 environment to SharePoint 2010. Although there is not a direct path to complete this upgrade, it can be done using a two-stage process.

First, you must upgrade SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint Server 2007.
Then, you can upgrade SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint 2010.

This is a great time to utilize the option of upgrading to SharePoint 2010 using the user-copy-only method and restructuring your SharePoint farm by exporting the information out of SharePoint 2003 and importing it into a newly designed SharePoint 2010 farm.

This process will require more planning and effort to ensure that you have a successful and safe upgrade. Most SharePoint 2003 environments probably aren’t installed on the required hardware or software that SharePoint 2010 requires. This often means that you have to build a new farm with SharePoint 2010 that meets the hardware and software requirements.

The following steps would be required to upgrade from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint 2010.

Prepare for the upgrade from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2010.
1. Prepare your SharePoint 2003 farm by running the pre-upgrade checker tool and documenting all of the discovered customizations.
2. Build a temporary SharePoint Server 2007 farm.
3. Build and configure your full SharePoint 2010 farm.
Upgrade SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint Server 2007.
1. Detach the SharePoint 2003 content databases from the farm and take the farm offline.
  Note:
  
  Alternatively, you can leave the databases attached but make a copy of the them so that you can quickly roll back to the original farm if necessary.
2. Attach the SharePoint 2003 content databases to the SharePoint Server 2007 farm and upgrade them.
3. Verify that the SharePoint 2003 content databases have been correctly upgraded and that the SharePoint Server 2007 farm is functioning properly. Be sure everything is working correctly here before upgrading to SharePoint 2010!
Upgrade SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint 2010.
1. Detach the SharePoint Server 2007 content databases from the farm.
2. Attach the SharePoint Server 2007 content databases to the SharePoint 2010 farm and upgrade them. (To expedite the upgrade, perform multiple database upgrades in parallel.)
3. Verify that the SharePoint Server 2007 content databases have been correctly upgraded and that the SharePoint 2010 farm is functioning properly.

These several upgrade scenarios should encompass most upgrades to SharePoint 2010 that you will encounter. Only you can decide which one will work best for your organization. However, the preferred method is to perform a database attach upgrade.