Back up the entire environment before an in-place upgrade (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

To ensure that you can recover the existing environment in case something goes wrong during the upgrade process, you must back up the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment before you run the upgrade process.

If you are running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 in a Hyper-V virtual environment, see Using SharePoint Products and Technologies in a Hyper-V virtual environment (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=125834&clcid=0x409).

Back up the environment

You can do a full backup of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment. We recommend that you perform a full backup of the farm before upgrading.

To back up the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment, use the procedures described in Back up a farm by using built-in tools (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0) (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=105988&clcid=0x409).

If you have deployed customizations, you must also back up the customizations. For more information, see Back up and restore customizations (Windows SharePoint Services) (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=186627).

Test the backups

You have to be sure that these backups are valid so that you can recover if there is a hardware failure or data corruption during the upgrade process. To test the backups, set up a non-production Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 farm, restore the backups and install any customizations (such as site definitions, Web Parts, and so on), and then verify that the restored backup is functional.

To do this, use the procedures described in Restore a farm by using built-in tools (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0) (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=105989&clcid=0x409).

See Also

Other Resources

Back up and restore the farm (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Downloadable book: Upgrading to SharePoint Foundation 2010
Resource Center: Upgrade and Migration for SharePoint Foundation 2010