SharePoint 2007 Upgrade Scenarios
When talking to customers about the new version of SharePoint, a lot of questions I get are related to moving the existing infrastructure and data to the new version of SharePoint once it gets released. For now there wasn't a lot of (public) information available, but now Joel Oleson has written a nice post about the topic. There are actually three scenarios:
- In place upgrade - of course for hardware reasons you're going to want to have an option like this, so for small environments you're not needing additional hardware or additional expenses. Be sure to get a good backup if you take this route. You'll pretty much be down while the upgrade takes place, the options are few, but this is the quickest route to getting the job done.
- Side by side upgrade - running V2 and v3 or 2003 and 2007 side by side on 2 different IIS web applications (IIS virtual servers) in the same farm may sound strange, but this gives best of both worlds options... the ability to preserve on hardware costs... minimize user impact, and the ability to quickly roll forward or rollback and with customizations or no customizations, you'll find this ability very useful.
- Database attach/content database migration - having 2 different farms on different hardware, given it's the right time of the year to invest in hardware... this option is great for really seeing your farm have a clean v3/2007 experience. I really like the idea of taking a content db and simply taking a good backup, making a copy of the db, and attaching it to the v3 FE's. Automatically Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 will know to upgrade the content in the database. There is planning of course on disk space on the SQL side and IIS/DNS namespace for something like this, but as well this gives you options for a quicker upgrade than the side by side, but methodical and easy to roll back.