Guys, I have been asked to migrate all the SharePoint databases for a WSS 3.0 Farm from one SQL server to a new SQL server. So I gather I need to move the following: The SharePoint_AdminContent contentdb for C.A. The ContentDbs for each web application SharePoint_Config (with psconfig.exe cmds) Is this all the DBs? I am confused, as I'm taking over these SP farms from another engineer who has left the company and there are other databases on the SQL instance that appear to be SharePoint related: 2 x SharePoint_AdminContent_GUID.............. 1 x WSS_Search_Server-Name-Here - obviously this is the WSS Search index, but how do I move this to the new SQL server and connect it back to the farm? Or do I accept I have to rebuild the index after migrating the dbs??? Can't find any info online about migrating this db. Many thanks ConradConrad Goodman MCITP SA / MCTS: WSS3.0 + MOSS2007

Hi Conrad, I think you may find the answer to this differs depending on who you are asking. My preference in 2007 has always been to worry about my content dbs, and not so much about the admin and config dbs. For your particular situation, what i would do is: 1. Back up all content dbs for each web application. You can find out which content db belongs to which web app through central administration - > Content databases. I always double check this in case I have some orphaned content dbs that I may not need to backup / restore. 2. Re-run sharepoint config wizard, disconnect from old farm and create a new farm on your new sql server. This will create new admin and config dbs. Your admin and config dbs store your settings specific to central administration. In my experience, it's faster for me to simply to recreate the dbs and reconfigure these settings than to worry about a backup / restore operation. So reconfigure smtp, shared services etc. If you have a really complex central admin config with lots of ssps etc and you can't afford the down time on them, then doing a backup and restore might make more sense. 3. Create new web apps (when prompted for db name, use the same name as the content dbs you backed up in step 1) and then restore your content dbs to overwrite the newly created one so you get all your data back. You could also detach/attack your old content dbs. 4. Rebuild your search index. How big is your index? Is rebuilding it feasible? Hope that helps, perhaps others will have feedback on how they might approach this. The steps I laid out above I've done several times and it works well for me, but again, I don't really care if i have to recreate my config, admin and search dbs.