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Run the pre-upgrade checker (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

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Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

You can use the pre-upgrade checker to report on the status of your environment and SharePoint sites before you upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010. We highly recommend that the server administrator run the pre-upgrade checker and resolve as many problems as possible before scheduling the upgrade.

The pre-upgrade checker is an Stsadm operation that you run in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment to find any potential issues for upgrade and to review recommendations and best practices. The operation is available with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 and has been updated in the October 2009 Cumulative Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. You can download and install the October 2009 Cumulative Update from October 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are published (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=169179).

Note

You might need to run the pre-upgrade checker more than once. For example, if you run the tool to evaluate your server farm but do not perform the upgrade for a few weeks, you can run the tool again just before you perform the upgrade to scan any new sites and to ensure that no additional issues have appeared in the meantime.

In this article:

  • About the pre-upgrade checker report

  • Run the pre-upgrade checker

Note

One frequent cause of failures during upgrade is that the environment is missing customized features, solutions, or other elements. Be sure that any custom elements you need are installed on your front-end Web servers before you begin the upgrade process. You can use the pre-upgrade checker — and, for a database attach upgrade, the test-spcontentdatabase Windows PowerShell cmdlet — to identify any custom elements that your sites might be using. For more information, see Identify and install customizations in the article "Use a trial upgrade to find potential issues."

About the pre-upgrade checker report

The pre-upgrade checker reports information about the status of your environment and the SharePoint sites in that environment, including:

  • Upgrade readiness and supported paths   Returns a list of all servers and components in the farm and information about whether the servers meet requirements for upgrading.

  • Alternate access mapping settings   Returns a list of the alternate access mapping URLs that are being used in the farm.

  • Installed elements    Returns a list of all site definitions, site templates, features, and language packs that are installed in the farm. You need to know which site templates have been installed or used so that you can verify that they are available after an upgrade or database attach. You also need to know which elements have been customized so you can verify the customizations again after the upgrade. For example, you need to know whether a site depends on a language pack for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that does not exist yet for SharePoint Foundation 2010, so you can plan how to handle that site during upgrade.

  • Unsupported customizations   Reports whether any server-side customizations that are not supported (such as database schema modifications) exist in the farm.

  • Orphaned objects   Lists any database or site orphans in the farm. Objects such as list items, lists, documents, Web sites, and site collections can become orphaned — that is, the objects exist but are not associated with a particular site. Because orphaned objects do not work in the previous version, they won’t work after the upgrade. If you perform an in-place upgrade, the orphaned items will still exist, but will not work. We recommend that you repair any orphaned objects before upgrading.

    Tip

    Members of the Administrators group on the front-end Web servers can repair orphaned items before the upgrade by following the steps in Knowledge Base article 918744, Description of a new command-line operation that you can use to repair content databases in Windows SharePoint Services (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=69958&clcid=0x409).

  • Valid configuration settings   Reports any missing or invalid configuration settings (such as a missing Web.config file, invalid host names, or invalid service accounts) that exist in the farm.

  • Database requirements   Reports whether the databases meet the requirements for upgrade — for example, databases are set to read/write, and any databases and site collections that are stored in the Windows Internal Database are not larger than 4 GB.

Use the information gathered from the pre-upgrade checker to determine:

  • Whether to perform an in-place upgrade or a database attach upgrade.

    Determine upgrade approach (SharePoint Foundation 2010) provides information to help you decide which type of upgrade to perform. It is important to consider the report generated by the pre-upgrade checker when you make this decision. If your servers do not meet the requirements for in-place upgrade, you need to consider performing a database attach upgrade.

  • Whether to upgrade some or all site collections that contain customized sites.

  • Which sites need to have customizations reapplied or redone after upgrade and therefore might take longer than others in the review stage.

A worksheet is available so you can record information about your environment while you prepare for upgrade. Download the worksheet from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=179928.

Run the pre-upgrade checker

Before you perform this procedure, confirm that:

  • Your system is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 2

To run the pre-upgrade checker

  1. Verify that you have the following administrative credentials:

    • To use Stsadm, you must be a member of the local Administrators group on the server.

  2. Click Start, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.

  3. In the Command Prompt window, navigate to the following directory:

    %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin

  4. Type the following command and press ENTER:

    STSADM.EXE -o preupgradecheck

    This command checks both the local server and your farm-level settings. For a list of other parameters you can use with this operation, see Preupgradecheck: Stsadm operation (Windows SharePoint Services). For a list of rules included in the pre-upgrade checker, see Pre-upgrade scanning and reporting for future releases (Windows SharePoint Services).

After you run the pre-upgrade checker, the report automatically opens in your default browser. You can also view the report by opening it from its location in the %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\LOGS directory. The report is named in the following format: PreUpgradeCheck_YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-SSS-random-number.htm, where YYYYMMDD is the date and HHMMSS-SSS is the time (hours in 24-hour clock format, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds), and the random number is used to differentiate between possible simultaneous attempts to run the pre-upgrade checker. There are also TXT and XML versions of the report in the same location.

Use the report to find and troubleshoot issues. You can also share the relevant results with other members of the upgrade team. For example, you can report issues such as customized site templates or custom Web Parts to the appropriate site owner, Web designer, or developer before scheduling the upgrade, to give them time to resolve the issues.

See Also

Other Resources

Downloadable book: Upgrading to SharePoint Foundation 2010
Resource Center: Upgrade and Migration for SharePoint Foundation 2010