Migration phases

- [Instructor] There are four phases to upgrading to SharePoint Server 2016. Within each phase there are some steps that we have to perform, but before we can do any of these steps, whether you're in SharePoint 2013 or 2016, you have to be a Farm Administrator. So make sure you have the appropriate permissions before you start anything. Our very first phase is to create the SharePoint 2016 Farm, and after we've done that we're going to copy the databases from the SharePoint Server 2013 Farm to the SharePoint 2016 Farm.

We're then going to upgrade our service applications, and then we're going to upgrade the content databases and our site collections. Remember they have to be SharePoint 2016. I'm going to break these down into individual steps for you to make this process a little bit simpler. In the very first step we're going to create the SharePoint 2016 Farm, which means we need to go out and we need to install SharePoint Server 2016. We've already talked about the hardware and software requirements so you should be pretty comfortable with performing that step.

We're then going to configure the service applications that we're going to use in SharePoint Server 2016. And then we're going to configure the farm settings. Remember, earlier on in the course we talked about taking an inventory, auditing, jotting down the settings that you have at the farm level so you can reapply them to SharePoint 2016. Now that your SharePoint 2016 Farm is build you can start applying those farm configuration settings that you jotted down. These are the three steps we'll use to create the SharePoint 2016 Farm.

We're going to create our upgradable service applications as well. We're going to create the BDC, or the Business Data Connectivity service, our managed metadata service, PerformancePoint, Search, and Secure Store. All of these are service applications that are upgradable. Notice the machine translation service is not listed here. That one's not upgradable. You need to just recreate that particular service. We'll then go in and we'll configure our farm settings. We talked about these, the incoming and outgoing email settings, farm-level security and permissions.

And then we're going to look at blocked file types. Remember, we can have specific file types blocked per web app. I often see my sites blocking MP3s and WMVs and AVIs. So those, don't become dumping grounds for pictures of your cats and your dogs, and videos of your cats and dogs. So we'll reapply any blocked file types that we had. We'll look at the usage and health data collection configuration settings, specifically the location of those, as well as diagnostic logging.

If we altered those compared to the out-of-the-box settings that we had in 2013, we're going to want to do the same in 2016. One of the big things we do here is take those off the C Drive, because by default those are in the C Drive, and we know that's a bad thing. So this is where we'll configure our farm settings. In our second phase we're going to copy our databases that we backed up from the SharePoint 2013 SQL Server instance to our new farm. This is a four step process. We're going to begin by setting those databases to read-only because we don't want to make a copy of the database in SharePoint 2013 and then people having the rights to continue to update that content, because when we move the content over to 2016, they're going to be out of sync.

So we're going to put those babies in read-only. Then we're going to back up the databases using SQL Server Tools, very straightforward backup. Then we'll copy and restore the databases to the SharePoint 2016 Farm. And then we'll set the restored databases to read-write so when we migrate our users over to SharePoint 2016 they'll be able to access and update the content as they should. We're going to see that step three in action in the demo later on in this module. Phase three is to upgrade our service applications.

In here we're going to start the service instances of each of our service applications. Step two is to create our service application. Then we'll create proxies for these service applications so they can communicate with the web applications. Then we're going to verify the proxies are in the default proxy group, or if you've created a custom group you'll need to create that custom proxy group, and make sure the appropriate service applications are in that custom proxy group.

During this process of service upgrades we're going to use PowerShell Commands. Notice they're all new PowerShell Commands. They're not new as in new for SharePoint Server 2016, but all of them except for the very last one begin with new. For instance, New SP Secure Store, Business Data Catalog, Metadata Service, Profile Service, Performance Point Service. However, when we're working with the search service we use a restore option instead of a new option.

So just be aware of these PowerShell Commands because you're going to want to use these as you complete the migration. Finally, we're going to take a look at upgrading the content databases and site collections. To do so, we have to begin by creating our web apps in a SharePoint Server 2016 Farm. We reapply all the customizations for the web apps. We attach the first content database to a web app. The first content database that needs to be attached is the one that contains the root site collection. So if you have a half a dozen databases associated with a web app you need to locate the database that contains the root site collection, attach that one first, and then you can complete the remaining five attachments of the databases to SQL Server and you'll be able to access that content from inside a SharePoint Server 2016.

So the big thing to be aware of up here is to attach the content database that contains the root site collection first. When you're using the attach process, you're going to use two commands. Optionally you can run a Test-SPContentDatabase. That just does a quick check to find out if the database is available or is ready to be upgraded to SharePoint Server 2016. There's not any customizations, there's not any site collections still hanging out in SharePoint 2010 that we need to upgrade prior to bringing it over to SharePoint 2016.

So you may want to run that against the databases before you attach them. And then when you're ready to attach the database to SharePoint 2016 you're going to use this PowerShell here called Mount-SPContentDatabase. Not only does it mount and attach it to SQL Server, it also performs the upgrade to SharePoint 2016 from SharePoint 2013. So it's not going to be a simple attach that you perform through the SQL Server management studio. You're going to want to use the PowerShell Command Mount-SPContentDatabase.

So let's take a look at how we can attach a content database from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016.