So the week at Microsoft and the first SharePoint 2013 Ignite ITPro class has come to an end, I take my cool little 2gb USB stick that was in the gift bag, my many informational decks, and my sore note taking fingers and head home.
How did day 4 go….well we spent 3 hours discussing migration approaches…yes the dreaded……..
SharePoint 2013 Upgrade Path
So after about 2 hours of reading thru deck after deck…..6 in total the feeling I had can be simply summarized below…..
SharePoint 2013 is designed to make your migration approach at least tolerable, if not cordial. Upgrade (migrations) are now as simple as 5 steps (well we hope right):
Learn
Prepare
Test
Implement
Validate
In general the 5 steps to a migration success are the same wash, rinse, repeat approach we have been doing since 2003, and if you follow the bouncing ball, you will get there.
I have to say the upgrade labs I did all worked perfect, I did have fun with some of the new tools like Site Evaluation (the ability to do a site migration, take a look and if you say Cool, go do it for real). Uses a snapshot approach and some pretty slick PowerShell commands.
There was a lot of other cool features, and also some nice gotchas. The Upgrade section of the class was 205+ slides of information, PowerShell scripts, and warnings.
SharePoint 2010 to 2013 migrations made easy
So the big question coming out of the Conference will be are you migrating, when, and are you going to need tools. The answer is ……ARRRGGG.I DON’T KNOW. Lets put it simply if a tool provider creates a Easy Button tool they will be heroes in the industry, the challenge is, there is not a clear path to easy. Many of YOU, and us have created custom 2010 environments that are magnificent, but also migrate as easy as well “getting Lady Gaga to dress normal”. I fear that a lot of teams, and so called experts are definitely going to do this wrong….there is a lot of ways to screw up a upgrade. It is nice to say I am one of the few that has done over 4 SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 migrations as of pre-beta…haha, but it might be a long time before real corporations do it.