Upgrading Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 to Search Server 2008 Express
Collaboration Tuesday, March 11 2008If you haven't been keeping up with what's going on at this year's SharePoint Conference, you should know that Microsoft has announced the release of Search Server Express (Free). I decided to post the following guidance on upgrading WSS 3.0 to Search Server Express.
1. First things first. Test this process in a lab multiple times before attempting to try this in production. Then do a complete backup of your production SharePoint farm using the stsadm tool or 3rd party backup utility.
2. Now you need to download and install WSS 3.0 Service Pack 1 per Microsoft KB article 934838. You must perform this step before you can upgrade your farm.
3. After downloading the service pack double click the install file to begin.
4. Accept the License Agreement and Click Continue.
5. The SharePoint Configuration Wizard will launch. Click the Next button.
6. Click Yes when prompted to restart services.
7. Confirm the config database setting and server name are correct. Then click Next.
8. The SharePoint Configuration Wizard will no proceed to upgrade the SharePoint code and SQL database to Service Pack 1. You should see a 9 step progress indicator.
9. After the upgrade completes you should see a dialog box stating you must run this wizard on all web servers in your farm. Click OK.
10. You should see a Configuration Successful dialog box. Click Finish to complete the upgrade process. If your upgrade fails SharePoint will attempt to rollback the upgrade process. If this occurs you may need to review the log files to see what is preventing the upgrade. More than likely this is a permissions issue with the account running the Service Pack installer. If the rollback fails you will need to restore your environment from the backup you took in step 1. You need to repeat steps 3 - 10 on every web server in your SharePoint farm.
11. Now that your service pack install is complete we are ready to install Search Server Express. Before proceeding I would recommend rebooting all SharePoint web servers in the farm. This is definitely not required but it does flush the server memory and allows SharePoint to come up fresh and clean.
12. After the server comes back online open Central Admin to ensure everything looks clean.
13. Next launch the SearchExpress.exe file.
14. The Search Server 2008 Express installer will launch. Select Install Search Server from the options.
15. Accept the license agreement and click Continue.
16. Choose your install type and click Install Now.
17. The install process will begin. After the install completes you should be presented with the option to Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard now. Ensure the checkbox is checked and click Close.
18. The SharePoint configuration wizard will now launch. Click Next to begin.
19. You will receive a warning prompt that IIS and related services may restart. Click Yes to continue.
20. Confirm the database server and config_db name then click Next.
21. The configuration wizard will now proceed with setting up Search Server 2008 Express. After the wizard completes you will see the Configuration Successful screen. Click the Finish button to complete the install.
22. The Search Server Configuration will launch. Here you select the search server index server and search server accounts. Enter those along with a contact email address then click OK.
23. SharePoint will now save the configuration, start the search services, and create a Shared Service Provider (SSP). After creation is complete click OK.
This completes the upgrade to Search Server 2008 Express. However you're not finished yet. You still need to configure indexing jobs and enable the search services. You will also want to create a search center for your existing sites. I'm not providing guidance in this post as I don't want to put you to sleep. I will try to post configuration steps on a future post. If you would like to see more, feel free to comment.
3.13.2008 at 10:22 AM
[...] Upgrading WSS 3.0 with Search Server Express 2008 [...]
3.14.2008 at 1:41 PM
So, let me get this straight, Search Server Express replaces the built in Search on Sharepoint or ? Also, have you tested this on Server 2008?
3.14.2008 at 1:58 PM
Jack,
Thanks for leaving a comment. Search Express basically adds enteprise search to WSS 3.0. You get most of the functionality of Office SharePoint Server Search. To get a better idea this comparison link should help:
www.microsoft.com/.../products.aspx
3.14.2008 at 6:31 PM
Well I am doing a fresh install on a Server 2008 box with WSS 3.0 SP1 and SSEX 2008. I'll then import my Site into the environment and let you know what I run into since I haven't been able to find anybody doing this on a 2008 box yet.
3.18.2008 at 3:45 PM
Install went fine on a clean 2008 install with a clean install of WSS 3.0 SP1 and a clean install of SSEX 2008. Restored my objects and everything was OK. One thing I have noticed is that it takes an incredibily long time to open up office files in office 2007 on vista machines. XP Machines running Office 2007 and Office 2003 seem to be unaffected and PDFs are unaffected pointing to an issue with the Vista/Office 2007 Combo. We are seeing this with all of our Vista SP1 installs here.
3.18.2008 at 4:03 PM
Jack..thanks for sharing your upgrade story. I'm glad everything worked like you expected. Did this slowness just start occuring with Search Express or did it happen with WSs 3.0 as well?
3.19.2008 at 1:08 PM
Well we had been working on a site for sometime as a new intranet site deployment and it got put on hold as these projects often do. As we came back to it, we decided to deploy it along with Search Express to a fresh 2008 server so as to be current. So, I can't really give you a straight answer on that.
10.02.2008 at 4:02 PM
Does anybody know if it's possible to customize the search area after the installation of SSEx 2008? I used to make changes to SearchArea.ascx in the 12 hive with WSS search but can't find where to do it after installing SSEx.
11.25.2008 at 2:04 AM
Hi there
have just loaded SS 2008 Express on Win2008 test server.
Am using Frontpage to tweak WSS3 main page.
Can I use Sharepoint or Frontpage to have a Search field that launch the SS 2008 Express search (ie, without having to jump to the Search Server home page to perform a search?)
Thanks.