Plan for upgrade to Project Server 2016

Summary: Learn about considerations you need to make in upgrading to Project Server 2016.
Applies to: Project Server 2016

In this article:

• Things you need to know about upgrading to Project Server 2016

• Upgrading from an earlier version of Project Server

• Upgrading multiple Project Web App sites

If you are planning to upgrade to Project Server 2016, it is important to know the following:

• You can only upgrade to Project Server 2016 through Project Server 2013 If you are upgrading from earlier versions of Project Server, you must upgrade your databases to Project Server 2013 first in order to upgrade to Project Server 2016. There is no direct upgrade path from Project Server 2010 to Project Server 2016.

• No in-place upgrade You must first create a Project Server 2016 installation, and then attach and upgrade your Project Server 2013 databases to the new farm. In-place upgrade is not supported.

• Upgrade through Windows PowerShell cmdlets Similar to the Project Server 2013 upgrade experience, upgrading to Project Server 2016 will be through the use of Windows PowerShell cmdlets. You can use the SharePoint 2016 Management Shell to run the correct version of the cmdlets used for upgrade.

• Upgrade your Project Server 2013 Resource Plans to Resource Engagements Resource Engagements is a new feature in Project Server 2016 that helps project managers and resource managers to align with each other on the specific amount of work and time periods for specific resources associated with a project. Resource Engagements replaces the Resource Plans feature, as they will no longer be available in Project Server 2016. You can choose to migrate your existing Project Server 2013 Resources Plans to use as Resource Engagements in Project Server 2016 as part of the upgrade process. Note that for your Project Server 2013 Resource Plans to migrate correctly to Resource Engagements, they must contain time phased data and must be published.

  Note

  For more information about Resource Engagements, see this blog post: Resource Engagements.

Since upgrading to Project Server 2016 from Project Server 2013 is the only supported upgrade path, you will have to upgrade to Project Server 2013 first if you are upgrading from an earlier version of Project Server.

For more informations:
Upgrade to Project Server 2010
Upgrade to Project Server 2013
Upgrading to Project Server 2016

If you have multiple Project Web App sites using the same content database, and want the update the site collections in the content database or any of the PWA sites to 2016, all the sites in the content database and all three PWA sites must be upgraded at the same time.

In the following example, Contoso is using Project Server 2013 and has three PWA sites that all use the same content database to store their data (ContentDB-A). When upgrading to Project Server 2016, the content database and all three associated Project databases need to be copied to the Project Server 2016 database server, and then attached and upgraded in the upgrade process.