Remove or ignore Project Server 2007 on SharePoint 2007

Question

Environment is a single SharePoint 2007 server (MOSS) and a SQL db server farm. Once upon a time a previous SP admin installed Project Server on the SP server, but it was never used. Some action was taken so that now SharePoint sees a site collection which was obviously used for projects (obvious by the naming of the collection) that make the collection inaccessible (via browser).
The plan is to clean up this SharePoint environment and upgrade to 2010 (on new hardware). There is no desire to use Project Server. I have heard that project server cannot be uninstalled safely from the SP server.

Is that true?

Would there be a problem with just 'ignoring' project server in production, not install it on the new 2010 hardware and SharePoint will just never know it existed in the old environment?

If not, what do I have to do to detach project server from SP in the new environment?

Answer 1

I had this same scenario.

There is not way to remove it in a supported fashion. You would need to remove the bits and update the database schema that project modifies. There is no tool I know of that does this for you. In addition there are the version number issue within the database. When you uninstall Project from your servers, it also has a tendency to remove your IIS configuration, so anything not configured by SP will be lost unless you back it up prior.

Becouse of the requirements for Project server changed in 2010, your only upgrade path is to SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 w/ Project Server 2010. Nothing else is supported, and you will get errors when attempting to utilize the upgrade tool.

You are looking at migration scenario for your data. We purchased the AvePoint tool, but Quest and other companies have comparable products. Currently AvePoint is giving the tool away with 100GB of data (its priced on data migrated).

So if its less than that, you could utilize the free tool. If its more you'll need to purchase the difference. It is worth it vs. trying to migrate it yourself.

If no Project Server features are used in the site collections you would like to migrate, it is possible to do a database attach upgrade. Make sure no project server content (lists, etc) are used. A valid option is to clean up the site collections and migrate the sites through database attach. For feature cleanup there exists a tool on codeplex you can run on the sharepoint server:

http://featureadmin.codeplex.com/

After cleaning up you can do a "simple" a database attach migration and no need for an extra tool:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263299.aspx

Answer 2

As long as no features from project server are referenced in the web app's content db you plan to migrate, you're in the clear when you do a backup restore of the content db to the new farm. Check your site collection(s) if no features related to project server are activated.