Move SharePoint 2016 on prem environment to Windows 2019 and SQL 2019

[Jupiter82]

Question:

What steps should be taken to move our current environment: SharePoint 2016 On-Premise on Windows 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2012 on Windows Server 2012 R2 to SharePoint 2016 On Premise Windows Server 2019 and SQL Server 2019 on Windows Server 2019.

Current Environment:

SQL Server 2014 on a Windows 2012 server (VM)

SharePoint 2016 on a Windows 2012 server (VM)

• 1 App Server
• 1 Web front end with distributed cache server
• 1 search server

Planned environment:

SQL to SQL Server 2019 on a Windows 2019 server (VM)

SharePoint 2016 to a Windows 2019 server. (VM)

• 1 App Server
• 1 Web front end with distributed cache server
• 1 search server

SQL Server has been created with SQL 2019 installed and configured.

SharePoint 2016 has been installed on the new Windows 2019 (VM) servers with their respective roles.

• 1 App Server
• 1 Web front end with distributed cache server
• 1 search server

I have created the first Web Application and Site Collection.

I cannot access the site with the install account. I get a “Can’t reach this page’ message.

I have created the following service Applications (same on current environment):

• Application Discovery and Load Balancer Service Application
• Managed Metadata Service Application
• Search Administration Web Service for Search Service Application
• Search Service Application
• Secure Store Service
• State Service Application
• User Profile Service Application
• WSS_UsageApplication

I am not sure what steps I should take next.

Should I wipe everything out and start over with just the basic install (no configuration) of the three servers. Add them to the existing farm, then migrate the databases to the new platform before reconnecting the SP environment to the upgraded database?

We need to have both the new environment and old environment online at the same time due to ongoing project work.

I am looking for suggestion on how to proceed.

Thank you.

[#2]

Hi @Jupiter82 ,

Have you named the site url in the new (win2019) environment same as the existing one (win2012r2) ?

If you are trying to reach the SharePoint site locally in the server you need 1st to add an entry into the hostfile, 2nd  Disable Loopback Check via PowerShell and 3rd (optional) configure the SSL certificate in IIS if your site is running in HTTPS.

This should help you accessing the site in the new platform (win2019).

Concerning the migration approach, what you are trying to do is technically possible because you are still using the same SharePoint version, only upgrading to a new OS, HOWEVER I don't recommend the approach because it's too risky, in my opinion, and if something goes wrong you will generate an outage.

A better approach is to build a parallel SP platform (as you are doing right now).

Apply all the settings and customization and migrate finally the Content Databases from an instance to another.

IF you need to access both platform at the same time, you need to create the web applications and urls same as the existing AND temporary extend on the new platform the web applications with a unique name.

This will allow you to keep browsing both sites at the same time (eg. xyz.contoso.com - win2012r2 / xyz-2019.contoso.com - win2019). Once you have validated that everything works fine, before the final cut over, you can simply delete the extension and keep the original url as default   

[#3]

yeah as above, pretty straight forward operation.
1. Configure new farm exactly the same as the existing
- Install SharePoint
- Configure Services using same service accounts setup
- Configure Web Applications the same (Service Accounts, DNS, Hostnames e.t.c)
- Install any solutions
- set old farm to read-only, backup and restore all (content and service, not all required google which ones are) databases to new sql (overwriting existing is they existing in testing/setup)
- Change DNS entries to point to new server
- Decomissions old servers