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Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Let’s consider a Sharepoint 3 server failure scenario. The server has failed and after the hardware fault has been fixed a bare metal restore using Backup Exec fails to get the server up and running in it’s original state. Or the server comes back up but Sharepoint still isn’t working and restoring sharepoint using backup agents doesn’t work either. Hmm, not looking great is it. However if you have the content database (or databases if you are running multiple sites) then there is another method that you can try.
To restore a Sharepoint database file into a new web application you may wish to do a fresh install of Sharepoint to make sure you have a clean system, it’s up to you, but once you can use Sharepoint Central Administration you can try the following: -
1. Using Sharepoint Central Administration create a new wep application and virtual server. Let’s say it is called ‘intranet’
2. Once the new web application is ready, create a site collection (it doesn’t matter which template) and test that it is working and available in a browser
3. Now, using Sharepoint Central Administration, delete the content database that has just been created for the new web application
4. Open a terminal command prompt window (start - run - ‘cmd’ - ok) and change directory to the following path: - ‘cd c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extentions\12\bin’
5. From this directory execute the following command: -
stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://intranet:80 -databasename STS_Server1_878787564 -databaseserver Server1\MICROSOFT##SSEE
This command will add the content database to the new web application called ‘intranet’. Lets take a closer look at the command arguments: -
1. http://intranet:80 is the name of the web application url and the port number it is responding to
2. STS_Server1_878787564 is the name of the .mdf database file which is probably in an SQL directory like: - ‘c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL$SHAREPOINT\Data’
3. Server1\Microsoft##SE is the server name and the name of the SQL Server instance that is running the sharepoint databases. You can find the latter by looking at the name of the server ‘Windows Internal Database’ and see what instance name has been appended to it. eg. ‘Windows Internal Database (MICROSOFT##SE)’
If the content database file is consistent, all being well, once the stsadm command has finished all the original content will now be available in your new web application.
So using stsadm is a route to restore a sharepoint database when all you have is the content database.
Are you having trouble restoring a Sharepoint database? Why not contact us.
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