How do I migrate from Windows Sharepoint Services to to Sharepoint Foundation 2010

Question

Earlier this week I tried migrating a WSS v3 to SPF 2010. And during installation SPF 2010 setup will detect a previous version and will tell you that you're about to do an in-place upgrade and that worked well. But my problem is after i tried adding Search Express 2010 i couldn't get it working and i came to know that the reason is because you can't install Search Express 2010 on any previous Sharepoint Products. Basically I couldn't create a Search Service Application.The option was missing.

So i went on to install a clean SPF 2010 but what I did was just install SearchExpress.exe (2010 the final version) and that went well but unfortunately no content from the WSSv site. But it did install SP Foundation 2010 plus Search Express 2010. So if you don't know the MS Search Express 2010 installation contains both SP Foundation 2010 and Search Express 2010!

I now decided to give it another by first installing WSS v3 and then used SearchExpress.exe (2010 the final version) hoping it would detect the old version and do an upgrade but it did nothing.

Any ideas on how I can upgrade a WSS v3 to SPF 2010+ Search Express 2010?

Would a Database-Attach upgrade be an option?

Answer 1

Database attach is always an option. If you are needing to maintain the look and feel of the 2007 version (visual upgrade) you can still do that with a database attach. Create your new 2010 farm and configure it the way you want it. Then you just attach your content databases to the new 2010 version. It will perform the upgrade for you just as it did in 2007. To get the 2007 look and feel back, you will need to copy the 12 hive files to your new installation and then go into PowerShell and set the version. You can get detailed instructions on the visual upgrade part here: http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=173.