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Upgrading to Project Server Subscription Edition

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Summary: Learn how to upgrade to Project Server Subscription Edition.
Applies to: Project Server Subscription Edition

This article describes the steps required to upgrade to Project Server Subscription Edition.

Note

Prior to reading this article, see Plan for upgrade to Project Server Subscription Edition for more information about upgrade and the upgrade process.

Upgrade requirements

Note the following requirements for upgrading to Project Server Subscription Edition:

  • You can only upgrade from Project Server 2016 or 2019. If you are upgrading from earlier versions of Project Server, you must upgrade your databases to Project Server 2016 or 2019 first in order to upgrade to Project Server Subscription Edition.

    Note

    For information about upgrading to Project Server Subscription Edition from Project Server 2013, see Upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Server Subscription Edition.

  • The upgrade process requires you to run Microsoft PowerShell cmdlets in the SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Management Shell. Verify that you have the following minimum permissions to run them:

    • securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance.

    • db_owner fixed database role on all databases that are to be updated.

    • Administrators group on the server on which you are running the PowerShell cmdlets.

    An administrator can use the Add-SPShellAdmin cmdlet to grant permissions to use SharePoint Server cmdlets.

    Note

    If you do not have permissions, contact your Setup administrator or SQL Server administrator to request permissions. For more information about PowerShell permissions, see Add-SPShellAdmin

  • If you are migrating your Project Server 2016 or 2019 Resource Plans to use as Resource Engagements in Project Server Subscription Edition:

    • They must be published.

    • They must have associated time phased data (it must contain work, not just resources).

      Note

      For more information about Resource Engagements, see this blog post: Resource Engagements.

Project Server Subscription Edition upgrade steps

Upgrading to Project Server Subscription Edition can be broken up into four steps. These include:

  1. Create a Project Server Subscription Edition farm

  2. Copy and move your databases

  3. Attach and upgrade your SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019 content database

  4. Test your SharePoint Content database

The following provides more detail about these upgrade steps.

Create your Project Server Subscription Edition farm

The first step in the upgrade process is to create the Project Server Subscription Edition farm. Since database attach is the supported method for upgrade, you will be attaching and upgrading your Project Server 2016 or 2019 databases to this farm in the steps that follow.

Note that a key difference in installing Project Server Subscription Edition versus the way it was installed in previous versions is that the Project Server Subscription Edition installation is now a part of the SharePoint Server Subscription Edition installation. Project Server Subscription Edition now runs as a service application in SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, and does not require a separate installation.

Important

Project Server Subscription Edition can only be enabled on the Enterprise version of SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. Project Server Subscription Edition cannot be enabled on SharePoint Server Subscription Edition with a Standard license.

Note

For more information about how to install a new Project Server Subscription Edition farm, see Deploy Project Servers 2016 or 2019 or Subscription Edition.

Copy and move your databases

The second step in the upgrade process copies your databases required for your Project Server 2016 or 2019 environment to your new Project Server Subscription Edition environment. This is a two-step process:

  1. With the SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019 farm in read-only mode, the server farm administrator backs up the following database from the SQL Server instance:

    • SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019 content database that contains your project data

  2. The server farm administrator restores a backup copy of the database to the SQL Server 2019 instance being used to host the Project Server Subscription Edition farm databases.

You can use SQL Server Management Studio to copy and restore the databases.

Attach and upgrade your SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019 content database

The third step in the upgrade process attaches and upgrades your SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019 content database that contains your Project site data to your new Project Server Subscription Edition farm.

You will need to run the Mount -SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet in the SharePoint Subscription Edition Management Shell in order to do this.

  1. Open the SharePoint Subscription Edition Management Shell as an Administrator.

  2. At the PowerShell command prompt, type:

    Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name <database name> -WebApplication <Web application name>

    For example:

    Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name WSSContentContosoPWA -WebApplication "SharePoint 80"

Test your content database

The fourth step in the upgrade is to test your newly attached and upgraded content database. You will use the Test-SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet to test against the Web application you specified to verify all customizations referenced within the content database are also installed in the web application in the new SharePoint Server Subscription Edition environment. This cmdlet will not update your data in anyway.

  1. Open the SharePoint Subscription Edition Management Shell as an Administrator.

  2. At the PowerShell command prompt, type:

    Test-SPContentDatabase -Name <database name> -WebApplication <Web application name>

    For example:

    Test-SPContentDatabase -Name WSSContentContosoPWA -WebApplication "SharePoint 80"

    This will check the SharePoint - 80 Web application against the customizations referenced in the WSSContentContosoPWA database, and will post the results.

The results of the Test-SPContentDatabase cmdlet will note inconsistencies it will find in your upgraded SharePoint Web application in its new SharePoint Server Subscription Edition environment. The results do not imply that the upgrade of the SharePoint 2016 or 2019 content database has failed, but will only note things you need to look into in your new environment. The following are some checks that may appear in your results.

Check your SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019 content database for resource plan migration information

Check the MSP_RESOURCE_PLANS table for the following columns:

Column Values
RESPLAN_IS_MIGRATED
"0" not migrated
"1" migrated
MIGRATED_REV_COUNTER
The value shown is the number of attempts it took to migrate this resource plan. If the command is run repeatedly, this value is incremented each time, with a maximum value of 50.
MIGRATION_ERROR_INFO
Provides additional information about migration:
MissingResources=1, followed by a list of missing resources
AccessDenied=2, followed by any additional information
DatabaseError=3, followed by any additional information
Unknown=4, followed by any additional information

You can check to see if a specific PWA site you are migrating has an associated resource plan. You use the following SQL query to do this:

SELECT *
  FROM [DBName].[pjpub].[MSP_RESOURCE_PLANS] where SiteId = <SiteId>

There is a row in this table for each resource plan for the site (A project can have 0 or 1 resource plan).

To get the SiteID value for your PWA site, run the following PowerShell command in the SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Management Shell:

$site = get-spsite <SiteUrl>
$site.ID

Check your ULS logs for more information

The following tags in category:Engagements (PWA) may have useful information to help troubleshoot any problems associated with your resource plan migration:

  • tag_a5h65

  • tag_a5h66

  • tag_a1kg8

  • tag_a3qj3

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  • tag_a5h67

  • tag_a1khf

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