Upgrade SP2013 to 2016 with deployed add-ins

[Jan Steenbeek]

We have a few customers with deployed SharePoint hosted add-ins in their SharePoint 2013 environment. The add-in webs have lots of documents, metadata and configuration. We're looking for the right way to bring them over to SharePoint 2016.

Ideally, we create a new SharePoint 2016 farm, and do a database attach upgrade. This also brings over the add-in webs that are in the content databases. 

However, we have no way to bring over the contents of the App Management and Subscription Settings service application databases. We've had issues with upgrading add-ins and add-in permissions in scenario's where these databases were not present.

Also, add-in identities contain the realm of the farm

(i:0i.t|ms.sp.ext|930fc405-2029-4afc-bfe4-8cd7a9f22e15@56775c06-47b3-4957-9b5b-003e2b4b0d23)

Does this imply that with this kind of upgrade we would need to set the realm of the 2016 farm to the same value as the 2013 one using 'Set-SPRealm'?

Any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Why are you unable to bring over the two databases?

[#3]

I was under the assumption that you cannot migrate these service applications from sp 2013 to 2016 since they are not on the list here: 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj839719(v=office.16).aspx

But you know what they say about assumptions.

Are you suggesting creating SharePoint 2016 App Management and Subscription Settings service  applications and pointing to the 2013 databases in the creation cmdlets? 

[#4]

Somebody seems to have written a book documenting exactly this procedure :)

Get it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Deploying-SharePoint-2016-Configuring-Maintaining/dp/1484219988

Technet is incomplete. Thanks Trevor!

[#5]

Yep! You should migrate those databases and install the App. The process isn't well documented, I usually go back and look at old notes myself.