Microsoft has just released a technical document on installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008. You will find it here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff959273(WS.10).aspx
It great to finally have a guidance document from Microsoft on this process but there are a few issues from what I see.
The major one is around section 10 whose heading is – Step 10: Connect the ShareWebDb database to SQL Server 2008 you’ll find that the contents are actually identical (word for word) with Step 12: Connect the ShareWebDb content database which appears to be a simple editing over sight.
Step 10 should in fact detail how to attach ShareWebDb to SQL 2008 which isn’t that hard but unless that is done first you are not going to be able to complete step 12 of actually connecting the database to SharePoint Foundation 2010.
Apart from that major issue I also believe the document could contain some additional items of information, such as:
1. The document speaks of using SQL Express 2008 but doesn’t appear to mention the fact that this version of SQL although free is limited to databases of 4GB in size. So if your existing companyweb on SBS 2008 is greater than 4GB the detailed process won’t work.
If you however install SQL Express 2008 R2 you can then have a maximum database size of 10GB and if you then use remote blob storage like I explained in a previous blog post, you can have a database up to 16GB. You can always use a full blown version of SQL 2008 which overcomes the database limit but if you want a free version make sure you go SQL Express 2008 R2.
2. After the migration process is complete and you bring up the new SharePoint site it will look almost identical to WSS v3. That’s because SharePoint Foundation 2010 has a visual upgrade feature that you have to select to upgrade the look and feel of the site. I believe that a major reason why people would want to go to all the trouble of installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008 is so they can benefit from the new interface.
So after you do the upgrade go into the site settings for the site and select the visual upgrade option to change the look and feel of your site to new SharePoint interface.
3. If you have configured PDF icons and indexing on your existing version of WSS v3 on SBS 2008 you’ll have to reconfigure it on SharePoint Foundation 2010. Getting the PDF icon is pretty simple, here’s my video tutorial on the process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay6Xvb2oIUU
but getting PDFs to index now that is something much more tricky under SharePoint Foundation 2010. The solution is in my SharePoint Guide (which is yet another great reason to purchase it!).
3. If you try and install SQL 2008 Express on the SBS 2008 server you won;t be able to until you uninstall the existing SQL 2005 Express Management Studio. Not a major issue but handy to know when you are doing the prep work.
So there’s a few things I’ve noticed about the document upon first glance. The big issue is the fact that Step 10 needs to be correct to show the process of attaching the old WSS v3 database to SQL Express 2008.
I’ll let you know what more info I find as I dig deeper.
CIAOPS 