Bill Baer /bɛːr/

Introduction Changing software can be difficult, SharePoint Server 2013 simplifies the upgrade process, empowers the user, and improves resiliency and manageability through new features and capabilities designed to balance the needs of users with those of IT. What’s new in upgrade… Deferred Site Collection Upgrade Site Collection Health Checks Evaluation Site Collections Deprecated Upgrade Approaches Separation of Schema and Site Collection Upgrade Upgrade in SharePoint 2013 separates the aspects of site collection and schema upgrade improving performance and resiliency related to the upgrade process.

Search has become the primary means in the Enterprise for surfacing and locating information, as a result, it has become a mission critical component of SharePoint deployments. The rise in adoption of SharePoint 2010 in organizations has led to more customers seeking to leverage the benefits of the new search architectures, whether Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010 or FAST Search Server 2010, as part of their topologies. In either scenario…read more on the SharePoint Team Blog.

If you’ve recently installed KB938444 and have run into post-installation issues, we’ve posted new guidance and potential solutions here http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/06/22/installing-kb938444.aspx.

We just posted a new Virtual Migration Environment for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or Project Server 2003 customers looking to migrate/upgrade to Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Project Server 2007. Overview The Virtual Migration Environment is a set of two virtual disks that provide Office Project Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 environments, sample content, and scripts design to assist customers with upgrade and migration from Office Project Server 2003 and Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Project Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

We’ve published a new post on the SharePoint Team Blog that details the process, procedures, and options for upgrading from Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 - read more here…

New documentation was recently published which provides guidance and examples on how to configure your server farms for minimal downtime during software updates http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee514459.aspx.

While attending Ask the Experts at the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Conference 2008, I was asked about migrating user accounts in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to a new login name programmatically, fortunately Windows SharePoint Services addressed user account migrations with the Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 post SP1 hotfix package 896593 which was followed by a number of applications including SPUserUtil Keith Richie corrected me today - SPUserUtil preceeded the MigrateUser API - Thanks Keith!

I was recently asked a question regarding moving sites between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web applications and whether or not there are any prerequisites associated with such a move. While moving sites can be an arduous and on occasion, a complicated task, moving between variations in platform only adds to the complexities associated with site-level moves. Many of the Features available to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites are not available to Windows SharePoint Services 3.

I was reviewing the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server TechNet article Determine upgrade approach and realized an article I have been working internally over the past few weeks has been published and introduced to the three existing upgrade approaches of in-place, gradual, and database migration. The upgrade approach itself is described/labeled as a hybrid upgrade approach which combines both the gradual and database migration approaches permitting administrators to preview a subset of site collections prior to upgrading the remainder of the environment (for those who have attended my TechReady, etc.

Ghosted and unghosted pages are references not new to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, but have received increased interest as a result of their impact on upgrading from previous versions and more recently, the ability to manage pages in an unghosted state. Introduction Ghosted is the preferred state of pages in a site collection, ghosted pages refer to site definition files cached in memory on the server at process startup of IIS.

I’ve updated my post Understanding PRESCAN.EXE Errors to include new errors and solutions. Read more here: http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2006/12/22/prescan-errors-what-they-mean.aspx. Excerpt: ““An outbound zone URL is configured for something other than the default zone on virtual server http://fabrikam/, and no default zone outbound URL is defined. This is not supported, and must be corrected before upgrading.””

One of the great features in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is the ability to co-host both path-based and host header-based site collections within the same server farm and content databases. Now that you’ve introduced host header-based site collections to your server farm, how do you quickly identify those site collections within a server farm or content database that also hosts your path-based site collections? In this scenario the object model is extremely useful in reporting on those site collections, the Web application, and content database where they reside.

Jingmei Li has put together a great post detailing partner solutions supporting SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 migrations; these solutions are useful in situations where any of the three supported approaches do not fit within the scope of a business’ plans for migration and upgrade. Read the entire post here http://blogs.msdn.com/jingmeili/archive/2007/03/13/evaluate-partner-solutions-that-support-migration-from-sps-2003-to-moss-2007.aspx.

In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 host header-based Site Collections can coexist with path-based site collections within a Web Application or optionally reside on multiple Web Applications. Gradual, in-place, and database migration upgrade approaches can be applied to Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 server farms in scalable hosting mode. This differs from Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 where a server farm was configured to run in scalable hosting mode preventing the introduction of path-based Site Collections to the server farm.

One of the most common questions I receive is how to co-host traditional “team” and personal Site Collections (My Sites) within an individual Web Application in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. While possible, there are several important steps that you should be aware of. The public profile page is a document specific to the SPSMSITEHOST site template (My Site Host); unless a My Site Host is defined in the server farm, public profile pages will not be available to users.

I’ve recently been asked whether Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 can be upgraded to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007; while this is possible, there are several important constraints that should be taken into consideration. Foremost, you should not upgrade Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 bypassing the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 upgrade - by attempting to upgrading Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 you are combining two upgrade methodologies; version to version (WSS 2.

MSDN Windows SharePoint Services Run the pre-upgrade scan tool (Windows SharePoint Services) http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/035a3024-bd27-4d63-9499-0f15ac00c6e61033.mspx Issues that are reported by the pre-upgrade scan tool http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/035a3024-bd27-4d63-9499-0f15ac00c6e61033.mspx#section1 Install and run the pre-upgrade scan tool http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/035a3024-bd27-4d63-9499-0f15ac00c6e61033.mspx#section2 Error message when you try to upgrade Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: “Upgrade has encountered one or more lists that were not updated by Prescan.exe and must exit” http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923904 Office SharePoint Server Run the pre-upgrade scan tool (Office SharePoint Server)

I’ve made several updates and revisions to my previous post “Understanding PRESCAN.EXE Errors”, I hope this information will be useful in diagnosing and remediating errors generated by PRESCAN.EXE.

*UPDATED 5/22/2007 I put together this post as a follow-up to my initial PRESCAN topic “Understanding PRESCAN.EXE in MOSS 2007”; hopefully, this will provide insight into the most common PRESCAN errors administrators may encounter and remediation steps where available. These solutions may not fit every environment due to the natural differences in topologies, hosting models, versioning, and infrastructure. Error: There is no Web named “//”. The Content Database contains one or more orphaned Webs.

A recent change has been communicated for all current Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 B2 (Beta 2) customers. The change will require customers who wish to upgrade their B2 environments to first apply B2 Technical Refresh prior to upgrading to RTM, Windows SharePoint Services will not support B2 to RTM direct upgrades. Previously announced upgrade paths will remain unchanged at this time: B2 Technical Refresh remains planned as a release patch, upgrading to RTM will require the modification of a Registry key, uninstalling B2 Technical Refresh, and then installing RTM.

Prior to upgrading to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007/Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 one of the prerequisites some of you may have already noticed is running PRESCAN.EXE from the installation directory. This post will hopefully provide some insight into PRESCAN.EXE as well as best practices on when it should be run. PRESCAN.EXE has two primary purposes: It parses and saves List definitions with the associated Lists. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 2 already incorporates this feature whenever a list is modified; however, this process should be completed for all Lists, so prescan calls the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 2 method to persist that data.