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Migrating SharePoint

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The Problem

I needed to migrate a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) front-end application from one server to another.

Issues

The Solution

To first install an entirely new version of WSS 3.0 on the new server. Then we restore current data from the latest back up on the currently running WS 3.0 instance.

Section 0.1 – Before you get started

  1. Set up test URLs for both your WSS 3.0 site as well as the admin site
    • For example, http://SharePointTest and http://SharePointAdminTest
    • Verify the user name and password for the account used to set up your current instance of WSS 3.0.

Section 1.0 – Install a clean version of WSS 3.0

The goal of this phase is to set up a brand new version of WSS 3.0 to which we can restore data. Make sure to use the same user credentials to create this new site as were used to create the existing WSS 3.0 instance.

  1. Install SharePoint as a new instance of a Web-Front end
    • Choose the “Advanced” installation
    • Choose “Web Front End”.
    • Under “Data Location”, you choose where to save your data.
  2. In the “SharePoint Configuration Wizard”,
    • Choose “No, I want to create a new server farm”
    • Put your new DBs on the same server as the live ones
      • DB names do not have to be the same as the live versions to restore.
      • We chose to use a naming convention that would group our DBs together.
    • Use the same log in credentials used to create the current live application.
    • You can specify a port number, but it doesn’t seem to matter whether you do or you use their default. Best practices seem to be to have a URL like http://SharePointAdmin already set up to use for your administration site.

Section 1.1.1 – Configure the new WS 3.0 instance – Set up site search

To get the site ready for the restoration, you have to set up the search services and create the web application.

  1. Run the CA web site. This will either have popped up after the configuration wizard or can be found under “Start/All Programs”.
  2. Select the “Operations” tab across the top of the site
  3. Select “Services on Server”
  4. “Windows SharePoint Services Search” should need to be started. Click the title rather than “Start” to configure it.
  5. For both the “Service Account” and the “Content Access Account User”, use the same administrator account you used to install the application.
  6. Leave everything else as its default.
  7. After the “Operation in progress” screen, you will still likely have to start the search service.

Section 1.1.2 – Configure the new WS 3.0 instance – Create the web application

  1. Select the Application Management tab.
  2. Select Create or Extend a Web Application.
  3. Click on Create a new Web Application.
  4. For “Create a new IIS web site”, give your new site a unique name. Preferably the test URL you created in Section 0.1.
  5. In the Select a security account for this application pool, again use your administrator account information.
  6. Specify your “Database Server”.
  7. Specify your “Database Name”.
  8. Under “Select Windows SharePoint Search Services Server”, there should only be one option for you to select. If there is more than one, choose the target server you wish to use as your site host.
  9. Restart IIS. (The command-line code is: iisreset /noforce)

Section 2.0 – Restoring SharePoint

Create a directory on your target machine and copy the latest version of your SharePoint back up to it. In the same directory, create a .bat file with the following code:

c:
cd\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin
pause 111

stsadm -o restore -url http://YourTestURL -filename PathToTheBackUpHere -overwrite
pause 333

  1. Doubt-click your newly-created .bat file.
  2. The process should take some time, depending on how much data you are restoring.
  3. After receiving the “Operation completed Successfully” message, open your new WSS 3.0 site to verify that the data is now there.

Section 3.0 – Clean Up

Related posts

  1. Redesigning SharePoint
  2. SharePoint Research
  3. WSS 3.0 Site Search Not Working
  4. 301 Redirects
  5. Knowing the Answer
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