Get Ready

Get Ready for SharePoint 2010

Do you want to get ready for SharePoint 2010? There are several steps you can take today to prepare yourself, your infrastructure and the solutions you’ve developed that will help make the upgrade to SharePoint 2010 smooth and predictable.

For IT Professionals	For Developers
Read the Preliminary System Requirements.	Read the Preliminary System Requirements
Plan for upgrading 32-bit hardware that is currently running SharePoint 2007 to 64-bit hardware. SharePoint 2010 will only be available in a 64-bit version. There are some great resources to get you started here.	Plan for upgrading SharePoint development environments to 64 bit. The Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services (VSeWSS), version 1.3 support 64 bit development, debugging and deployment to SharePoint Server 2007 today.
Plan for upgrading 32-bit hardware that is currently running SQL Server for SharePoint 2007 storage. SharePoint 2010 will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005.	Consider packaging all custom code that you deploy to SharePoint as SharePoint Solutions in WSP files. SharePoint 2010 has new technology that makes this solution deployment format more valuable. You can read about the SharePoint Solution format.
Plan for upgrading your Windows Server Operating System to Windows Server 2008 64-bit or above. SharePoint 2010 will require Windows Server 2008 64-bit or above. There are some great resources to get you started here.	We recommend Visual Studio 2008 for SharePoint Server 2007 development and Visual Studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010 development. There will be two types of upgrade provided for projects. Visual Studio 2008 SharePoint Workflow projects will be upgraded to Visual Studio 2010 and continue to work in SharePoint Server 2007. Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services (VSeWSS) projects will be upgraded to Visual Studio 2010 and in the process will be migrated to SharePoint 2010 projects.
Deploy Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 and Service Pack 2 for SharePoint Server 2007. Service Pack 2 is a requirement for upgrading SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint 2010.	Many of your SharePoint 2007 applications will work in SharePoint 2010. In specific cases where we deprecate an API, we will be providing detailed written guidance for developers on how to upgrade custom code, and any deprecated API’s will issue warnings on compile with recommendations for changes.
Run the Upgrade Checker Tool that is included in Service Pack 2. The report that the tool generates will provide early insight into many issues that could affect a future upgrade of your SharePoint Server 2007 Farm to SharePoint 2010.	Continue to follow the Coding Best Practices for SharePoint Server 2007.
Consider your desktop browser strategy if you have a large population of Internet Explorer 6 users. Internet Explorer 6 will not be a supported browser for SharePoint 2010. SharePoint 2010 will support a broader range of standards based browsers such as Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and FireFox 3.x. You can find more details here.	Learn about the new .NET features such as Language Integrated Query (LINQ), entity models and Silverlight to get a jump start on your SharePoint 2010 developer knowledge since these technologies will be supported in the SharePoint 2010 release.
Continue to follow the Best Practices guidance for SharePoint Server 2007.