SharePoint 2010 Database Upgrade - Partial Success

In my last post I detailed how my SharePoint upgrade attempts have failed because of a lack of sufficient drive space in my test environment.

I attached a 500 GB external drive to my test server, truncated the transaction log to 1Mb, moved the transaction log file to the external drive, and restarted the upgrade process. Hopefully this would be more than enough disk space.

After 10 hours, Central Administration reported that the upgrade had once again failed! However, when I checked the log files, there was no mention of drive space errors, and the hard drives had plenty of room left on them. Further review of the log files indicated that the database upgrade process had reached 100% and was complete, but that there were 76 errors. Evidently these errors were the cause of the failure.

Upon restarting SharePoint I was able to open the web app successfully.  My data was intact and I was able to browse, open documents, etc. The errors were very apparent, as certain webparts and features were causing errors or not displaying.

After the "failed" database upgrade, the log file had grown from less than 1 Mb to 130 GB. The mdf file had grown from 140 GB to 250 GB.

The content database was still in Simple Recovery Model, so I truncated the transaction log by running

DBCC Shrinkfile(@LogFileLogicalName,100).

Next, I ran DBCC ShrinkDatabase(@DataBaseName)

At this point the content database was close to it's original size of 140 GB. As with any upgrading testing, the next step is to identify and resolve the logged errors, and repeat the upgrade process until it's successful.