Migration from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 Summary This paper provides an overview of the SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 migration and highlights the KPIT- SYSTIME migration approach. The document encompasses various migration activities, challenges and user adoption for SharePoint 2010. Organizations can leverage SharePoint 2010 capabilities to improve their productivity, reduce the risk, reduce the cost, and improve business efficiency by defining a proper migration strategy. KPIT SYSTIME methodology can help organizations deliver these benefits by migrating to SharePoint 2010
Why SharePoint Migration? Many organizations are planning to upgrade their applications from SharePoint Server 2007 to its revised and improved version SharePoint 2010. The key reason being the number of documents that can be stored and displayed in a library, the sites and index capability and most important the scalability of SharePoint 2010 compared to SharePoint 2007. SharePoint 2010 as a platform has some key business drivers for migration as mentioned below Increase in the Database Size Segregation of Services for better performance Increased Traffic due to office and LOB integration Business productivity platform for the enterprise and the internet Improved interoperability Easy integration with external services, Read / Write to LOB System, Active Directory Better collaboration and information sharing capabilities Full cross-browser compatibility Mac + iphone + ipad Cloud Support Significantly improved administration health monitoring, logging Improving business process efficiency Improve information control Improve operational efficiency Improve effectiveness of the existing workforce Better Manage content across business/organizations Many organizations would like leverage these capabilities by migrating existing applications to SharePoint 2010. Using SharePoint 2010 capabilities organizations can improve their productivity and co-connect with their employees in relatively easier and cost effective way Preparing for SharePoint Migration Organizations have to decide their SharePoint migration strategy based on its key priorities. Organizations have to think on the information they need, how it can be used and how they reduce the migration risk before they migrate any applications to the new SharePoint environment. They have to first decide on the content they migrate, allowing for a step by step approach, instead of migrating the entire content at once. The relevant governance structure needs to be in place for the content owners to decide how the content can be organized and structured for successful migration. The content owners are trained, aware and accountable as part of the migration process. This not only enables the organizations to have the required buy-in from the content owners but also reduces the risk from the IT
team perspective. While Governance model is quite important for the execution of the migration the organization has to take into account the architecture considerations, topology, OS, database, capacity planning and scalability have to be considered. In addition to the above changes the below factors /parameters needs to be considered for the migration Hardware requirements Software requirements for SharePoint and client upgrades Farm Architecture Capacity planning and scalability Governance Communication Plan User Adoption Before considering any of the approaches Microsoft provides pre-upgrade checker to analyze the existing SharePoint 2007 for any customizations, changes in schemas or any other issues associated within it. The pre-upgrade checker provides information on the URL mapping, customizations that are not supported, configurations issues, orphan databases and whether the system requirements meet the expectations. The Organizations have to choose their upgrade approach, backup the existing databases, services that impact, clean up the content and test the upgrade farm to identify or address the issues arise. Challenges One of the biggest challenges you ll face is moving the content from one platform or version to another. Following are some of the challenges one might face during migration. 1. Migration of large list with unique permission set for each item or set of items 2. Migration of custom list views 3. Migrating manually added content types, custom templates 4. Rebranding site collections using SharePoint 2010 master pages 5. Challenge in querying list which exceeds the defined threshold limits. 6. Challenge in opening word documents with metadata in Older version of MS Office (Office 2003) 7. Challenge in migrating workflows, workflow states and configuration data 8. Migration of multilingual content and managing variations 9. Migration of Search Service Providers KPIT-SYSTIME migration methodology defines a clear strategy to overcome these challenges by doing proof of concept and defining the approach well in advance rather than finding a solution after migration. It also pre-tests the migration on test farm before moving to production.
KPIT-SYSTIME Migration Approach KPIT SYSTIME has defined a phased approach that comprises of four phases as illustrated in below figure. During these phases we analyze, execute, launch and stabilize the SharePoint environment. Envision Phase During this first phase KPIT analyzes or assesses the existing environment to provide a suitable approach for migration. Envision phase is the key decision making process to consider factors such as: Present business requirements & Usage Current deployment environment Content types & size to be migrated Applications size & complexity - POCs Tools and Technologies Effort Estimates The assessment report would consist of the server details, list details, services and list of all servers and components in the farm, configuration settings, Customizations in the farm that are not supported, site definitions, site templates, features, and language packs that are installed in the farm and whether the servers meet requirements for upgrading OS, Application Servers, Web Front-end and Database Servers. The size of databases for calculating the migration upgrades process time. This helps in understanding the application complexity, scope, the required PoC s on the test environment, tools and technologies required for migration, estimation, planning and defining a Governance plan in the
subsequent phase. While there approaches to migration, testing is the way to determine the time, speed by using the real-time data Prepare Phase During this phase we do the physical server implementation, pre-check of the existing environment and build development, staging and production environments. The entire process for executing the migration is prepared within this phase. The below factors needs to be considered during the planning phase Architecture design Test Strategy and Test plans Installation of the SharePoint and Office Environment Governance Structure In this phase the OS upgrade, database upgrade would be determined for the SharePoint migration. This phase is to ensure that common pit falls would be avoided like not defining a proper governance structure or policies, scalability, backups, restoring the environment, change management for future OS or database upgrades, information lifecycle and environment for virtual and physical test farms to replicate the exact environment. Build & Test Before we start running any upgrade process, you need to determine which upgrade approach to take. The order of steps would vary for the various approaches as per the customer requirements. While organizations can use various techniques for upgrading or migrating to SharePoint 2010 it is in the best interest of the customer to compare the pros and cons during the architecture assessment for each upgrade. The SharePoint functionality provides three approaches In-Place Upgrade Approach Database Upgrade Approach Hybrid Approach (Combination of In-Place and Database) During build phase we upgrade the SharePoint Environment and the customizations on the new SharePoint environment using on one of the approaches. This is key stage to ensure that minimum downtime is maintained we should use automated scripts, tools or reusable components to accelerate the migration process. While there are ways to mitigate the downtime by following the recommendations of the pre-upgrade checker like cleaning the content, splitting databases, the upgrade process is entirely dependent on the server performance, size, and number of applications and
effectiveness of the testing. The upgrade logs will help analyze any potential issues. Organizations generally encounter issues in user interface, data challenges for connectivity, permissions and authentication. Many of the permissions, reconfiguring of services, UI links, and search crawling are configured in this phase. During this process KPIT would use the Application migration process and content Migration process to migrate the SharePoint content into the new environment. The below factors needs to considered for this phase Provide similar interface on the new environment Customize only to the extend need to support the 64-bit SharePoint environment Minimum downtime through effective testing SharePoint Adoption Application Migration Process Content Migration Process 1. Understand & document the existing SharePoint 2007 application. Enables SharePoint developer to produce a unit test case document. 2. Import existing SharePoint 2007 wsp package. This will create a new Visual Studio 2010 project with imported features from the existing wsp package. 3. Verify the newly created VS 2010 project against the existing features available in SharePoint 2007 project. Enables SharePoint developer to modify the newly created project to add missing features based on 1. Verification of the environment that needs to be upgraded to meet the minimum requirements. Pre-upgrade checker. 2. Back up and then restore each contentspecific and implementation-specific database that will be upgraded to SharePoint Server 2010. 3. This step includes applying configuration settings for the new environment and applying the upgrade for each applicable content database.
certain conditions. 4. Take help of Feature & Package wizard of newly created solution to identify if we are missing any files in the new package. If there are any missing files, this step will help to add those missing files. 5. Imported and modified 2010 wsp will be debugged to find any issues / bugs and functionality will be verified against the test cases created in step 1 4. In this step up gradation of Shared Service Provider will be done as SSP is no longer supported in SharePoint 2010. Apply various Multilingual and variation settings 5. Up gradation of master pages, page layouts, web parts, user controls. Addition of new SP 2010 capabilities. Configure Governance capabilities such as resource throttling, quota template settings etc. Stabilize and Deploy In last phase of the migration, we would validate the SharePoint environment and the portal solution that has been deployed onto the new environment and would test the application with business users and IT team on the technical aspects and functionality, for final closure. The final validation of the environment and applications are done in this phase before deployment. In this phase the customization like WSP, UI, and security are all verified before deployment. Conclusion Using SharePoint 2010 capabilities organizations can improve their productivity, co-connect with their employees and also provide business value. SharePoint 2010 provides enhanced capability and scalability compared to SharePoint 2007. Organization planning for SharePoint 2010 migration needs to identify the challenges, mitigate risks, before they plan the migration on to SharePoint 2010 It is very important for organizations to move to SharePoint 2010 to the changing business needs. KPIT SYSTIME methodology can help organizations deliver these benefits by migrating to SharePoint 2010
About the Author The author, Venkata Krishna Kona is a SharePoint Solution Architect at KPIT Cummins and part of the Microsoft Center of Excellence. He has significant experience in Collaboration on various platforms including Microsoft SharePoint, Lotus Notes and open source software s. He is passionate about solving business problems through technology. About KPIT Cummins KPIT Cummins Infosystems Limited (BSE: 532400; NSE: KPIT), a trusted global IT Consulting and product engineering partner, is focused on co-innovating domain intensive technology solutions for Manufacturing and Energy & Utilities corporations to help customers become efficient, integrated and innovative enterprises. A leader in technology solutions and services, KPIT Cummins currently partners with 100+ global manufacturing corporations including Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), semiconductor companies and Tier 1s, helping them globalize efficiently & bring complex technology products/ systems faster to their global markets.