Migrating WSS2 to WSS3

Hi All,

Migrating from Wss2 to Wss3 is always a bit tedious. You go through manuals and instruction and they go quite deep into the ocean. Headacke! I‘ll say.

Anyway, I was migrating from wss2 to wss3 the other day and discover a much quicker procedure.

1 1 Backup your content database used by Wss2 (as a safety measure, and a copy will be used for migration).

2 Restore it into your SQL Server of choice. This could be the current one but you will need, I guess, to rename it somehow.

3 Install Net 3.0 and Wss3 (sp3 if you want) into your Front End server.

4 Download and run the prescan.exe (download if wss3 has not provided it for you) on the box. NOT SURE THIS STEP IS REALLY NEEDED WHEN WSS2 IS NOT INSTALLED ON THE SAME BOX. BUT WHAT THE HEIK!

5 Then create a Web application using the Sharepoint Administrator site.

6 Then use the stsadm addcontentdb:

stsadm -o addcontentdb -url urlToTheWebApplicationCreated -databasename theNameOfYourWss2ContentDatabase -databaseserver theNameOfTheSQLServer –[databaseuser usernameWhohasAccessToDatabase -password passwordOfTheUsername]. (open a window command and go to the bin folder under the 12 hives)

Notice that username and password will ONLY work if the SQL Server Database has allowed mixed login. If it is only Window authentication, DO NOT PROVIDES the username and password as part of the stsadm command.

After adding the content database to your web application successfully, go to your Sharepoint Administrator page and under “application management” click on “Web application list” then click on the created “Web application”. Then click on “Content Database” and remove the content database which has 0 as value of the Current number of sites.

Then that’s should be it fox!
Enjoy!!!

Severin