Upgrading from WSS 3.0 to Search Server 2008

A couple of weeks ago a colleague and me were sent to install WSS 3.0 and Search Server 2008 Express at a clients. Before we went up there I did some research as to the best way to install this combination. Did we need more than one server, one to run WSS and one to run Search Server? Can they coexist peacefully? Can you upgrade WSS to Search Server? These were all questions that were running through my head.

I did a search on the web and found a TechNet article entitled, Upgrade to Search Server 2008 from Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The article outlined the process to take to successfully deploy both platforms. The good news that they can coexist on the same server and the upgrade is pretty straight forward.

There are a few items to consider first. Make sure that your SQL Server is running SQL 200 with service pack 4 or SQL Server 2005 with service pack 2. If you don't make sure of this, you will get pretty far into the installation before you find any issues. Also you can't upgrade from WSS 2.0 to Search Server 2008. To upgrade WSS 3.0 you will need to make sure that you installed Service Pack 1 for WSS 3.0 prior to the Search Server upgrade. You can get a slipstream version of WSS 3.0 that already contains the service pack here. Once you have WSS installed, you simply run the Search Server 2008 installation and then re-run the SharePoint configuration wizard.

Some additional things that we found when doing installations include:

Create your web application in WSS if one doesn't exist already before upgrading to Search Server. This makes the process a little easier as Search Server will make the changes needed to integrate itself into existing web apps. You can wait to create a web application and a site collection until after you install Search Server, you will just need to do a few more manual steps.

Keep in mind that Search Server 2008 Express (the free version) can not be extended into a farm.

Once you have installed Search Server 2008, you will notice that the Shared Services link will take you to the Search Administration page where you can control content sources, crawl rules, federated sources, and crawl schedules. If you want to access the keyword best bets, you will not find these on the Search Administration page. These can be found under the Search Center settings.

Search Server 2008 provides enterprise search that works well with the collaboration of SharePoint. With federated sources, you can include searchs from Yahoo!, Live Search, and others to allow your employees to search internally and externally at the same time. All of this is extensible as well so that you can write your own federated source connectors.