Back up environment before an in-place upgrade (SharePoint Server 2010)
Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010
To ensure that you can recover the existing environment in case something goes wrong during the upgrade process, you must back up the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment before you run the upgrade process.
If you are running Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a Hyper-V virtual environment, see Using SharePoint Products and Technologies in a Hyper-V virtual environment (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=125834&clcid=0x409).
Back up the environment in SharePoint
You can do a full backup of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment. We recommend that you perform a full backup of the farm before upgrading.
To back up the Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment, use the procedures described in Back up a farm by using built-in tools (Office SharePoint Server 2007) (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=105986&clcid=0x409).
If you have deployed customizations, you must also back up the customizations. For more information, see Back up and restore customizations (Office SharePoint Server 2007) (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=186626).
Test the backups in SharePoint
You have to be sure that these backups are valid so that you can recover if there is a hardware failure or data corruption during the upgrade process. To test the backups, set up a non-production Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm, restore the backups and install any customizations (such as site definitions, Web Parts, and so on), and then verify that the restored backup is functional.
To do this, use the procedures described in Restore a farm by using built-in tools (Office SharePoint Server 2007) (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=105987&clcid=0x409).
See Also
Other Resources
Back up and restore a farm (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
Downloadable book: Upgrading to SharePoint Server 2010
Resource Center: Upgrade and Migration for SharePoint Server 2010