Noble Knights Networking

I was recently tasked with moving a list from a WSS3 server to a SharePoint Foundation 2010 server. After Googling around, I tried exporting the list as a template in WSS3, then importing the template into Foundation. However, I quickly learned that SharePoint Foundation cannot import WSS3 list templates. There didn’t seem to be a way to ‘update’ the WSS3 list template to Foundation; dead-end. To get around this limitation, I backed up the entire WSS3 site and performed a ‘database attach upgrade’ to a new temporary Sharepoint Foundation server, then transferred the list as a template.

Basic Process:

1. Backup the SP_WSS3 database
2. Restore it to a temporary SP_2010 server (SP_2010Temp)
3. Copy the list (as a template) from the temporary server to your production SP_Foundation server

Things to note:

• The Two SharePoint servers we are using are Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0  and SharePoint Foundation 2010
• For reference, here are my version numbers: SP_WSS3′s version is: 12.0.0.6421, SP SP_2010′s version is: 14.0.4762.1000, SP2010 RTM
• SP_2010Temp’s version will be the same as SP_2010

Setting up your new SP_2010Temp site:

Note: I referenced this blog for lots of this information Installing a Standalone Sharepoint Foundation 2010 Server. However, we’re not going to complete every step because we shouldn’t need SSL for this temporary SharePoint Foundation server.

The basic outline:

1. Install SQL Server 2008 R2 Express
2. Download SharePoint Foundation. You do not need Search server Express
3. Follow Prepare your system
4. Install SharePoint Prerequisites
5. Install SharePoint Foundation 2010
6. Follow the Intial Configuration Wizard
7. Follow Create Site Collection
8. Ignore everything else!

To upgrade the actual WSS 3 content to SP2010, we will use the “database attach upgrade” method. See this blog post for more info: WSS3.0 to SharePoint Foundation 2010 upgrade

Backing up the WSS 3 Content Database:

1. On your  SP_WSS3 server, Open SQL Server Management Studio and connect.
2. Expand Databases, than right click WSS_Content -> tasks -> Back Up…
3. When the back up window opens, set your destination to: “disk” then click “Add”.
4. In the next menu, Choose a location , and give the backup a name.
5. Now on your SP_2010Temp server, open SQL Server Management Studio
6. Expand the databases, right click on the database you want to restore to. This database will be similar to the filename that you just backed up (e.g. WSS_Content_1)
7. Right click on the database -> tasks -> Restore -> database
8. In this Menu, check that the Destination for restore is the database you just backed up from SP_WSS3, Under “Source for restore” choose “From device”, then click the “…” button, This will open another menu prompting for you to choose your backup file, find the backup file of the WSS_Content and click ok.
9. After you choose the backup file, you will notice that the selected backup file is now under your “Source for restore”, make sure its checked and proceed to the next step
10. Open options and check “Overwrite”            
11. Click ok and you should get a message saying “The Restore of <database> completed successfully.”
12. Login to SP_2010New’s central administration website.
13. Go to “Manage Content Databases”
14. If there is a database there, delete it, ignore the pop up
15. The last step: We are going to add our new database to the SP_2010New’s Farm using this command, we should be still Remote desktop to SP_2010New cd “<programfiles>\common files\microsoft shared\web service extensions\14\bin” stsadm -o addcontentdb -url <URL> -databasename <database name>
16. This will upgrade your database to 2010 format at the same time
17. Navigate to the Central admin site for SP_2010New, the new database should be under “Manage Content Databases”

18. Your Done! The two websites should look similar becuase we havent done a visual upgrade, you can see simularities in the menus and how the is website setup.