This probably falls under SharePoint Administration 101, but as a developer, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to move our MOSS 2007 intranet to a new web front end.
Our environment is very simple: 1 SharePoint WFE and a separate SQL Server which is shared by several other applications. Our old WFE recently started acting up and we figured that we better get a new server up and running before this one GPFd. It also ran a 32-bit version of Windows Server 2003, and we wanted to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 x64.
It was also important for us to not have to do any DNS changes. If that doesnt work for you, youll have to adjust these instructions slightly.
The whole process was pretty simple, here are the steps I followed:
- Install Windows 2008 Server x64 on the new server
- Install MOSS but do not run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard
- Bring up the new server to the same patch level as the farm
- In this case, I took the opportunity to bring everything up to SP2
- Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard on the new server
- Connect the server to the farm
- Host the Central Administration site on the server
- Let the wizard do its thing
At this point, you have a another fully functioning WFE in your farm. However, it wont be able to serve any requests because as far as DNS is concerned, it doesnt exist. You can browse to your site at the servers IP address to make sure that everything is working.
- Send a nice email to your users to let them know that the farm will be down while you do this
- Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard on the old server
- Disconnect the server from the farm
- Change the old servers IP address to something else
Your farm is now inaccessible until you assign the old servers IP address to the new server.
- Assign the old servers IP address to the new server
- Install your SSL certificate (if applicable) on the new server
- Set your host headers in IIS on the new server
Thats it! Go through Central Administration and make sure all your services are started, you should be good to go.
A couple of interesting things I learned while doing this:
- Dont know why youd want to do this, but it looks like your WFEs can be running different version of Windows Server
- You have to apply your host headers manually in IIS. Not surprising because the wizard probably has no clue what you have going on for DNS and load balancing.
Now I need to work on getting Windows Rights Management Services off the old server!
