Copy SharePoint production farm to a development farm
Hi all,
My company has a Production Sharepoint site that is highly customized with webparts, content types, permissions, etc... We need to create a development farm, but want it to look and function just like the production farm. I've read a lot on ways about doing this and found that you have to install Sharepoint on the development farm with the same configuration, then backup and restore onlythe contentdatabases manually, then create a new website application and link it to those content databases. from there i couldn't find too much that assured me the site content would copy over the same.
My questions are:
How can I copy over my production site content, pages, documents, webparts, permissions, etc... to the development area keeping all my settings?
Or is there a better way to do a complete copy of the sharepoint farm to a new farm?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
Tony
July 12th, 2007 10:28am
Hi everyone,
Well i figured this one out on my own (with the help of a $150 an hour tech guy). anyways for anyone else who is wondering what i'm about to tell you is how to (basically) make an exact copy of your sharepoint server farm to a new farm (for dev or as a restore for production in case of a disaster).
First, you need to install sharepoint always use a complete install even if its a one server farm. (oh and obviously u need SQL server 2005 with latest updates and windows server 2003 with latest updates and .net framework 3.0) so once installed (there are tons of helps for how to install so i wont explain that). Configure the server the way it was on production or where ever. (you should document all configurations so in case of an emergency you can restore) When configuring the SharedServices change all the default names to something other than what you called them on production or where ever your coping from. Once you got everything done make an empty site collection for each site collection you've created on production. from here you can use the stsadm utility to backup and restore the site collection or you can just do a SQL backup and restore just the content database. If you do the SQL restore then you need to detach the old content database and attach the new one through the central administration. The last thing you need to do is do a sql restore of the SharedServices1_DB and SharedServices1_Search_DB (these are the default names, use whatever you named them) once their restored to sql go into central administration and click on "Create or configure this farm's shared services" under application management. Here you restore the SSP and enter in the databases you just restored to sql. After that make sure you move all your applications over to the new SSP (except for the Administration site host) and change the new SSP to the default one. Now just go into the SharedServices link on the left side and make sure the user profiles and properties have been crawled and the regualar searches have been crawled.
This is what i found worked for me and my company's needs. Expiriences will differ with every farm.
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July 24th, 2007 10:15am
Hi TonyD256,
thank you for document your experience, it's very helpfull. I'm very new in SharePoint and i'm trying to understand how to createtesting, development and production enviroments.The main challenge thatI found is this:
*You have a working site in development and you moved that into production
* Once in production, the users creates custom lists, contacts, etc...
* Then you need to implement something new in development stage (I can use what you described for importing all changes in production to development).
* Meenwhie, the users creates more custom list, etc...
* Then you finished implementing the new requierment in development and you need to "export" that to production.
Is there any way to "export" ONLY that changes to production and mantain the changes the users did?
Regards,
Guillermo
December 17th, 2007 11:58am
a Backup of ProD Server Farm Image
b Backup of Sharepont all databases
c Backup of User profie / IIS / Application pool
d list of all services account / sql account / server name / ip address
e I disconnected the App Server/WFE from the existing farm by running the configuration wizard.
f Using SharePoint farm configuration wizard I provisioned a new farm and service applications.
g I created a new web application and removed the content database created for this web app.
h Then run the stsadm command to Add the Production Content database to the new web application.
i check and add one bye one db .
j check stsadm command for rename and connected to QA.Deepesh Yevle MCTS
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September 30th, 2012 7:44am