Upgrade Overview
Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010
When you upgrade an installation of Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 , you can either perform an in-place upgrade, or you can attach a content database to the installation. In both cases, until the upgrade is complete for databases, the SharePoint sites are unavailable. Visual upgrade allows you to gradually verify changes during an in-place upgrade, so that you can determine whether user interface (UI) elements of a previous release function appropriately in the current one. For an IT professional overview about upgrade, see Upgrade process overview (SharePoint Foundation 2010) on the Microsoft TechNet Website.
In-Place Upgrade
An in-place upgrade replaces the previous code in a Web application with the code of the latest version, and manipulates the databases that were used with the previous version. The upgrade preserves farm settings, web application settings, service settings, and site settings, as well as content.
In-place upgrade executes a set of applicable upgrade actions on service instances and resources of the previous version, providing a one-way transformation to the current version. This upgrade updates the Internet Information Services (IIS) Web sites (Web applications) that run SharePoint Foundation 2010 code, and modifies the databases and content of the previous version to work with the most recent SharePoint builds.
For IT professional information about how to perform in-place upgrade, see Perform an in-place upgrade (SharePoint Foundation 2010).
Database Attachment
Unlike an in-place upgrade, database attachment upgrades content, but does not upgrade configuration settings. In a database attach upgrade, you back up databases of the old farm and restore them in the new farm. When you attach the database to the farm, SharePoint Foundation upgrades the database to the new version.
For more information about database attachment, see Perform a database attach upgrade to SharePoint Foundation 2010.
Visual Upgrade
Visual upgrade, introduced in SharePoint Foundation 2010, allows you to leave a site in the user interface (UI) of the previous version, or to move it to the UI of the new version. SharePoint Foundation accomplishes this by including most components of the old version’s UI, as well as UI components of the new version. In some cases, the old and new UIs have similar components, but the components (for example, Web Parts) dynamically render different content depending on the UI mode of the Web site.
Components that have a visual aspect may need to be revised to work correctly in SharePoint Foundation 2010. Visual features include, for example, delegate controls, Web Parts, custom site definitions, custom master pages, or custom themes. While a feature might work correctly before visual upgrade, after visual upgrade it may render something that is incompatible with the new UI structure. For more information, see Visual Upgrade.
Build-to-Build and Version-to-Version Upgrades
SharePoint Foundation supports version-to-version upgrade between different versions, and build-to-build upgrade for the same version. It is not possible to have different builds of the same server application version running on the same computer. SharePoint Foundation does not support running two different builds in the same server farm. For information about versioning, see Site Versioning and Setup Path Fallback.