Migration from MOSS 2007 to Sharepoint Azure

Although there is lots of documentation already available on this i want to list the steps to migrate from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint Azure in simple language.

Now before we start, lets list some points to consider:

• We can not directly Migrate from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint azure. We will have first migrate to SP 2010.
• We will have to convert AD users to ADFS as explained here.
• It is always a good practice to cleanup the SharePoint Database before we mount it on Azure Site.

Steps to Migrate

Step 1 : Make MOSS 2007 DB read only

• On the MOSS 2007’s database server, click Start, point to All Programs, Microsoft SQL Server, and then click SQL Server Management Studio.
• Traverse to Databases node by expanding the tree
• Right-click the name of the database that you want to set to read-only, and then click Properties.
• In the Properties dialog box, click the Options tab.
• Under State, select the Database Read-only to True, and then click OK

Step 2 : Take MOSS 2007 DB Backup

• Traverse to Databases node by expanding the tree.
• Right-click the database you want to back up, point to Tasks, and then click Backup Database
• In the SQL Server Backup dialog box, specify a name for the backup, select Back-up type – Full, select a destination, and then Click OK to start the backup process.

Step 3 : Restore this Backup on 2010 DB Sever.

Step 4 : Create a Web application on SharePoint 2010.

Step 5 : Remove the data base of new created web application and mount the restored DB.

• This could be done using UI or power-shell. This is listed by Microsoft here.

Step 6 : Now we will test DB for any missing features and if we need to install any custom components on the on Azure.

Test-SPContentDatabase -Name <DatabaseName> -WebApplication <URL>

This URL explains thoroughly the report generated by Test command .

Step 7 : Based on the report generated in above step we will have to take appropriate actions.

Majorly there would be following things:

• Missing features : Use the power-shell to remove the missing features(or orphaned features)
• Install any third party components.

Step 8 : Once cleanup is done take DB back up of 2010 site.

Step 9 : Restore backup on Azure DB sever.

Step 10 :  Create a Web application on SharePoint 2013.

Step 11 : Remove the data base of new created web application and mount the restored DB.

Step 12 : Now that our Site is ready we will have to convert the Users.

Follow this link to understand how to convert.

Step 13 : Deferred Site Collection Upgrade

This is a replacement of Visual upgrade feature available in 2010. Its pretty simple and can be done using below mentioned power-shell command.

Get-SPSite -ContentDatabase WSS_Content -Limit All | Upgrade-SPSite –VersionUpgrade