Planning For SharePoint Migration

There are a number of ways to Migrate a SharePoint installation. Most cost a serious amount of money.

When it was time to update my local SharePoint system, there was no funding for consultants or migration packages. Thus began the log hard task of piecing together the method of a manual migration.

What follows is the method that I used to migrate from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016. I carried out the migration a number of times, stopping and then starting again from the beginning each time that I realised that an extra step needed adding to the sequence at an earlier stage.

The migration phase of the operation took slighty less than two days but I had already installed the three servers that I would be using in readiness of the move.

The migration co-incided with a move from a single server hosted on VMWare to two servers hosted on Hyper-V. The new configuration would see the databases moved to a seperate server to that hosting the front end.

The process had the added complication that in order to migrate by hand from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016, you have to first migrate to SharePoint 2013 and then move to the final version. This means that you are essentialy migrating twice.

So, first things first.

Install three Windows Servers. Install every patch that you can and do any configuation to these servers at this stage before going anywhere near your existing SharePoint server. Turn them off and back on a few times (to be sure that they will restart normally without any surprises) and install anything else that you want to install before we get started.

On Server #1, Install Microsoft SQL Server. This will become the new database server.

On Server #2, Install SharePoint 2013. Use Server #1 to hold the databases. Install the latest Cumulative Updates from Microsoft to bring this SharePoint installation up to the latest possible standard.

Next, get lots of sleep and build up a supply of strong coffee.