SharePoint Migration: Preparation, Cleanup, and Check Up with SPDocKit

Toni Frankola, Acceleratio CEO & Microsoft MVP

SPDocKit is the ultimate SharePoint management and administration tool created by Acceleratio Ltd. It was developed for administrators and consultants to save time and automate their administration tasks.  Improve your SharePoint farm performance with this user-friendly and powerful solution trusted by thousands of global customers. 

• Automatically generate SharePoint farm documentation with a few clicks

• Explore and manage SharePoint permissions• Audit and validate farm configuration according to the latest best

practices• Compare farms (e.g. Production, QA, DEV) and track changes• Compare Web Applications, Site Collections, Permissions and

Web.config Files• Create reports on farm storage, structure, features and content

usage• Enforce governance policies with queries and rules• Generate an AutoSPInstaller XML Configuration File• Monitor ULS and Windows Event Logs and keep your farm healthy

SharePoint farm administration is faster and

easier with SPDocKit.

What is SPDocKit?

Pre-migration step...SharePoint farm assessment

So, you’ve decided that you are ready to move the next version of SharePoint?

Careful! Upgrades to the new versions and migration of your content must be approached with great caution. 

Otherwise, you might end up with a lot of problems such as user frustration, lost information, security breaches etc.

• Delete unused or underused site collections and subwebs• Check large lists (lists with lots of data)• Consider moving site collections into separate databases• Remove extraneous document versions• Remove unused templates, features, and Web Parts• Remove unsupported sites• Finalize Visual Upgrade• Check databases for corrupted data• Check databases for duplicate or orphaned site collections• Make structural changes

Clean up your environmenthttps://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff382641.aspx

How can SPDocKit help you?

When it comes to SharePoint migration, you need to plan this ahead. You need to understand what kind of SharePoint farm you’re dealing with, especially if you’re a consultant hired to make sense of someone else’s environment.

When doing a SharePoint migration as a consultant for a client, you most likely weren’t involved in the original setup and you’re not sure what the client has in the environment. If you’re managing your own SharePoint, it will provide easily accessible information, which makes maintenance of your environment sound like a piece of cake.

SPDocKit can spell it all out for you; what kind of SharePoint farm your dealing with; what needs to be upgraded; if there any custom solutions in the environment; what kind of content you’re beginning to deal with. Everything you gather will be documented in the SharePoint farm documentation, which you can later export and discuss with your client.

• Generate an AutoSPInstaller XML Configuration File

To help you create a farm that looks as similar as possible to your original farm we have a built in out-of-the-box integration with AutoSPInstaller which you can use to provision SharePoint farms automatically.

• SharePoint Best Practices

SPDocKit gathers all SharePoint settings as well as helping in the pre-migration process. For example, our best practices can help you a great deal in this case.• Check whether your SharePoint is up to date (e.g. if you want to

upgrade to SharePoint 2016 from SharePoint 2013 then you will need to have Service Pack 1 before proceeding with your upgrade).

• Determine whether the web.config files on all servers in your farm are identical

• Export the entire Best Practices documentation• Set up Best Practices alerts for all configuration settings you want

to track

Step 1 - Infrastructure Assessment

Best Practices Dashboard

AutoSPInstaller Wizard

Step 2 explains how can you use SPDocKit to analyze the content of your SharePoint farm. In this section, you will learn more about storage and content usage, features usage and activations, as well as SharePoint structure.

Use various SPDocKit reports to determine what kind of content you have in your SharePoint farm.

Before doing an upgrade, it would be a good idea to comb your environment and check whether you have any dead documents, documents that no one has access to, large sites that aren’t in use anymore, or maybe there is a site collection no one uses and you can archive it before starting the upgrade.

• Content and Usage reports

SPDocKit helps you find all those long-forgotten projects that should be dealt with properly. For instance, you can archive them or change them to a read-only mode.

If there are any custom Content Types, especially if they are provisioned from a Content Type Hub then you should be aware of them because you will need to re-provision the Content Type Hub. SPDocKit shows you exactly where these Content Types are used.

Be sure to check if you have any dead documents, which are actually documents created in your SharePoint but the original author does not have access to the document anymore or the author has been disabled in the Active Directory. You can either delete them or not upgrade them if they are no longer needed.

As a company evolves, things change and there might be some sites and site collections that haven’t been used for some time—SPDocKit can help you detect how many of these unused sites you have.

Step 2 – SharePoint Content & Usage

You need to be able to identify absolutely every database you will need in the process, which may be time consuming! To save time, use SPDocKit to perform an inventory check! It can help you detect and list all the content databases, site collections, web applications, etc., and it will show you the size, usage, number of files, and other important information for each database.

You will also be able to check all the service applications you will need to set up in your new farm. This will help you estimate how long will it take to migrate and upgrade your databases.

With content reports, you can see how many databases you have and see what some of the largest sites are. If you have a large site collection, that is taking up 99% percent of the database, you need to take care of it. You might want to split these site collections into different databases.

Since you can list all the databases and site collections along with their owners, size, and other information, you can use this information to plan for and schedule upgrades with other business departments. You can ask those departments to decide which of these they still need and schedule upgrades.

Step 2 – Inventory Check

Storage Metrics Report

When you should cleanup your content, you shouldn’t forget to cleanup your permissions as well because they can be a nightmare to manage.

The second part of Step 2 covers SPDocKit reports that gather information on SharePoint permissions. This helps SharePoint administrators track permissions for different users and groups across a SharePoint farm to easily manage SharePoint permissions.

SPDocKit scans your sites for missing groups, groups with disabled users, groups without users, users disabled in the Active Directory, and users without permissions. This can be useful when you are trying to remove unused content.

Step 2 – Cleanup and Manage SharePoint Permissions

Cleanup Wizard

Picture this:

You are at the very end of your project and you have your built-in SharePoint 2016 farm, your servers are up and running, they have

been provisioned, and your about to migrate your content from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016.

Before you continue, you must ensure that everything has been configured in exactly the same as your new farm, just as it was in your old farm. In SharePoint, as you may well know, there are way too many settings for a mere mortal to keep track of manually, and, obviously, you might forget something. That’s when the SPDocKit Compare Wizard steps in to save the day.

Check out our very detailed blog post on the subject of SPDocKit Compare Wizardry.

Step 3 – Compare Two Different SharePoint Farms

Compare Wizard

A migration or an upgrade to SharePoint 2016 can be a great opportunity to clean up

your farm, filter important content, and create a new farm with the best possible

configuration and with content you actually need.

Acceleratio Ltd. is a software development company based in Zagreb, Croatia. The company was founded in 2009 and is devoted to creating innovative enterprise software solutions for SharePoint, Office 365, Windows Servers, Remote Desktop Services, SQL Servers, and Citrix environments.

Acceleratio Ltd. has developed many quality software products, such as SPDocKit, SysKit, CloudKit 365, and SQLDocKit. These products are used by more than 2,500 public and corporate customers across the globe.

Visit: www.spdockit.com

Contact us:sales@acceleratio.net

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