Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Unleashed

Examining Alternative Approaches and Third-Party Migrations

Although the in-place upgrade and database attach upgrade approaches are the only two direct Microsoft supported migration scenarios, various other approaches can be used, including the following:

• Third-party migration tools— These tools typically do not have limitations to what versions can be migrated from and also allow for splicing and splitting of site collections and content databases, something not supported in the Microsoft approaches. They also typically handle exceptions better.

• STSADM exports or backups/restores— Although STSADM, the command-line tool, can only export or back up/restore to the same version, it can be used to export SharePoint content to a farm of the same ...