Upgrading from SharePoint 2010 to 2013 Using PowerShell

Abstract

In this last chapter of the book, I will take a step back and look at the scenario in which your organization already has a SharePoint 2010 environment deployed and is looking at upgrading it to SharePoint 2013. The upgrade story has been a changing one between versions of SharePoint for the last decade. If you take a look back at SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you had three options when it came to upgrading to SharePoint 2007. The first option was to do an in-place upgrade, which simply required you to put in the installation media, start the upgrade wizard, and pray for the best. Unfortunately, this didn't work well for customized SharePoint environments. The second option, called the gradual update, allowed you to run both SharePoint 2003 and 2007 side by side. The third and last option was to do what Microsoft calls a database attach. This basically involved you to start by creating a new SharePoint farm running the desired version of SharePoint, in this case 2007, and to attach copies of your previous environment's content databases. In many cases, the third option was the preferred one. People often decided that while upgrading the software that they might as well upgrade the hardware as well. From SharePoint 2007 to 2010, Microsoft dropped the option to do gradual upgrades, and decided to only stick with database attach, and in-place upgrades. With SharePoint 2013, the only option left to upgrade from a previous version is to attach a database to a new SharePoint 2013 server and upgrade it from their using PowerShell.