Wish you all a Very Happy 2012 and hope you had a good break!
Microsoft has released a whitepaper on best practices during Data Upgrade - http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28701&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all
The following topics are discussed in the whitepaper:
- Analyzing customizations
- Purging and archiving data with the Intelligent Data Management Framework
- Analyzing space requirements for databases
- Creating project plans for testing
- Recommended upgrade process
- Preparing the source database
- Preparing the source AOS instance
- Using the state transfer tool
- Preparing the target database
- Preparing the target AOS instance
