SharePoint Migration - Planning And Guidance On SharePoint Objects

While performing SharePoint Migration, we need to do a lot of planning before actually starting even with the basic steps of migration.

Planning includes a well-defined list of SharePoint Artifacts, Settings, or Configurations that must be identified beforehand and accordingly, the migration strategy can be worked out.

SharePoint Migration involves the following stages.

Inventory Audits
Configuration Migration
Schema Migration
Data Migration
Validation

In this article, I will share with you a detailed list of SharePoint Inventory that must be pulled out and kept stored as backup safely, at least during the migration phase.

SharePoint Inventory Map

Below is the small inventory map for SharePoint Objects & Artifacts that we should always consider during the planning phase for SharePoint Migration.

In the upcoming sections of this article, we will discuss each of the Objects/Artifacts in more detail from a data collection standpoint.

SharePoint Objects & Properties

Here is a list of objects that should be queried during the Initiation phase of migration.

SharePoint Farm

We should query the SharePoint Farm Object to get its Properties, Configurations settings, Level of SharePoint Logging, and Server details which are associated with this farm.

Configuration & Settings

We should query SharePoint to get configuration settings for IIS, SharePoint Designer, Alternate Access and Common Web Services (SPServiceHostConfig).

Databases

We should query SharePoint to get details on databases designated as Content & Configuration databases associated with the current Farm

Web Application, Sites, (Site Map)

We should query SharePoint to get details on Web Applications, Site Collections, Sites Subsites (Site Map), Site Templates especially the custom templates if you want to have sites based on these custom templates at the destination as well.

Lists & Libraries

We should query SharePoint to get details on List Schema, Item Count, List Permissions, Item Specific Permissions if any and also, reports of large lists. This information will be very helpful while migrating Schema & data at a later stage of the Migration process

Accounts, Authentication & Claim Providers

We should query SharePoint to get details on Managed Accounts, Application Pool Accounts, Authentication Providers and Installed Certificates Information.

Custom Solutions

We should query SharePoint to get details on custom WebParts, Features, Time Jobs, Layout Pages and other solutions (WSPs). This information is really important to migrate or rewrite functionalities as deemed fit. We also need to gather source code for each of the custom solutions as it might be required during migration issues encountered during/after migration.

Service Applications

We should query SharePoint to get details on Service Applications, Application Instances, Load Balancer Configuration. Information on Server Applications is important to help understand and troubleshoot issues during/after migration

Business Connectivity Service Applications

We should query SharePoint to get details on configuration settings for BCS data connection files. This will be really important to know all connection details for LOBs connected using BCS.

Search Service Applications

Search is one of the most complex Service applications when it comes to migration. So it's really important that we should detail out each granular piece of information associated with Search Service Applications.

We should query SharePoint to get details on configuration settings for Search Service Applications, Query Keywords, Query Scope, Query Rules, Query Suggestion, Ranking Model, Security Trimmer, and Application Proxies.

Application Specific Properties & Settings for Service Applications

Most Service applications expose a set of properties specific to each of them. It is important to detail out all possible details on each of application-specific property that we can query from SharePoint as shown below

I will keep on updating this article as I get more relevant information to include so that it could be proved as a one-stop reference for SharePoint Migration Guidance.

In the upcoming articles on SharePoint Migration, I will show you implementation details on how to gather the inventory for each of the above-mentioned objects.

So stay tuned.

I hope you find it helpful.