Hello SP Gurus, We are regularly taking full Farm backups. I would like to test these backups on testing environment (AD -1, WFE - 1, SQL - 1). I am facing following problems 1. How to replicate AD objects to test environment? 2. Found that backup task is throwing errors while backing up; How to take good full farm backup? using Central Administration or STSADM? 3. How to restore full farm backup on this testing environment? I know we can restore it using STSADM or Central Admin, but will it restore with AD users and permissions? Thanks in advance

If you create the test environment the wayI explained in my first port, all your Goasl will be achieved. Your points above for checking the backups, testing new webparts or using the test if Prod is down can be easily done. Later part is all Planning and as I said in my first post, you can keep all the names just very same but add a suffix or prefix to everything so as to avoid any confusion with the production environment. Say for eg. you prod servers are: Leo, terra,leopard, you can name your test servers as leo-test,terra-test,leopard-test. If your prod account is sharepointaccount, you can name test account as sharepointaccount-t, if web app is http://companysite, you can name your test webapp as http://companysite-test I LOVE MS..... Thanks and Regards, Kshitiz (Posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.)

John, I am not able to run STSADM -o preupgradecheck command because SharePoint is still running on SP1 Can you elaborate more on "same version of SharePoint as your production" and "use the same configurations"? how to achieve this? can you give me some steps? Kshitizs "The best way to replicate, Have SharePoint installed on servers, take backup of the content databases from Prod and restore into the SQL server instance of the TEST. Attach the content databases to the web apps created in test" Can you give me steps on how to find how many content dbs are there? Can you give me steps on how to find how many web apps are there? Do I need to give WFE and SQL server names same as production with 'test' suffix? Do I need to create web apps first? and then attach database? -- I am not getting this step Thanks in advance

Please find the answers below: Can you give me steps on how to find how many content dbs are there? you can check this on webapp level, so you can find the content databases for each webapp. You can use the command below to find the databases attached to a webapp. stsadm.exe -o enumcontentdbs -url <URL name> Can you give me steps on how to find how many web apps are there? stsadm -o enumalternatedomains Do I need to give WFE and SQL server names same as production with 'test' suffix? That was just an idea how you can do it. You can plan what is good and followed in your organization Do I need to create web apps first? and then attach database? -- I am not getting this step Yes Create the webapp first with some dummy database name. then through central administration, remove the dummy database and attach the one restored from restoration environment.I LOVE MS..... Thanks and Regards, Kshitiz (Posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.)

Kshitizs, I am working on test environment as you stated above, I will let you know as things goes further Regards

Hello, I have restored full farm backup on new test environment, but not able to browse the site. I don't see any errors in eventlog. IE is showing "Internet explorer cannot display the webpage". How do debug such error? Thanks in advance