SharePoint 2013 upgrade design and architect step 2 - SharePoint 2010 farm clean up

In order to have a success SharePoint 2013 upgrade as we discussed in design andarchitect of the prepare the existing SharePoint 2010 farm, the first and key step is the SharePoint 2010 farm inventory and reports. Then the second key step is to clean up your 2010 farm to elimination potential upgrade errors. Make sure that your environment is functioning in a healthy state and that you clean up any content that you do not have to upgrade. Clean up any orphaned sites or data, address any large lists and large ACLs, remove extraneous document versions, and remove any unused templates, features and Web Parts as in the below picture.

In additional to ones provided by Microsoft, we have identified several major components need to clean up that are listed below. 

1. Remove unnecessary components

• Remove unused customizations (Bamboo, BAInsight, Flo, DHW)
• Remove unnecessary content (MPS unused sites)
• Remove orphaned sites
• Remove error web parts
• Delete unused or underused site collections and subwebs
• Delete recycle bins from site and site collection to reduce the content size
• Delete excess columns from wide lists (lists with too many columns) or remove wide lists
• Delete audit logs if this has been captured in other eDiscovery tools
• Remove extraneous document versions
• Remove unused templates, features, and Web Parts
• Remove any orphaned features
• Remove orphan event receivers
• Remove deleted site from content database
• Remove saved site templates

2. Remove unsupported components

• Remove Tagcloud
• Remove PowerPoint Broadcast sites- Not support on 2013
• Remove FAST Search Center sites
• Remove unsupported templates like Fab 40
• Turn off Web Analytics - Not support in 2013
• Check and fix large lists (list with lots of data or over threshold)
• Remove OWA (Office Web App)
• Remove orphan site collections
• Remove orphan database
• Remove orphan features
• Remove orphan event receivers
• Remove missing site definition sites
• Remove missing list definition lists
• Remove missing definition field types - this may cause upgrade fail

3. Replace using OoB features

• Remove customizations that has been replaced by 2013 OoB features- Discussion board is one good example
• Handle saved site templates
• Consider moving site collections into separate databases

You should always check the OoB new features and verify whether anything can customizations can be replaced. Please check depreciated features and prepare for replacement as we discussed before.

You should also plan the governance, claims migration, redirect migrated sites to be prepared for 2013 upgrade. 

Regarding the cleanup items in RED, we have already discussed the procedure to deal with saved site templates and will discuss Fab 40 site cleanup and upgrade in future blogs.