Migrating From Legacy Sharepoint Environments
Assessing Your Current Environment
Conducting a thorough assessment of your current SharePoint environment is crucial before planning a migration. This includes identifying key details like version number, activated features, custom solutions, and third-party integrations.
Evaluating version, features, customizations
Document the specific SharePoint edition, version number, build number, and patch level. This determines upgrade paths and feature support options. Examine activated service applications like Excel Services, Visio Services, Managed Metadata Service, and Search Service. Catalog all active SharePoint features at the farm, web app, site collection, and site level. Inventory all custom solutions including workflows, event receivers, custom web parts, custom master pages, and JavaScript/CSS modifications. Reference the capabilities and limitations of your environment’s components to shape migration planning.
Identifying integrations and dependencies
Itemize SharePoint connections with external systems like DMS, ERP, CRM, and ecommerce. Investigate how cloud services like Azure AD, OneDrive, and Office 365 assets interact with on-prem farms. Document dependent infrastructure like load balancers, reverse proxies, distributed caches, and dedicated SQL servers. Outline how custom PHP, .NET solutions, PowerShell scripts, and VB/C# solutions integrate. Define how third-party add-ons like migration tools, backup utilities, and administration consoles connect. Understanding integration touch points helps anticipate post-upgrade testing and troubleshooting.
Documenting content and site structure
Record an exhaustive examination of your content databases, site collections, sites, lists, libraries, list items, documents, pages, and site assets. Produce a site hierarchy detailing permission levels, ownership, metadata thresholds, and inventory specialized libraries. Quantify user-generated content like community threads, wikis, blogs, and comments across the farm. Estimating the scope and density of materials to shift aids migration scheduling, validations testing, and cutover planning.
Planning Your Migration Strategy
Outlining a migration plan optimized for your SharePoint edition, on-prem topology, uptime requirements, and resource availability is key for minimizing business disruption. Fundamental decisions like in-place vs. database attach require thorough analysis when charting your migration approach.
Choosing between in-place upgrade vs. database attach upgrade
In-place upgrades retain existing content databases, config databases, IIS sites, file system resources, and some farm settings. Database attach methods provision new SharePoint farms and attach copies of patched content databases. Factor in upgrade support for your SharePoint edition, uptime mandates, maintenance windows, and server lift-and-shift options when selecting migration technique. Consult Microsoft documentation concretely outlining upgrade sequences, steps and best practices. Contrast pros and cons of each method regarding complexity, risk, downtime, and rollback provisions.
Setting realistic timeline and phases
Construct a project plan identifying key tasks, durations, prerequisites, resources, and contingencies based on your environmental complexity, upgrade approach, team skill sets and availability. Schema patch, pre-upgrade check, site collection upgrade, and production cutover require thoughtful scheduling for success. Assign reasonable phases like inventory, test upgrades, remediate customizations, content validation, go-live, and decommission. Adhere to recommended sequencing and testing cadences for your migration method and edition. Build executive support by demonstrating due diligence via milestone checklists and contingency planning.
Assigning team roles and responsibilities
Secure buy-in by designating upgrade owners across business units tied to SharePoint. Outline an RACI chart identifying task owners, approvers, consultants, and informers for security, infrastructure, architecture, development, power users, project managers, and executives. Distinguish between legacy support, upgrade engineers, testers, trainers, frontline support, and change management. Mitigate work duplication and accountability gaps by emphasizing role clarity for hardware, software, features, storage, data access, networking, monitoring, and DR members.
Preparing Content and Features for Migration
Rigorously preparing SharePoint assets for migration substantially controls upgrade risk and customer-impacting flaws. From content database sanitation to customization remediation, proactive measures streamline stability.
Backing up and cleaning up content databases
After running the Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer, execute index rebuilds, statistics updates, and integrity checks on content databases and transaction logs slated for migration. Attach copies to a staged Pre-Prod farm to identify dirty shutdowns and repair using ESEUTIL or SharePoint’s DBCC CHECKDB. Script PowerShell database comparisons assessing size deltas to monitor bloating issues pre and post upgrade. Develop detailed backup plans adhering to server version and build specific guidance from Microsoft.
Remediating customizations for compatibility
Inventory custom solutions like event receivers, workflows, web parts, master pages, and page layouts to detect upgrades blocking declarations, methods, or syntax. Modify the solution manifest schema version to explicitly target the new SharePoint release. Address deprecated API calls by mapping to supported equivalents and recompile. Use Visual Studio, CKSDEV, .NET Reflector, and PowerShell test harnesses to evaluate your options. Retest all customizations in a staged environment at scale to validate efficacy.
Testing solutions and features in staging environment
Buildout representative staging, development, and testing farms configured for your migration scenario to experiment upgrades at-scale. Synthesize real-world content density, metadata complexity, access patterns, and code dependencies for confidence testing. Mimic applicable service applications, features, solutions, and customizations between staging and production topologies. Iterate test migrations addressing flaws until requirements are met before scheduling production upgrades.
Executing the Technical Migration
Translate detailed test plans into practice by completing the technical migration steps whether an in-place upgrade or database attach. Follow Microsoft’s guidance to the letter through preparation, execution, validation, and go-live while responding thoroughly to any issues.
Following best practices for in-place vs. attach upgrade
Strictly adhere to Microsoft documentation on executing your choose upgrade method covering sequence, timing, validation gates, and recommended tools. For in-place, utilize prerequisite checker, config wizard, PSCONFIG, attach database upgrades with a Content Database Migration Took like ShareGate. Monitor database sizes, crawler impact, and wait for job completions between steps. Avoid deviating from guidelines without air-tight justification.
Validating migrated content and features
Triage validation testing by verifying site hierarchy and security inheritance, confirming metadata and column mappings, assessing performance deltas, validating feature activation states, and stress testing via load generation. Update test cases to incorporate all custom components like event receivers, workflows, indexed columns, and InfoPath forms. Include user acceptance testing to cover business process flaws missed by technical validation. Attain sign-off from application owners, power users, and executives before scheduling go-live events.
Troubleshooting issues and iterating as needed
Capture issues at each validation juncture including error messages, screenshot, repro steps, and logs in an issue tracking system like Jira or TFS. Categorize by priority based on user impact and blast radius. Assign owners, due dates, and mandatory fix versions for sign-off before the next stage commences. Iterate test migrations and confirmations until agreement is reached on residual risk and migration readiness for end-user impacting events.
Completing Post-Migration Tasks
While upgrade processes conclude, real work persists after go-live in decommissioning legacy assets, repointing existing integrations and delivering training to ease user transition pains.
Retiring legacy environment
Decommission original SharePoint servers, databases, IIS sites, file shares software, agent services, DNS entries, load balancers, and code repositories per company policy once migration is deemed successful. Detach log shipping chains, remove server from farms, unjoin from the domain, clear configurations, and overwrite storage as appropriate. Some components maybe be temporarily retained as rollback safeguards based on risk tolerance.
Redirecting links, updating integrations
Update DNS aliases, URLs, ingested links, hub site associations, hybrid configurations, and declared connections to leverage new SharePoint infrastructure avoiding orphaned references to legacy assets. Fix PowerShell, InfoPath forms, custom ASMX services, client object models pointing to outdated endpoints still hit by end users and adjacent systems.
Training end users on changes
Educate users on new SharePoint interface elements, modified business processes, rewritten custom solutions and retired legacy functionality. Demonstrate applicable new features, global term sets, site themes, document templates, navigation elements, and updated search schema. Measure proficiency level post training via assessments surveys and iteratively clarify the delta.
Optimizing performance and stability
After profiling utilization and load testing, execute optimization techniques like BLOB offloading SQL index rebuilds, cached object count tweaking, search performance tuning, throttling trimming, and timer job conditioning for scale. Apply post-migration recommendations from Microsoft documentation. Open vendor support tickets supplying data on lingering instability or degradation to rectify expediently if internal efforts stall.
