Migrating Project Server to an Existing SharePoint Farm

Migrating a Project Server instance to an existing SharePoint farm is a common request from companies that want to consolidate their SharePoint environments. The scenarios can be various:

1.       Migrate Project Server 2007 to a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Farm.

2.       Migrate Project Server 2007 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

3.       Install a new Instance of Project Server 2007 on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

4.       Install a new Instance of Project Server 2007 on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

5.       Migrate a Project Server 2007 Database from Test to Production Farms.

The most important concept to remember is that Project Server is only a component on a SharePoint Farm, so when you migrate a Project Server you are installing new services on your SharePoint environment. With this in mind, it is easier to understand how to distribute the services on the new environment because the existing services will continue to work the same way they did before.

In this article, we will provide some guidelines on how to proceed to accomplish scenario 2, which is Migrating an existing Project Server 2007 instance to an existing SharePoint Server 2007 Farm.

Figure 1 - Initial Scenario

Figure 2 - Final Scenario

The following sequence explains how to accomplish the migration in a general case. Depending on your environment, some customization may be necessary but if you understand the concept, it should not be very difficult.

1.       Install Project Server 2007 binaries on all Servers in the Farm. To do this you may use the guide from Microsoft available at http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/888fc300-edb4-43fe-86a9-5663bcd03bce1033.mspx (NOTE: Stop the process when you reach the session “Provision the Project Server 2007 site on the farm”. We will continue this step later on item 4).

a.       Quiesce the farm

b.      Install Project Server 2007 on all Office SharePoint Server 2007 front-end Web and application servers

c.       Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard

d.      Configure the farm services for Project Server application servers

2.       Backup the original Databases from Project Server.

a.       ProjectServer_Draft

b.      ProjectServer_Published

c.       ProjectServer_Archive

d.      ProjectServer_Reporting

3.       Restore the Databases to the SQL Server that hosts the SharePoint Farm.

4.       Provision the Project Server 2007 site on the farm.

a.       Now is time to resume the steps remaining on step 1, but now using the restored databases from the migrated Project Server 2007. This process is not synchronous so it may take a little while to complete.

Once all four steps are completed, you will have a replica of the original PWA Instance ready to use. As SharePoint does the “Load balancing” automatically there is no additional configuration to do.

We hope this article can help you to understand better how Project Server can be migrated between Farms and gives you a new alternative for future deployments.

Comments

[David]

Thank you...we'll be following this guide TODAY and it's the best summary I've seen online so far. (wish us luck)