What is the best way to migrate my SharePoint Farm that resides in Hyper-V to VMWare and update all the applications and OS's (SQL, Server, SharePoint)?

Mr. Peacock 1 Reputation point
2022-02-14T14:40:50.997+00:00

I have A SP 2014 Farm using SQL 2014 running on 2012r2 Servers. They are in a failover cluster using storage from a Netapp FAS2750. I want to upgrade to the latest software of SharePoint, Windows Server, and SQL. I also want to move the Farm to our VMware environment and reduce my server count from 5 to 3. Currently, we have 2 web front-ends, an IDX, an App Server, and the SQL Server. My plan is to dual-role my SharePoint servers. My SQL DB for the SharePoint Site is 1.5TB. There are multiple subsites.

I was told I could just create a new farm and restore the DB to the new SQL server and voila! I'm skeptical. The Portal is ridiculously important so I am trying to make this as transparent as possible. So, can I just restore the DB to a new SQL/SP? Is there something more in-depth required to do this?

SQL Server
SQL Server
A family of Microsoft relational database management and analysis systems for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.
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SharePoint Server Management
SharePoint Server Management
SharePoint Server: A family of Microsoft on-premises document management and storage systems.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
2,418 questions

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  1. CaseyYang-MSFT 10,321 Reputation points
    2022-02-15T06:20:19.983+00:00

    Hi @Mr. Peacock ,

    Do you want to migrate your SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019?

    To upgrade to SharePoint Server 2019, you must upgrade SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Server 2016, and then upgrade to SharePoint Server 2019. Your databases must be at a SharePoint Server 2016 RTM version or higher when you upgrade to SharePoint Server 2019. Any database with a lower version will be locked and upgrade will not start.

    I would suggest you create a new farm > copy databases to new farm > upgrade service applications > upgrade content databases and site collections

    For Reference:
    High level overview to upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Server 2019
    Upgrade to SharePoint Server 2016
    Upgrade to SharePoint Server 2019

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  2. Matteo Zamori 86 Reputation points
    2022-02-15T09:59:34.19+00:00

    Hi @Mr. Peacock ,

    the approach it has been suggested to you is called Detach/Attach migration/upgrade and I confirm is one of the safest.

    It requires you a bit more effort because you have to build a 2nd SP farm in parallel with your existing one.
    It means you have to install/configure and re-import any kind of customizations you were having on the previous/current platform (wsp packages , IIS custom configuration if any, 3rd party tools etc...). Also you can move copy of existing SP services if you are heavily using them (UPSA , Search Config, Metadata, BDC, etc...)

    This approach even if longer it gives you the freedom to deep testing the new farm while using a copy of the existing Content Databases without touching Production contents.
    Only once you are fully sure that everything works as expected then you can plan the real switch by setting the old SP farm in read-only mode, move the latest content database version, switch DNS to let end user pointing to the new SP farm.