Upgrade/downgrade from MOSS 2007 enterprise to SharePoint Server 2010 standard?

Question

Hei,

I have an installation of MOSS 2007 enterprise in production right now, and are planning on upgrading to SharePoint 2010, but downgrade from enterprise to standard. According to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262747.aspx this is not a supported approach, but does this mean it is not possible? Will uninstalling all the enterprise features, like done here http://brendannewell.com/musings/?p=165 solve the issue?

Answer 1

From what I recall you cant migrate from Enteprise 2007 to Standard 2010 - it doesn't work.  So you'll need to downgrade your 2007 platform before you even try and then upgrade from 2007 standard to 2010 standard.  At this stage the pre-upgrade check will tell you what issues you might need to resolve.  The immediate issue is that your enterprise key enabled the enterprise features and you cannot just enable a new key with the standard features, you have to do a specific type of reinstall.  Fortunately others have tried this with 2007 before such as:

http://ashkanj.blogspot.com/2007/06/enterprise-to-standard.html

Not sure exactly what this will do with your existing support contract as I dont belive the downgrsade option is officially supported, so you could be heading into a wider support issue.

Personally, I think you might be better off upgrading to enterprise and then deactivating enterprise features, as the difference might only be CAL licence cost (you need to check that).

---

Regards John Timney http://www.johntimney.com

Answer 2

Hi John,

I also stumbled across this post, and am thinking about giving it a try. But thanks anyway for your answer. It strikes me as strange that this is not supported.

Answer 3

While it's not officially supported, I've done it through the database attach upgrade method and it has been working fine for the past 4 months *knock on wood*.  If you clean up your MOSS 2007 environment as much as possible before the upgrade, it will help. 

When you restore your database and run the Test-SPContentDatabase cmdlet on it, if you don't see anything saying "UpgradeBlocking: True" in the logs, then you should be good to go.  The biggest issues will be any custom solutions that are installed on your MOSS environment. 

Answer 4

Thanks tyrone888,

I think I will go for this, as it is hopefully less work. Did you follow any specific blogposts etc. during your upgrade or was it more or less trial and error? Any issues you encountered on the way? Anything that you think can be helpful?

Answer 5

I just followed standard database attach procedures and it actually went smoother than I expected.  After that it was just about trying to find and fix any errors that I could find in the logs.  Since it is a database attach method, there is a lot of room for trial and error because your MOSS 2007 environment will still be fully functional.

The only issue I ran into was that after I ran the Mount-SPContentDatabase command, it succeeded, but the sites wouldn't come up.  But it ended up being because some of the Fab 40 templates were installed in my MOSS farm, but not my 2010 farm, so I installed what was needed and my sites came up.  I'm somewhat "kicking the can down the road" by ignoring the fact that while the Fab 40 templates work for 2010, it is recommended to remove them completely.  But I'll live with it for now because when my upgrade was done it was under a tight time schedule.

As with all SP migrations, the more OOTB your MOSS 2007 farm is, the easier this upgrade will be.  You may see some errors in your Event logs regarding Enterprise features afterwards, but I think that's part of the "unsupported"-ness of this method. 

 

Answer 6

Thanks tyrone888,

Your information is very helpful, and actually made my day. The migration actually looks a lot more straight forward now now. We have a pretty standard solution, but with a few customizations that I believe is solvable. The only challenge I can se is that I have to make a new custom solution for some forms services functionality we have made. Can I ask if you backed up/restored alle the databases, or just the content-databases?

Answer 7

I only restored the content databases after building out my SP 2010 farm.  Good luck with your upgrade.

Answer 8

Ok,

So you created your web applications, and then restored and attached the database? Then I am ready to test this first thing tomorrow.

Answer 9

Below is an article that you may be helpful with regard to upgrading to SharePoint 2010.

http://www.dmcinfo.com/Blog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/3631/Upgrading-SharePoint-from-MOSS-2007-to-Standard-2010.aspx

DMC