Planning a SharePoint migration is never easy, but can be successful by following the right steps. I’ve recently done a number of upgrades, even from SharePoint 2007, and I have come to rely on certain actions to ensure everything goes well. I hope this advice will help you be as successful in your own SharePoint migration.
Make an inventory of your SharePoint Sites
One thing you should never skip is to make an inventory of your SharePoint Sites and if possible, even their content. Now I don’t mean to make an inventory of the sites you plan on migrating, I really mean to take a full inventory of everything you have in your current SharePoint environment
For a while now I have been using an upgrade strategy I call RMR. The RMR Strategy stands for “Remove, Migrate, Rebuild”. The idea is to which sites we are going to remove during the migration, migrate or completely rebuild. But to be able to classify your sites, you’ll first need a complete inventory.
Getting the inventory can be done either using PowerShell or with a third party tool, unfortunately there is no easy Report Builder that comes with SharePoint.
Classify the SharePoint Sites you’ve inventoried
Now that you have a complete list and inventory of your SharePoint environment, you can begin the classification using the RMR Strategy mentioned above.
Site
Owners
RMR Strategy
Community Portal
http:// demo/sites/portal
Database: WSS_Content
Benjamin Niaulin
NIAULIN\administrator
Remove
Demo
http:// demo
Database: WSS_Content
Benjamin Niaulin
farm
Migrate
DemoWebinar
http:// demo2010/sites/webinar
Database: WSS_Content_2010
Benjamin Niaulin
NIAULIN\administrator
Migrate
Design
http:// demo/sites/design
Database: WSS_Content
Benjamin Niaulin
NIAULIN\administrator
Migrate
Dev
http:// demo/sites/dev
Database: WSS_Content
Benjamin Niaulin
Rebuild
This way you can contact the site owners and see with them what kind of content lives inside the site. Will you be keeping it when going to the next version? Will you need to migrate the site as is? Or does it have too many custom coded solutions that it will need to be rebuilt?
Migrate the SharePoint Sites
Now that you have this document, you can use it almost as a checklist to see which sites need to be migrated and if they were done. The actual migration process is another story as the only supported scenario to upgrade to SharePoint 2013 is to take a SharePoint 2010 Database and attach it. So if you are on SharePoint 2007 or planning on going to Office 365, you might need to migrate to SharePoint with Sharegate . Of course there are other things to look for to make sure your SharePoint migration goes well. You could always look at this fun presentation “ 10 Reasons your SharePoint Migration Failed ”. For it to be successful you’ll also need to look at a roadmap, a plan and some measurable goals. But if there is one advice I can give, it is to make an inventory of your SharePoint Sites.
via Examiner National Edition Gadgets & Tech Channel Articles http://www.examiner.com/article/the-best-sharepoint-migration-advice-you-ll-ever-get?cid=roadrunner