Planning for SharePoint 2010 – Upgrade Planning Part 3
Please read first two posts in this series. Planning for SharePoint 2010 Part 1, Planning for SharePoint 2010 Part 2.
In the last two posts I showed you how to move your data tier to your new 64bit Farm. That is you moved all your databases and tested that you now have a 64bit based database server to host all the content databases.
Let’s look at how we can move the application server and the web front end server tiers. In this case you can choose to move both Tiers Tier B and C at the same time or individually. In either case the approach is the same.
In order to move your Application Server(s) and the Web Front End Server(s) you’ll need to first install the SharePoint binaries on the servers on Farm B.
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With information you gathered in your audit you’ll need to do a fresh install of SharePoint on the SPAPP1 server. Note that you can add an extra application server to this tier as per Microsoft best practice. In this case your application tier will consist of SPAPP1 and SPAPP2 with one server providing Indexing and the other server providing the Query role.
Before moving the application tiers one of the main testing and deciding factors are components that you have manually installed in the servers which you will have to install yourself. You should check with your third party suppliers and your developers that any add-on SharePoint component works correctly in a 64-bit environment. Some of the components that fall into this category are, installation of antivirus products, backup products, iFilters, alternate access mappings and as well as any Web Parts, Features and Site Definitions that you did not install as SharePoint Solutions.
For the installation of SharePoint on Tier B make sure that you follow guidelines for using domain service accounts. You can obtain the latest service updates and the SharePoint binaries from the following links.
Also please note that you will need to create a slip stream build of SharePoint 2007 with SP 2 when installing on Windows Server 2008 R2.
For SharePoint Server 2007, you can follow Create an installation source that includes software updates (Office SharePoint Server 2007) to create one. Below are the complete steps to create a new slipstream build for SharePoint 2007.
Installation Steps
Make sure that your server administrators are aware of the Cumulative Update cycles as published on TechNet and the SharePoint Team Blog.
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At this stage you should have your application server and data tier in 64bit mode with only the web front ends to be added.
In this step you are now adding the web front end servers by joining the new 64-bit servers to the farm, SharePoint Server will create the Web applications on the new servers for you. However you need to make sure that if there are any manual changes that these are applied and working correctly. Also if you are using network load balancing for the web front end’s these have been tested and configured. For reference please read this White Paper by Steve Smith (MVP) titled “[How to Scale out SharePoint Server 2007 from a single server farm to a 3 server farm with Microsoft Network Load Balancing on the Web servers](https://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads/2007/How to scale out a SharePoint farm and configure IIS 7 Microsoft Network Load Balancing on windows server 2008.pdf)” (PDF)
Now you should have your SharePoint deployment moved to a 64 bit server tiers to further test your upgrade compatibility for SharePoint 2010.
There are also other variations to moving to 64bit. One other approach has been outlined by Steve Smith and Penny Coventry in a White Paper. You can download the White Paper titled “[How to move a 32bit SharePoint farm to 64bit Windows Server 2008](https://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads/2007/How to move MOSS2007 from W2003_32bit to W2008_64bit.pdf)”.
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Steve and Penny outlines this approach with steps in the White Paper.
In my next post I will outline how to test your existing SharePoint farm using the preupgrade tool provided with SharePoint Service Pack 2.