9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

Last week, I managed to crash the keystone of our internal web-based applications platform.

Yes. I crashed the Intranet.

I attempted an upgrade. I had good backups. I had verifiable data in said backups.

But let me tell you what… backups are for shit when Sharepoint bombs out.

I had attempted to upgrade a vanilla Sharepoint 2003 instance to Sharepoint 2007. I read up on the process, and found that for an in-place upgrade, on a vanilla instance, it should be a no brainer.

I ran the preflight check on the install, the logs showed all green. No errors found, no issues found. So I ran the install. The initial install was seamless. Reboot later, all was well.

Then I ran the upgrade wizard. This little magical fairy wizard that ports all your old site over to your new site. Content (like documents and spreadsheets), links, and pages… along with the audiences, security and workspaces are all supposed to be “upgraded” from the old 2003 site to the new 2007 site.

Did not work… and it failed spectacularly. After seeing that it was a lost endeavor, I tried to backtrack. (Had I known then what I know now, I would have not backtracked.) But I removed the new version, and tried to get the old version back up and running.

And… it did not work. I tried to restore from backup.

And… it did not work. Dammit.

So I called Microsoft.

And… four hour phone call later… still not working. Then another four hour phone call… still not working.

So I did what any sane tech would do. I abandoned the install.

Reinstalled from scratch… and just to get done sooner, I reinstalled the old version. Reinstalled the same patches, the same everything. Restored the old databases to the new instance name and viola!

I got it up and running. With everything intact.

Lessons Learned:

1. When upgrading a complex technology product, do not use in-place upgrade.
2. When upgrading a complex technology product, do a side-by-side (gradual) upgrade.
3. Calling Microsoft may be frustrating, but it is the best OJT you can buy. Without Microsoft’s impromptu training session on the inner workings of Sharepoint, I would not have been able to bring it back up on my own with a fresh install.
4. Sometimes you just have to call tech support.

So thanks Microsoft. You didn’t help me fix the original install, but at least I learned something from it.