Upgrading to Project Server 2019

Summary: Learn how to upgrade to Project Server 2019.
Applies to: Project Server 2019

This article describes the steps required to upgrade to Project Server 2019.

Upgrade requirements

Note the following requirements for upgrading to Project Server 2019:

• You can only upgrade from Project Server 2016. If you are upgrading from earlier versions of Project Server, you must upgrade your databases to Project Server 2016 first in order to upgrade to Project Server 2019.

  Note

  For information about upgrading to Project Server 2019 from Project Server 2013, see Upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Server 2019.

• The upgrade process requires you to run Microsoft PowerShell cmdlets in the SharePoint Server 2019 Management Shell. Verify that you have the following minimum permissions to run them:

  • securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance.

  • db_owner fixed database role on all databases that are to be updated.

  • Administrators group on the server on which you are running the PowerShell cmdlets.

  An administrator can use the Add-SPShellAdmin cmdlet to grant permissions to use SharePoint Server cmdlets.

  [!NOTE]If you do not have permissions, contact your Setup administrator or SQL Server administrator to request permissions. For additional information about PowerShell permissions, see Add-SPShellAdmin

• If you are migrating your Project Server 2016 Resource Plans to use as Resource Engagements in Project Server 2019:

  • They must be published.

  • They must have associated time phased data (it must contain work, not just resources).

    Note

    For more information about Resource Engagements, see this blog post: Resource Engagements.

Project Server 2019 upgrade steps

Upgrading to Project Server 2019 can be broken up into four steps. These include:

1. Create a Project Server 2019 farm

2. Copy and move your databases

3. Attach and upgrade your SharePoint Server 2016 content database

4. Test your SharePoint Content database

The following provides more detail about these upgrade steps.

Create your Project Server 2019 farm

The first step in the upgrade process is to create the Project Server 2019 farm. Since database attach is the supported method for upgrade, you will be attaching and upgrading your Project Server 2016 databases to this farm in the steps that follow.

Note that a key difference in installing Project Server 2019 versus the way it was installed in previous versions is that the Project Server 2019 installation is now a part of the SharePoint Server 2019 installation. Project Server 2019 now runs as a service application in SharePoint Server 2019, and does not require a separate installation.

Copy and move your databases

The second step in the upgrade process copies your databases required for your Project Server 2016 environment to your new Project Server 2019 environment. This is a two-step process:

1. With the SharePoint Server 2016 farm in read-only mode, the server farm administrator backs up the following two databases from the SQL Server instance:

   • SharePoint Server 2016 content database that contains your project data

2. The server farm administrator restores a backup copy of the databases to the SQL Server 2016 or 2017 instance being used to host the Project Server 2019 farm databases.

You can use SQL Server Management Studio to copy and restore the databases.

Attach and upgrade your SharePoint Server 2016 content database

The third step in the upgrade process attaches and upgrades your SharePoint Server 2016 content database that contains your Project site data to your new Project Server 2019 farm.

You will need to run the Mount -SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet in the SharePoint 2019 Management Shell in order to do this.

1. Open the SharePoint 2019 Management Shell as an Administrator.

2. At the Powershell command prompt, type:

   Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name <database name> -WebApplication <Web application name>

   For example:

   Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name WSSContentContosoPWA -WebApplication "SharePoint 80"

Test your content database

The fourth step in the upgrade is to test your newly attached and upgraded content database. You will use the Test-SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet to test against the Web application you specified to verify all customizations referenced within the content database are also installed in the web application in the new SharePoint Server 2019 environment. This cmdlet will not update your data in anyway.

1. Open the SharePoint 2019 Management Shell as an Administrator.

2. At the PowerShell command prompt, type:

   Test-SPContentDatabase -Name <database name> -WebApplication <Web application name>

   For example:

   Test-SPContentDatabase -Name WSSContentContosoPWA -WebApplication "SharePoint 80"

   This will check the SharePoint - 80 Web application against the customizations referenced in the WSSContentContosoPWA database, and will post the results.

The results of the Test-SPContentDatabase cmdlet will note inconsistencies it will find in your upgraded SharePoint Web application in its new SharePoint Server 2019 environment. The results do not imply that the upgrade of the SharePoint 2016 content database has failed, but will only note things you need to look into in your new environment. The following are some checks that may appear in your results.

Check your SharePoint Server 2016 content database for resource plan migration information

Check the MSP_RESOURCE_PLANS table for the following columns:

Check your SharePoint Server 2016 content database for resource plan migration information

You can check to see if a specific PWA site you are migrating has an associated resource plan. You use the following SQL query to do this:

SELECT *
  FROM [DBName].[pjpub].[MSP_RESOURCE_PLANS] where SiteId = <SiteId>

There is a row in this table for each resource plan for the site (A project can have 0 or 1 resource plan).

To get the SiteID value for your PWA site, run the following PowerShell command in the SharePoint Server 2019 Management Shell:

$site = get-spsite <SiteUrl>
$site.ID

Check your ULS logs for more information

The following tags in category:Engagements (PWA) may have useful information to help troubleshoot any problems associated with your resource plan migration:

• tag_a5h65

• tag_a5h66

• tag_a1kg8

• tag_a3qj3

• tag_a1khb

• tag_a5h67

• tag_a1khf

• tag_a2ifm

• tag_a4bic

• tag_a1khh

• tag_a2ifo