Live from SharePoint Conference 2012.
This session is promising as there is a lot of people: huge attendee number. We were obliged to switch the room to get more seats.
NOTE this doesn’t cover customization upgrade; this only an IT session.
Deferred Site Collection Upgrade Internals
- Check site collection health
- Request site collection upgrade
- Create evaluation site collection
- temporary site collection used to check upgrade
The compatibility level (SPSite.CompatibilityLevel) is used to check the site version (14: SharePoint 2010; 15: SharePoint 2013).
All site collection in upgraded 2010 content database start at compatibility level 14. Of course, webs can only be in the same compatibility level as site collection.
Features can be same or earlier compatibility level as site collection; current version used or system attempts fallback to prior version if installed; you can not activate a 2013 features on site with compatibility level equal to 14.
When creating new site collection/web site, you can choose the version to use: SP 2010 or SP 2013, depending from where you are creating the site collection:
- From Central Administration/Tenant Administration, you have a version dropdown
- From Site Collection, web creation is limited to the site collection version as well as if the self site creation is enabled
You can manage if end-users can self request an upgrade evaluation site (AllowsSelfServiceUpdgradeEvaluation); associated to it, you can also define a ‘quota’ for the eval site collection (MaxSizeForSelfServiceEvalSiteCreationMB). This may be helpful is the site collection is big.
Associated to these options, you can also off course manage if end users can upgrade by themselves to 2013 version (AllowsSelfServiceUpgrade).
Upgrade Throttling Internals
Too many upgrade at once can overload SharePoint and/or SQL.
SharePoint 2013 can add insight into throttles per database parallelism throttle or per processes parallelism throttles.
Managing Evaluation Site Collection
The evaluation site collection is a copy of the site collection to be upgrade.
The creation is queued and managed by timer job. Notification emails can be sent to site collection administrator.
SQL Snapshot Option
- User requests for evaluation
- the Create Evaluation site time job runs
- Timer jobs created a read only database snapshot if SQL supports it
- Static copy of source site is copied (with different URL) is copied from the snapshot to the source database
- Source site collection has evaluation site pairing
- Evaluation site collection configured
- Entered in Site Map
- Configured as Evaluation
- Expiration date is set
- Is optionally queued for upgrade
- Snapshot database is cleared up
- Upgrade time job runs
- Upgrade of evaluation site collection occurs if previously queued for upgrade
Site Collection Backup Option
- User requests for evaluation
- the Create Evaluation site time job runs
- Timer jobs created a site collection backup
- Time jobs restores with different URL
- Source site collection has evaluation site pairing
- Evaluation site collection configured
- Entered in Site Map
- Configured as Evaluation
- Expiration date is set
- Is optionally queued for upgrade
- Snapshot database is cleared up
- Upgrade time job runs
- Upgrade of evaluation site collection occurs if previously queued for upgrade
Customization
Install-SPSolution has a CompatibilityLevel parameter
If not set, the value taken is coming from the SharePointProductVersion.
SPSite.CompatibilityLevel determines which version of feature to use first.
- Fall back mechanisms
- SetupPath file fallback: checks current CompatibilityLevel version directory first then legacy one(s)
- Feature fallback
- checks current CompatibilityLevel version directory first then legacy one(s)
- Not applicable for _layouts based .aspx page
- APSX redirector will send to directory based on compatibilitylevel of SPSite
- Site definition do not fall back
- Install site definition in all version directories you plan to support
- A missing site definition will block site collection version upgrade
SharePoint 2013 does not support partial trusted code solutions: BIN directory deployment is now full trust only.
Sandboxed Solution will still works anyway.
Claims
Existing 2010 claims providers should work, just ensure you keep the exact same provider name in web.config files.
Content Databases detect authentication provider mismatch when attached; warning if database doesn’t match web application.
Run SPWebApplication.MigrateUers() operation after attaching if required (if coming from legacy/classic authentication mode).
Build Upgrade Improvements
Database upgrade without including site collections
- all sites experiences shortest outage during database upgrade
- individual site experience small outage as each is upgraded after
Snapshot database upgrade
- all sites experience only read only outage
Project Server now supports buts to database backwards compatibility.
- patch without immediate upgrade
Web level sequences now exist
- Database entries track web level sequence versions
- site sequences were refactored to extract web level operations into web sequences
Enable safe web restoration from site recycle bin
- Restored webs upgraded automatically if upgrade required to match site upgrade level
- works for both build to build and version to version site collection upgrades
Can not back-port changes to 2010.
Federated environments (services and content farms)
- Patching and upgrade order is always federated services farm first.
- 2013 federated services can be consumed by 2010 farms
- unpatched 2013 content farms can consume patched 2013 federated farm services
SharePoint 2013 now includes a Maintenance Window to manage/schedule upgrade/patch process.
Maintenance window is set at individual content database.