Migrating from Legacy SharePoint to SharePoint Server 2010 : Performing a Database Attach Upgrade

The database attach process is a much more risk-averse migration process and is subsequently more likely to be used for most environments. It has the significant advantage of enabling SharePoint administrators to create new best-practice SharePoint 2010 environments and simply move the databases to a new farm and upgrade them there.

Understanding the Steps to Perform a Database Attach Upgrade

The high-level steps involved with a database attach upgrade are as follows:

1.	Create a new SharePoint 2010 farm to best practices and validate all functionality in the farm. Test functionality with a pilot on sample data and prepare users for the transition.
2.	Back up the original SharePoint 2007 databases.
3.	Set the SharePoint 2007 databases to read-only mode if the migration is expected to take a longer period of time.
4.	Restore a copy of the SharePoint 2007 content databases to the SQL Server for SharePoint 2010. Attach the databases to SQL Server.
5.	From the Manage Content Databases area of the SharePoint Central Admin tool on the SharePoint 2007 server, as shown in Figure 1, select each individual database. Figure 1. Selecting SharePoint 2007 content databases to be upgraded.
6.	Check the remove content database box, as shown in Figure 2. Note that this will not delete the content database but simply detach it from SharePoint 2007. Figure 2. Detaching content databases from SharePoint 2007 so they can be upgraded.
7.	Create a new web application in SharePoint 2010, if not already created, such as the one shown in Figure 3. For a seamless migration, this web application should match the name of the SharePoint 2007 web application. This new web application will be used to house the migrated databases. Figure 3. Creating a new web application for the migrated content databases.
8.	In SharePoint Central Admin, on the new SharePoint 2010 server, be sure that there are no existing content databases in the newly created web application, as shown in Figure 4. Depending on how you create the web application, there may be one created there by default. Simply remove it in advance of the migration. Figure 4. Verifying that there are no content databases in the new web application.
9.	From PowerShell, run commands to attach the content databases to the web application, as illustrated in Figure 5. You cannot add the databases from the GUI; they must be added either by the deprecated STSADM command-line tool or (preferably) PowerShell. When added, each database starts the upgrade process, also illustrated in Figure 5.11. You can watch the upgrade from the SPCA tool in the “Upgrade and Migration” section of SPCA. Figure 5. Attaching content databases and monitoring the upgrade process.

The exact syntax to use when upgrading is Mount-SPContentDatabase –Name DBNAME–DatabaseServer DBSERVER –WebApplication http://yourwebapp.companyabc.com (where DBNAME, DBSERVER, and http://yourwebapp.companyabc.com are all names of your databases, servers, and webapps, respectively). Note in Figure 5.11 that one database has already been attached and upgraded, and the second one is in the process of being upgraded. Depending on the size of the database, this may take some time to upgrade. When a database is upgraded, it can immediately be used, though until the Visual Upgrade process is done, it will still have the same look and feel of the old site.