Migrating PS 2010 to PS 2013 Walkthrough
By blurg64
In this post I am going to take you through the process of migrating Project Server 2010 into Project Server 2013.
Usually there are two ways of doing a migration, either an in place upgrade, where if you were particularly brave, you would take your production system and then run the installer for the new binaries on it to upgrade. I say ‘Brave’ because frequently this method of upgrade would be fraught with danger, not giving you sufficient options for dry runs or rolling back.
The other option was a database attach method, where you would build up your target environment on the new version, then migrate the databases from the old version and ‘do the upgrade’. With Project Server 2013 and SharePoint 2013, Microsoft have finally stopped supporting the in place upgrade, which in my opinion was one of the best moves ever. So for this post, we will be walking through the DB attach migration method, where we will take the four Project Server databases and the associated SharePoint content database and migrating that into Project Server 2013.
Now for the purposes of this walkthrough, I am going to assume the following:
- You have already built a SharePoint 2013 and Project Server 2013 On Premises solution and performed the base configuration (accounts, binaries, install accounts and run the config wizard)
- You have created a Project Server 2013 Service App in Central Administration
- You have started the Project Service on the various servers.
- We are only migrating the Project Server data and associated content (PWA site and project workspaces), we will not be migrating any additional SharePoint content you have in your source farm
- You are not changing domains as you migrate the data.
Oh and most importantly, this walkthrough is for instructional purposes only, I accept no responsibility if this doesn’t work and corrupts your data. Backups and snapshots are your friends but no replacement for testing this time and time again before doing it for real.
Backup the Project Server 2010 source environment
To start with we need to back up your PS 2010 environment, ready to migrate it over to the target 2013 environment.
In SQL Server, choose to backup the four Project Server databases and the content database that holds the PWA site collection and Project workspaces. To do this, right click on the database name, choose Tasks and then Backup.
Now in a real production migration scenario there are a number of other options you may need to consider, including outage notices, restricting users from accessing the system during the migration etc etc. I am not going to cover those here. This is just to give you a broad walk through of the process.
Restore the databases to the Project Server 2013 target environment
Restore the five databases backed up previously to the Project Server 2013 database server using the following method:
Right Click on the Database node and click on Restore Database…
Choose Device (1), select the location where the database backup files are located (2), add the backup device (3), click ok (4) and ok (5) again to commence the restore.
Repeat the above for each of the databases to be restored.
Once the files have been restored, ensure the databases have the correct permissions to allow the upgrade process to be performed, in my case this was granting my setup account access db_owner access.
On the target farm, open up a SharePoint Management Shell in Administrator mode (ensure you have logged onto an account with sufficient privileges to perform the upgrade).
Test and Mount the SharePoint content database
The first step in the migration process is to mount the SharePoint content which includes the PWA site content, the Project Detail Pages, and Project Workspaces that were created under the PWA site and any custom lists or libraries you may have added.
Before doing the actual migration, 2013 provides a couple of handy PowerShell commands to ‘test’ the databases against the target environment before performing the migration. In this case, the test command will analyse the SharePoint content database and highlight any items referenced in the database that may not be present in the target environment, like missing web parts, features etc.
To run the test command, enter the following in the Management Shell prompt:
[sourcecode]
Test-SPContentDatabase -Name
[/sourcecode]
(of course replacing the items in the ’s with your values). In my example I entered the following:
[sourcecode]
Test-SPContentDatabase -Name PWA_WSS_Content_80 –WebApplication http://demo2013
[/sourcecode]
and received the following results:
Here the test command has identified a number of issues in the content database including missing assemblies and in this case that the content database is a Classic mode (the default for 2010) and the target web application is in Claims mode (the new default in 2013) and provides some steps to rectify it.
Notice at the top you can also see whether the problem found would block the upgrade or is an error. The goal of this step is to test, identify and then rectify any conditions that may impact the upgrade process as you can see below, the test command can be pretty comprehensive in the info it provides.
Once you are happy that all the potential upgrade blockers have been addressed then the content database can be mounted for real with the following command:
[sourcecode]
Mount-SPContentDatabase
[/sourcecode]
The final flag is quite important, it signifies that you are upgrading a SharePoint 2010 database to SharePoint 2013.
In my example I entered the following
[sourcecode]
Mount-SPContentDatabase PWA_WSS_Content_80 –WebApplication http://demo2013 –NoB2BSiteUpgrade
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The mount process can take some time to complete depending on the amount of content in the database. Once its completed, all that is required is to make sure your account has access to the PWA site collection you’re upgrading using the following command:
[sourcecode]
Set–SPSite -Identity
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You can check if this command was successful by viewing the Site Collection Administrators through Central Administration.
In this migration the test command identified that we were attaching the classic database to a claims based database, so it is also necessary to migrate the users in the content db to their claims equivalent. To do so, enter the following Powershell command:
[sourcecode]
(Get-SPWebApplication
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Test and Upgrade the PWA Site
Before we attach the Project databases, we need to perform the actual upgrade of the PWA site, this is not performed as part of the SharePoint content database mount above. Once again there is a handy test PowerShell command that can be leveraged:
Test-SPSite –Identity
In my case this would be:
[sourcecode]
Test-SPSite –Identity http://demo2013/pwa
[/sourcecode]
which will return any errors or warning that may cause the upgrade to fail:
Again, the goal here is to identify any errors or conditions that may cause your upgrade to fail. In this case, I only have two warnings, so I am happy to continue and upgrade the site using the following command:
[sourcecode]
Upgrade-SPSite –Identity
[/sourcecode]
So in my case this would be
[sourcecode]
Upgrade-SPSite -Identity http://demo2013/pwa –VersionUpgrade
[/sourcecode]
The important piece here is the –VersionUpgrade flag, this ensures the PWA site will be upgraded from Project Server 2010 to Project Server 2013 and is ready for the Project databases to be attached.
Convert the Project Server Databases
With Project Server 2013, there were a number of massive changes in the infrastructure and plumbing designed improve performance and maintainability. One of these key changes was the consolidation of the number of Project Server databases, from four down to one, making it much easier to maintain multiple PWA instances and stopping the proliferation of databases that you would get with Project Server 2010.
As part of the migration, it is necessary to perform a consolidation of the Project Server 2010 databases, again using a new PowerShell command:
[sourcecode]
ConvertTo-SPProjectDatabase -WebApplication
[/sourcecode]
On pressing enter, you will be asked if you want to convert the databases, choose yes.
Once completed, checking the SQL Server will show the consolidated database, in this example the ProjectServiceDB has been created.
Under the covers, the concept of separating the various draft, published, reporting and archive data is still present, but instead of four separate databases, there is now just one database with four schemas (dbo for reporting, draft, published and ver).
Mount, Test and Upgrade the Project Service Database
Next we need to mount and test the freshly created Project Service Database to ensure there are no issues which may impact the database being upgraded. To do so, enter the following command:
[sourcecode]
Mount-SPProjectDatabase –Name
[/sourcecode]
in my case this will be:
[sourcecode]
Mount-SPProjectDatabase –Name ProjectServiceDB –WebApplication http://demo2013
[/sourcecode]
Once mounted, the database can be tested as follows:
[sourcecode]
Test-SPProjectDatabase -Name
[/sourcecode]
in my case this will be
[sourcecode]
Test-SPProjectDatabase –Name ProjectServiceDB
[/sourcecode]
This will check various aspects of the newly consolidated database, including the schema version and things like the security roles.
Once you are happy there are no UpgradeBlocking errors, you can then proceed to upgrade the Project Service Database to the new 2013 schema using the following command:
[sourcecode]
Upgrade-SPProjectDatabase -Name
[/sourcecode]
in my example this would be:
[sourcecode]
Upgrade-SPProjectDatabase -Name ProjectServiceDB -WebApplication http://demo2013
[/sourcecode]
Again, this PowerShell command will modify the database, so you need to answer the confirmation prompt in the PowerShell window.
Mount, Test and Upgrade the ProjectWebInstance
Now that the PWA site collection has been upgraded, the Project Server databases consolidated and had their schemas updated (if required), the next step is to mount, test and upgrade the ProjectWebInstance. This is effectively the wiring up of PWA site collection to the Project data.
As with the other steps in the upgrade, there are three components, mounting the database so Project Server and SharePoint know about it, Testing it for potential issues and then performing the upgrade of the Project data itself.
To mount the ProjectServiceDB, enter the following PowerShell command:
[sourcecode]
Mount-SPProjectWebInstance –DatabaseName
[/sourcecode]
so in my example this will be:
[sourcecode]
Mount-SPProjectWebInstance –DatabaseName ProjectServiceDB -SiteCollection http://demo2013/pwa
[/sourcecode]
The mount process shouldn’t take very long at all to complete.
To test the ProjectWebInstance, use the following PowerShell command:
[sourcecode]
Test-SPProjectWebInstance –Identity
[/sourcecode]
In my example, this would be:
[sourcecode]
Test-SPProjectWebInstance –Identity http://demo2013/pwa
[/sourcecode]
Like the other test commands, the output of this command will show if there are any potential issues that would stop the ProjectWebInstance being upgraded
As you can see in the screenshot above, the default output is not so useful, but it does show if there is likely to be an issue. If you want to see a little more detail and stop the unhelpful ‘…’ truncation, modify the command a little to output to a text file where you can see all the info:
[sourcecode]
Test-SPProjectWebInstance –Identity http://demo2013/pwa | Format-Table -Wrap -AutoSize | Out-File -FilePath c:\output.txt
[/sourcecode]
This will result in:
Once you are happy with the results of the test command, we can perform the actual upgrade using the following:
[sourcecode]
Upgrade-SPProjectWebInstance -Identity
[/sourcecode]
in my example this would be:
[sourcecode]
Upgrade-SPProjectWebInstance -Identity http://demo2013/pwa
[/sourcecode]
You will be prompted if you want to perform the upgrade, answer yes. When the prompt comes back you are nearly there.
Finally, now that all of the various databases have been successfully upgraded and wired up, all that is required to do is to make sure the PWA features have been activated in the PWA site (things like . To do so, enter the following command:
[sourcecode]
Enable-SPFeature -Identity pwasite –URL
[/sourcecode]
in my example this would be:
[sourcecode]
Enable-SPFeature -Identity pwasite –URL http://demo2013/pwa
[/sourcecode]
And that’s the primary content migration completed.
But we’re not there just yet….
Now that all of the various databases have been migrated, tested, upgraded and wired up, just like in Project Server 2010, there are a few post migration tasks you will need to perform.
In all the migrations I have done from 2010, the first task post migration is to ensure the administrator account of the PWA site we have just migrated is correct. To check this, in Central Administration go to the Manage Service Apps and choose your Project Server Service App. In my case I saw something like the following showing that the Provisioning had yet to be completed successfully, even though I had completed all the steps above.
Open the context menu and choose edit, the properties for the PWA instance will be shown.
Here you can see the administrator account is incorrect and still showing the admin account of the source 2010 environment. The fix is really simple, enter your target administrator account details and press Edit. After a little churning and ‘Waiting for Resources’ you should see the following and can now get into your PWA instance.
The last thing you will need to do is to perform a bulk update of the Project Sites to reassociate with the target server name and to set up the various content types.
To access the Bulk Update Connected Project Sites feature (as it has been renamed in 2013), choose to Manage the Project Web App we just migrated in the Manage Project Web Apps screen above, this will bring up the instance settings for configuration.
Click on Bulk Update Connected SharePoint Sites and select the site paths and most importantly the ‘Update Content Types’ and ‘Synchronize site Permissions’ options and click on Update.
And that’s it…
All being well you will now have a fully working migrated Project Server 2013 instance, with all the data you had in 2010 successfully migrated over into 2013.
Of course, in the real world it won’t be this plain sailing, there will be missing features and web parts that you will either have to deactivate or remove, there may be multiple content db’s for your SharePoint content or you may run into errors because you missed or skipped a step. My advice, as always is to test your migration, test it several times and then test it again.
In the next few posts, I will look at some other common migration scenarios, including porting your data between a Production and Dev/Test 2013 environment, migrating data between environments of different patch levels and taking a look at some common errors you may run into during all of these, and how you can fix them.
- Database Attach
- Migration
- PowerShell
- Project Server 2010
- Project Server 2013
- SharePoint 2010
- SQL Server