SharePoint 2013 to 2016 upgrade in-place

Question

I have a SharePoint 2013 farm, and I wish to upgrade to 2016 on the same boxes. From my reading, everyone says you have to take the database, and attach it to the new farm. Can I do the upgrade in the same server?

Answer 1

No, you can't do the in place upgrade.only supported way is database upgrade or using 3rd party tools.

When you upgrade from SharePoint Server 2013 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) to SharePoint Server 2016, you must use a database attach upgrade, which means that you upgrade only the content for your environment and not the configuration settings.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263026(v=office.16).aspx

Answer 2

Agreed with above suggestion.

Moreover, please refer to this earlier thread having suggested solutions i.e. Step by step upgrade from 2013 to 2016: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/a31db70c-9d42-46c1-a0ce-6f28a5bfe63b/step-by-step-upgrade-from-2013-to-2016?forum=SP2016

Or you colud try a third party SharePoint migration tool to accomplish this migration task as they can take care of all your data, metadata included.

Hope it helps!