SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007 pre-migration tasks

About the book: This chapter excerpt on upgrading and deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (download PDF) is taken from the book MCTS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-630. The book covers topics that solutions providers are expected to know, including configuring content management and managing business intelligence.

Verifying migration prerequisites

The following are the four prerequisites to performing a 2003 to 2007 upgrade migration:

• All the web and application server computers you plan to use must be running some version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1, including the following:

• Standard
• Enterprise
• Datacenter
• Web Edition

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 must be installed on all your server computers.
• Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 must be enabled on all your server computers.
• SharePoint Portal Server 2003 must have SP2 applied.

In Chapter 2, refer to Exercise 2.1, "Installing and Configuring IIS," and Exercise 2.2, "Enabling ASP.NET 2.0," to address these prerequisites. You can find information about how to download and install .NET Framework 3.0 at the following location: http://www .microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F525634C3BF043&displaylang=en.

Performing a complete backup

This probably goes without saying, but to be safe I'll say it anyway. Before performing any major maintenance task and certainly before performing a platform upgrade migration, you must perform a complete backup of all affected systems. In this case, that means performing a complete backup of your current SharePoint 2003 environment.

See Chapter 14, "Performing Advanced SharePoint Management," to review standard SharePoint backup and restore procedures. Of course the procedures in Chapter 14 only apply to backup and restore for MOSS 2007, not SharePoint Server 2003.

The complete backup is part of your rollback plan and acts as a fail safe so that you can restore your 2003 production environment should anything go wrong with the migration. You will test your backup and rollback process on your test lab SharePoint 2003 environment before ever touching your production system because you will want to make sure the rollback process is working as required, even if your test lab migration from 2003 to 2007 goes without a hitch. Using the SharePoint 2003 backup utility will generate the necessary backup, but make sure all your databases, site definitions, customized websites, and so forth, are backed up before proceeding with the migration in both your lab and production environments.

After performing the backup in your test environment, perform a complete restore, and then completely test the lab platform to make sure that all the features and elements in SharePoint 2003 work the same way after the restore process.

Running a pre-upgrade scan

About the author: James Pyles is an experienced instructor and is currently a technical writer for EmergeCore Networks. He has participated in numerous installations of hardware, operating systems and wireless LANs and has authored many training materials and books, including PC Technicians Street Smarts: A Real World Guide to CompTIA A+ Skills.

Microsoft has developed pre-upgrade scan tools for a number of its software systems, including Windows Server 2003, so that you can scan your current system and receive a list of any outstanding issues that may inhibit a smooth upgrade migration before actually beginning the upgrade. SharePoint 2007 contains such a tool, but to use it to scan SharePoint 2003 you have to install SharePoint 2007 first. This seems like a catch-22 situation, but there's a way around it; in fact, you have it in your hands.

To run the scan utility on SharePoint 2003, you need only two files contained in SharePoint 2007: prescan.exe and preupgradescanconfig.xml. Both files are in your current lab installation in the following directory: C:program filescommon filesmicrosoft sharedweb server extensions12bin.

Just select Start, Run, paste this path in the Run box, and click OK. When the directory opens, copy the two files to a location where you can find them again when you need them. If you were a SharePoint administrator in a production environment, you could install a trial copy of SharePoint Server 2007 on a computer and extract the files as I've just described, without having to actually install 2007 on a 2003 machine in order to run the preupgrade scan tool. When you are ready to run the scan in SharePoint 2003, copy the two files onto the 2003 machine, and run prescan.exe.

You might have to run this utility more than once. In the first scan, you may find issues you need to address. Once you've performed the corrective actions, run the scan again to make sure everything shows as resolved. This is a command-line utility, so if you want to scan all your websites under 2003, you'll need to use the /allswitch after the prescan command, as in the following example:

C:prescan tool folder>prescan /c preupgradescanconfig.xml /all

You can also specify a particular site by using the /v URL switch. If you use no switch at all, the utility will scan all sites by default.

Planning a SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007 migration
  SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007 pre-migration tasks
  Determining a SharePoint Server 2007 upgrade migration plan
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Printed with permission from Wiley Publishing Inc. Copyright 2008. MCTS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-630 by James Pyles. For more information about this title and other similar books, please visit http://www.wiley.com.