Impact of Active Directory Migration or domain change on SharePoint, domain migrate SharePoint servers – Part 2

This is part 2 of part 1 written earlier https://synkventures.com/2017/07/25/impact-of-active-directory-migration-or-domain-change-on-sharepoint-part-1/

If your organization has decided to split your company or rename or for any other reason domain needs to be changed then SharePoint will be impacted. In the first part I had explained how to do user migration from SharePoint point of view.

Next step is to do Server Migration of SharePoints in new domain.

What is the recommended way to do this?

Note that Microsoft does not support chaning domain in same existing servers. It means you have to create a new farm in new domain with new service accounts and then do a data migration.

Broadly these are the steps to do it

  1. Create a new farm same as previous one or an upgraded one(scale) if needed.
  2. Create new service accounts in new domain to be used in new farm. Use these accounts to create and configure new farm.
  3. Migrate all Service Applications like Managed metadata service, Search service, User profile service, Workflow manager etc
  4. Create web applications same as previous farm
  5. Deloy any custom code WSP from the previous farm to new one
  6. Use database attach upgrade process to migrate content databases and attach to newly created web applications.
  7. Configure any SharePoint hosted app or provider hosted app
  8. Test and verify that all data has been migrated and also custom code as working as expected

Above are very broad steps, if you have done any upgrade such as SharePoint 2010 to 2013 or SharePoint 2013 to 2016 then you will find the steps familiar.

Although you always expect these steps to be done smoothly you know it will never be like this.

Below are some things you might experience or not experience but I am listing then down from our experience

  1. Issues with custom code where html files has been used for JavaScript based programming : Somehow the reference to js code was lost and it was not pointing to correct relative urls in the site. This was fixed manually in multiple places
  2. Workflow issues: Some of the workflows were republished and started working. Workflow 2013 had couple if isssues as well, you may refer to this article for more details https://synkventures.com/2019/05/18/sharepoint-workflow-2013-not-working-after-migration-workflow-issues/
  3. Provider hosted and SharePoint hosted app: All the apps had lost their settings and needed a deploy on all sites. This can be done via script.

You can always find new issues so it’s very important to testing and verification for all functtionalties.

If you have any more detail questions please contact us via Contact page.

if you have any questions or remarks please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter

Hybrid Architecture Office 365 (SharePoint Online) and SharePoint 2016 On premise #SharePoint2016 #SharePoint #Office365

If you like my blog post please subscribe to my YouTube Channel “SYNK Ventures – Let’s talk about Microsoft 365” as well https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6vLzWN-3aFG8dgTgEOlx5g?sub_confirmation=1

Best thing which has happened during the introduction of SharePoint 2016 is that Microsoft is convinced that Hybrid Architecture is the way forward for bigger organizations and all the data cannot be moved to cloud. At least this is the current reality with lot of companies but such fast changing technologies you never know what’s the future

In this post we will review architecture of SharePoint 2016 on-premise and Office 365 (SharePoint Online). Here we are assuming that you already have a SharePoint On-premise set up and you will add SharePoint Online.

Basic architecture looks like below

hybridarchitecture

Image source Download

To start with you need an Office 365 license and Azure subscription as well. To start with we need to set up server to server trust and certificates like STS.

We need Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) which is used to share information securely and seamlessly. SSO (Single Sign on) is also facilitated via this and also makes sure that there no duplication of accounts.

Azure active directory tenant is used to authenticate to Office 365. It’s quiet powerful with variety of features like identity management, multifactor authentication etc. Since authentication occurs via Azure active directory we will have copy of all user account of organization in this as well but we will use Azure Active Directory connect  for directory synchronization so that for end-user it looks like only one account.

More about Azure Active Directory Connect can be read here Azure Active Directory Connect

Azure Access control services is used to provide users authentication and authorization to web application and services. You can read more here Azure Access Control Service

There are multiple steps to do the complete set up, if you need very detailed steps I will recommend below online books from Microsoft press store

Planning and Preparing for SharePoint Hybrid

Configuring SharePoint Hybrid capabilities

Once the set up is done your users will experience various benefits, but you need to be sure what you are getting into and be clear about it

  • Integrated search: You get integrated search so you can search in both SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2016 on-premise. Everything will be indexed in SharePoint online. Note that since index is stored in SharePoint some customers need to be wary of it they might not want part of secret data also in cloud. How to do set up can read here Configure Cloud Hybrid Search
  • Unified user profile where users can see both on-premise and SharePoint online followed sites together
  • Other services like Delve, Video and App launched will now be available on SharePoint on-premise as well
  • You can redirect users to SharePoint Online OneDrive for Business from SharePoint 2016 on-premise OneDrive. Before you do this make sure that all documents are migrated as it’s only a redirect. Steps to redirect are very simple and can be used read here How to redirect users to Office 365 for OneDrive for Business . Best way to migrate data is to write a tool for migration, there are various way to implement this but best is that you can access OneDrive for Business using SharePoint APIs which you might be familiar with else you have to register an App for OneDrive for Business to access data / folders programatically. I am assuming you already know how to access OneDrive in SharePoint on-premise programatically.

To access OneDrive for business SharePoint online via REST API you can below url

https://O365DomainHere-my.sharepoint.com/personal/     UserName_O365DomainHere_onmicrosoft_com/_api/web/GetFolderByServerRelativeUrl(‘/personal/UserName_O365DomainHere_onmicrosoft_com/Documents’)/folders/

You can read about data operations here REST API Data Operations SharePoint

So this is a basic overview of Hybrid architecture and also my take on the things you need to consider, if you have further questions just leave  a comment

In case you need more help on this or other SharePoint issues please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Data Migration #SharePoint #Office365

After building the strategy and planning for it, next step is Data Migration from SharePoint 2013 to Office 365. We are going to look into native import / data migration service provided in Office 365, you need to be an Office 365 Administrator or at least have someone to help with initial set up.

Before we start actual migration we need to do some set up. Login to Office 365 and go to menu Users –> Migration.

datamigration

Once there scroll to see Onboarding and migration guidance, click on SharePoint and new window will open.

onboardingmeny

This will guide to Onboard you and create migration jobs, I am just capturing relevant steps here

onboardingsteos

Step 1 is just some text about SharePoint online

Step 2 is very important as you need to define what kind of deployment you will have, in our case we will select on premise to cloud.

oboarding-step-2

Step 3 explains PowerShell option we have selected On-premise to cloud migration

Step 4 is to prepare for PowerShell, first it download and install SharePoint Online Management Shell, download it from here SharePoint Online Management Shell.

Second is to create Azure Storage account if you don’t have already one.

Go to https://portal.azure.com and create a storage account

storageaccount

Also get your location and details

step-4

sponlinepowershell

Step 5 is creation of Content package, we need to use classic Export Web command in SharePoint onpremise server to create an export package

Export-SPWeb [-Identity] -Path [-ItemUrl ] [-NoFileCompression ]

Step 6 is coversion of package so that it can be imported

ConvertTo-SPOMigrationTargetedPackage -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -SourcePackagePath $sourcePackage -OutputPackagePath $targetPackage -TargetWebUrl $targetWeb -TargetDocumentLibraryPath $targetDocLib -Credentials $creds

To read more about ConvetTo-SPOMigrationTargetedPackage you can read here Click here

Step 7 is creating Azure Containers and uploading content package

$al = Set-SPOMigrationPackageAzureSource -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -SourcePackagePath $targetPackage -AzureQueueName $azureQueueName -AccountName $azureAccountName -AccountKey $azureAccountKey

$al|$al|fl

Step 8 is submitting a migration job, sample code is here

Submit-SPOMigrationJob -TargetWebUrl $targetWeb -MigrationPackageAzureLocations $al -Credentials $creds

Note that some parameters variables were created in earlier steps and needs to be used here

Step 9 is to check Migration Job Status which can be done Azure account storage queue

Sample source code

# Example file share packaging, conversion, upload and job submission script
# Queue is only container specified as new containers are automatically generated
# All container URIs get populated into $al variable output from Set-SPOMigrationPackageAzureSource cmdlet
$creds = (Get-Credential admin@contoso.com)
$sourceFiles = ‘\\fileshare\users\charles’
$sourcePackage = ‘C:\migration\CharlesDocumentsPackage_source’
$targetPackage = ‘C:\migration\CharlesDocumentsPackage_target’
$targetWeb = ‘https://contoso-my.sharepoint.com/personal/charles_contoso_com’
$targetDocLib = ‘Documents’
$azureAccountName = ‘contosomigration’
$azureAccountKey = ‘Insert Azure Account Key string Here’
$azureQueueName = ‘migrationqueue’
# Create new package from file share without security (faster)
New-SPOMigrationPackage -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -OutputPackagePath $sourcePackage
# Convert package to a targeted one by looking up data in target site collection
ConvertTo-SPOMigrationTargetedPackage -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -SourcePackagePath $sourcePackage -OutputPackagePath $targetPackage -TargetWebUrl $targetWeb -TargetDocumentLibraryPath $targetDocLib -Credentials $creds
# Create azure containers and upload package into them, finally snapshotting all files
$al = Set-SPOMigrationPackageAzureSource -SourceFilesPath $sourceFiles -SourcePackagePath $targetPackage -AzureQueueName $azureQueueName -AccountName $azureAccountName -AccountKey $azureAccountKey
# This displays the return Azure location
$al|$al|Format-List
# Submit package data to site collection to create new migration job
Submit-SPOMigrationJob -TargetWebUrl $targetWeb -MigrationPackageAzureLocations $al -Credentials $creds

So this completes all steps for data migration. Next we will look into Hybrid scenarios which will come in next post

To check earlier two posts click below

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Planning #SharePoint #Office365

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Strategy #SharePoint #Office365

 

 

 

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Strategy #SharePoint #Office365

This post is written as step 2 that is strategy. Step that is planning can be read here SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Planning #SharePoint #Office365

Once we have filled in the excel template and also found out all issues via SharePoint Migration assessment Tool we need to formulate a strategy to find solution to issues and customizations.

As an outcome of the first step you should have a list of categorization of issues / customizations for which you need to strategize. I am listing down some if it, note that these are just examples and it totally depends on what you have done in your farm before and how much customizations have been done.

customizationcategory

For more reading about above topics and in text format use below link to download an excel Customization / Issues Categorization

Note that any solution will be based on what kind of Office 365 license you have, whether your organization will have PowerApps or Flow or not? Also whether you will have SharePoint Add-in model in place or not

If you have any questions with specific customization solution you can ask in comment section and I will try my best to provide a solution to that.

After we define a strategy for customizations we need to find a strategy to migrate data from On-premise to Office 365. This will be our third step and we will define that in next post. Before we do data migration it’s important to list down how many Web Applications we have, size of Content Databases.

In case you need more help on this or other SharePoint issues please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter

 

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Planning #SharePoint #Office365

This post is written as step 1 that is planning.

When SharePoint 2010 was launched Microsoft wanted to move everyone to cloud and they were trying to convince everybody that cloud is the future but they soon realized everything cannot be moved to cloud due to local data regulations and customers apprehensions about data security. Now Hybrid architecture is promoted quite a lot which makes sense and also more practical.

In this post I will try to outline how to prepare for Migration from SharePoint 2010 / 2013 to Office 365. We also discuss Hybrid architecture later in other posts.

We will discuss different aspects of migration, in this post we will understand SMAT tool provided by Microsoft and also excel template created by me to analyze customizations.

Microsoft has introduced a SharePoint Migration assessment Tool called SMAT, you can download it from here SMAT.

The zip file downloaded needs to be run on a SharePoint server, file contains below files, some of them are important to understand

smatfiles

File SiteSkipList.csv is important as you can mention which sites needs to be skipped during assessment, like you can mention MySite to be skipped as in general they don’t have any customizations and many sites under it.

SMAT Read me have more instructions but to run it you need run the exe file via command prompt

SMAT.exe -0 D:\Outputlog

where D:\Outputlog is the destination where logs will be created, do not out the log destination as SMAT folder as it tries to clean up and will end up deleting files.

While its running you can see what it will be scanning, below is a screenshot while it runs. You can see it’s analyzing FullTrustSolutions, LargeExcelFiles, Wokflows etc.

Since we know that no server side code is allowed in Office365 it’s important to have this kind of analysis to understand what things needs to reimplemented.

smatcapture

Once the assessment tool finished it will generate reports for each topic in detail and list down all site details, issues about it like below

smatreports

Each report has very detailed information, if you want to understand meaning of each report you can refer to this link SMAT Report Definitions. Although I think names are self-explanatory.

These reports will help you understand what issues you will face if you need to migrate but for planning I have created excel template where you can list all customizations and also strategize around it. This is needed because I believe that no one understands your farm better.

You can download the excel template from here, each column has some explaination.There are two sheets. First sheet is for listing all customizations and categorized them. Second sheet is to write down solution details of each category. This way you can have common solutions for each category and it can define how your developers should approach re-implementation

SharePoint 2013 to Office 365 Migration Template

So the migration assessment tool and excel template will help you analyze your farm in great detail and plan for the migration.

Tech Tip : Are you in search of a remote working technology? Access your online private workspace on any device(PC/android/iOS) with remotely accessible citrix vdi from CloudDesktopOnline with enterprise Add-Ons like Hosted SharePoint and Exchange. If you`re a MS Azure user looking for managed azure services visit Apps4Rent.

You can read the part 2 here SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Strategy #SharePoint #Office365