If we want to move from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016, should we do an upgrade or migration and why?

Question

We have an on-premises SharePoint 2013 and we want to migrate/upgrade it to SharePoint 2016. so which approach we need to follow? Migrating the farm or upgrading it and why?

Second question, if we have Farm solutions (including Event Receivers) & Sandbox solutions inside SharePoint 2013 will they work as-is inside SharePoint 2016?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi @john john
To upgrade from Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 with the March 2013 Cumulative Update to SharePoint Server 2016, you use the database-attach method. In the database-attach method, you first create and configure a SharePoint Server 2016 farm. Then you copy the content and service application databases from the SharePoint Server 2013 with the March 2013 Cumulative Update farm, and then attach and upgrade the databases. This upgrades the data to the new version. Site owners can then upgrade individual site collections. (SharePoint Server 2016 supports an upgrade from SharePoint Server 2013 with the March 2013 Cumulative Update (CU), version 15.0.4481.1005 or higher.)

The whole process is as below:

1. create a new farm for SharePoint Server 2016
2. copy the databases to the new environment
3. upgrade the databases and service applications
4. upgrade the site collections.

For more details, you could refer to this article:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/upgrade-and-update/overview-of-the-upgrade-process

As to the second question, commonly your custom solutions need not make any changes, you just need to upgrade the solution version using visual studio 2016, here is a similar issue for you:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/527415/migrating-custom-solutions-from-sharepoint-2013-to.html

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