Boris A. Velikovich

July 11, 2013

Boris A. Velikovich – Software Architect

Email: boris.velikovich@exostar.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bvelikovich/

Blog: http://kiwiboris.blogspot.com

Twitter: @BVelikovich

Since 2007, I have been working for Exostar

Involved in A&D and Big Pharma projects

Leading provider of secure collaboration solutions and business process integration throughout the extended value chain.

Exostar’s ForumPass is a cloud-based, enterprise-class, complete B2B project collaboration service offering.

ForumPass executes within Exostar’s Community Cloud, a connect-once environment anchored by Exostar’s Identity Hub that brings companies and their customers, partners, and suppliers together.

One of the ForumPass site collections is 8 TB

This is twice as large as the recommended maximum

More than 30,000 users

Migrating the farm to SharePoint 2010

The huge site collection needs to be split

For this reason, this kind of migration cannot be done using the conventional methods, such as in-place migration or database attach

At least 99% of data should be preserved during the migration

We chose Metalogix Content Matrix as our migration software Allows read-only direct connection to the source

database - important for performance reasons

Metalogix allows scripting migration activities Provides PowerShell cmdlets

Allows running several migration activities simultaneously, thus speeding up the process

Allows full and incremental copies Important because incremental copies take less time

than full copies

Each script can take parameters

The new environment has to be fully functional

• SharePoint farm installation

• Web application configuration

• Service application configuration

• Firewalls configured

• Etc.

Code has to be migrated

• Feature IDs need to be preserved

• If migrating from MOSS 2007, code has to be compatible with SharePoint 2010

• In particular, code that refers to user profiles or search

• All the solutions need to be deployed

PowerShell has to be prepared

• Use Content Matrix PowerShell Console

• Make sure your powershell.exe.config file contains the settings necessary to initialize features

Each first-level subsite is promoted to a site collection

Some but not all second-level subsites are promoted to site collections

No other subsites are promoted to site collections (for complexity reasons)

The content of the top-level site of the site collection (libraries, lists, images, etc.) is

NOT migrated

• Create a new content database

• In this content database, create a new site collection based on the standard template

• Then, two options:

• 1) copy the content of the subsite to this new site collection

• Since some second-level subsites are promoted to their own site collection, a site filter is required

• or

• 2) copy the subsite to this new site collection

For each first-level

subsite

Copy-MLAllSharePointSiteContent or

Copy-MLSharePointSite

The specific parameters depends on the choice of the cmdlet, as well as your migration requirements E.g., you don’t want to migrate themes if you are

migrating from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010

Make sure that the SiteFilterExpression is present if you plan to promote certain subsites to their own site collections

Certain parameters might affect performance

Sometimes it is worth to prototype the migration operation in the GUI

Use Copy-MLAllSharePointSiteContent when

The URL of the new site collection has to stay exactly the same as in the first-level subsite, or

You want the first-level subsite content on the root level of the newly-created site collection, and the site template of that subsite does not interfere with the site template of the root subsite

In all other cases, use Copy-MLSharePointSite

1) Input CSV files

2) Exclusion CSV file

3) Script configuration

At the very least, it should include:

Server-relative source url

E.g., /sites/mycompany/SomeCoolSite

Managed path

E.g., /customers/ or /sites/mycompany

Site Name

E.g., SomeCoolSite

Site Description

E.g., Some Cool Site

Whether migration is full or incremental

At the very least, it should contain the site-collection-relative URLs of excluded subsites

• Input CSV file path

• Exclusion CSV file path

• Source information

• DB Server, content DB, root URL, template path, etc.

• Target information

• DB Server, farm administrator, root url

• Metalogix job history path

Should contain:

Some second-level subsites are promoted to site collections

These site collections’ URLs are new A separate script is needed Script configuration similar to what we’ve seen Input CSV should include the URL of the new site

collection, as well as the web template of the site copied

The Copy-MLSharePointSite cmdlet is used in the script

New site collections are created in new content databases

Be careful with Team Sites

-MergeSiteFeatures parameter

If it is true and you migrate from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010, then the web parts from default.aspx will move to SitePages/Home.aspx and default.aspx will be empty - causes great confusion for users

If it is false and you used the Copy-MLAllSharePointContent cmdlet, you need to make sure that all necessary site collection features are activated

Full copy: Workflow associations are copied, workflow instances are NOT

Possible to copy Nintex or SharePoint Designer workflow associations

Incremental copy: Workflow associations are NOT copied

Thus, the users should NOT create new workflow associations after the full copy ran

LegacyWorkflows feature needs to be activated on newly-created site collections

Make sure you add site collection admins to the newly-created site collections

Involve users (CFT)

Their feedback will identify the problem areas

Run incremental migrations as needed

Metalogix allows comparison reports to verify completeness of the migration job

Also, Metalogix provides logs for each job

When your testers identify a migration issue, the reports and logs will help you troubleshoot

Sometimes, an additional incremental copy might be needed

The hardest thing to troubleshoot Migrating a 8 TB site collection may well take more than 1024

times than migrating a 8 GB site collection Migration rate can go down with time

C:\Users\SomeUser\AppData\Roaming\Metalogix\Content Matrix Console – SharePoint Edition\ApplicationSettings.xml PerActionResourceUse - Controls how many migration

activities are run in parallel Trade-off - Higher value means more parallelism but less

predictability Since parallelism is available where possible, the variance of

load within a job is less predictable). SQLQueryTimeoutTime – You can also lose data if the timeout

time is too low

Disable verbose logging

Migrating a very large site collection:

Typically involves splits, which means that a third-party product such as Metalogix Content Matrix will be needed

Can be scripted, with scripts running in parallel

Requires comparison reports to ensure completeness

Presents performance challenges as the migration rate tends to go down