Content database upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016

Pre-upgrade checks

1. Make sure that if you have any site collection which has already been migrated to SharePoint 2013 but if they are in “SharePoint 2010” mode do upgrade them to the SharePoint 2013 UI and PowerShell ( You can follow this article for any quick help) .
2. On source web application on SharePoint 2013 take not of all the managed path site collections if any and create them in the new SharePoint 2016 environment.
3. 
   
   
   
   
4. Backup all content databases of the SharePoint 2013 databases using the SQL Server management studio.
5. Make the source sites (Web Application/site collection) in read-only mode as part of your downtime window.

• Using SharePoint Central Administration, we can Set the lock for a particular site collection, which is pretty straight forward. Since, It’s possible to set the site collection to read-only mode using PowerShell, We can loop through the each and every site collection in the web application and set the site collection's status to read-only. Once done with the migration/maintenance, you can unlock the sites again.
• SharePoint Web Application to Read only using PowerShell 

# Get the Web Application
$WebApp=Get-SPWebApplication "http://SharePoint.neelam.com"
 
#Loop through all site collections and Set read only status
    foreach ($SPsite in $webApp.Sites)
    {
       $SPsite.ReadOnly = $true
       #Or you can use: Set-SPSiteAdministration -LockState "Unlock" -Identity $SPsite.url
    }

• Alternatively, you can make a note of all the content databases and set them as read only from the SQL Server managements studio.

Upgrade Procedure

1. Restore the databases which you had backup earlier at point 3 in the new SharePoint 2016 SQL instance/cluster.
2. Now you need to provide the db_owner rights to all the databases to the account which is running the SharePoint PowerShell commands in the new environment. (example neelam\sp_farm2016).
3. Before we start the upgrade make sure the new SP2016 Web Application has all features/solutions etc have been installed.
4. Run the below command. This command tests to make sure the new web application http://portal.neelams.com has all the solutions/features/templates as per its assets from the source web application.
5. Test-SPContentDatabase -Name WSS_Content_WADB_2013 -WebApplication http://portal.neelams.com
6. If the above commands returns no results and you back to the command prompt congrats you are good with the next step, else you might need to fix the missing components and install them in the new SP2016 environment.
7. Run the below command. This command proceeds with the upgrade process for the specific database  WSS_Content_WADB_2013.
8. Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name WSS_Content_WADB_2013 -WebApplication http://portal.neelams.com
9. Wait for the process to complete to 100% and then try to access the new site collection.
10. If you get “Site is not being shared” error please go the Application management > Change Site collection administrators and add the new primary and secondary site collections administrator to the newly migrated site collection.

Post upgrade checks

1. You can now go Central Admin > Upgrade and Migration > click on “Check upgrade status” under Upgrade and Patch Management. This section shows all the upgrade activities status, their timing, warnings and it will also give you the location of the upgrade log file path which is actually at the 16 Hive.
2. You now view the file for the verbose logging information here with the below filename.

C:\Program files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\16\Logs\Upgrade-YYYYMMDD….guid.log and and also a file ending with -error if any.

Thank you viewing my blog.