We have a company SharePoint site that we paid a company to configure and setup for us. We are slowly taking over more and more of the administration of this site. We would like to setup a test environment so we can make changes with out affecting daily business.
How can we take what they have already installed, deployed, and configured and make a copy of it?
I know we can backup the database, but what about the stuff the downloaded and deployed into the system?
None of what they installed are paid applications from what i can tell. They look like the base applications from the Microsoft SharePoint site like Case Management, Knowledge Base, and a few others.
Thanks
You should take an inventory of the installed solutions, you can see that in the list of solutions under central administration. Then try to identity 3rd party solutions and get the WSP files (I bet they are stored in a folder on your server :))
Set up a new environment, make sure to install exactly the same version, including any service packs and/or hotfixes. You can get that list when you search for the version number in Google (the version number is usually seen in the Site Administration page).
After that, install your custom solutions and attach the content database, this should be it.
Related
I am working with a customer which have SharePoint 2013 dev, test and prod environments sitting in a datacentre. We are moving the datacentre which means their SharePoint 2013 needs to be moved as is. They have 1 heavly custom build application on top of SharePoint which needs to be moved. I need confirmation, process suggestion on the migration part.
I install SharePoint 2013 like for like in new environment.
Option 1
I take backup for their databases and restore them on new SQL Server. Use Mount-SPContentDatabase to mount database and test if everything is working as expected
Option 2
Recreate web application, site collections, activate custom features, timer job and migrate content.
I personally think that option 1 is more applicable but need input and suggestions. Any road blockers or gotcha are also encouraged.
Thanks for sharing your experience
As its a same version migration it wont be much of an issue but go with option 1.
Re Creating the whole farm is so hard specially if you decide to deploy each and every component.
I've migrations to same version and these are the steps that i follow.
Create a checklist of all solutions and features (WSP etc).
The check list should have the same services that are running in the farm as well.
Install SharePoint in the new farm and update to the same version as the existing farm , having same version will reduce a lot of
problems.
Create the service applications just like the existing farm.
Restore the service application databases (MetaData, UserProfile etc)
Create the web application and restore the content database
Deploy the custom solutions
Confirm that everything in your checklist is deployed and working fine
Fix errors if there are any
This is the flow that i follow and so far i've been successful.
Good Luck
I recently inherited an application from a developer who is no longer with the company. This application restores SharePoint sites from backups and extracts metadata and files from lists in the site. The application runs on a SharePoint server and uses the Microsoft.SharePoint assemblies in C# and VB.Net.
The backups come to us from various outside companies, and some of them have custom features installed. SharePoint Health Analyzer shows a warning about "Missing server side dependencies". When I look at the report there is a lot of "[MissingFeature] Database [db name] has reference(s) to a missing feature..." etc. The previous developer was supposed to implement a check for missing features, but it is obviously not working.
How can I identify features that the restored site references, but are not installed on the farm?
Thanks!
RH
You can use SQL Management Studion and check Features and FeatureTracking tables to see list of features, its' IDs, titles etc.
But do not modify these tables.
To solve missing features error. You can:
1. install missing feature (if you have it).
2. try to remove it (probably will fail as you don't have it).
3. as the last chance option you can create empty feature with the same ID as missing feature, pack it in WSP package and install it.
I'm not sure if this should be posted here or over superuser, but how does one go about mirroring a Sharepoint 2007 site? I have admin access, and the mirror doesn't need to be nice and pretty; it just needs to be presentable and readable. Also, I need all the shared docs to be copied as well.
We use to have WinHTTrack to mirror the Sharepoint, but that broke a few months ago due to some of our recent security changes. I tried the username#password:domain method but that resulted no luck.
It depends a little bit on how and where you want to mirror it.
If you have a separate SharePoint farm (even a single server - one tier - farm), you can rely on backup / restore, export / import or content deployment to have another copy up and running that will be a mirror of the existing one.
If you want an offline version, depends on what kind of content you need (collaboration stuff ?) you can use Microsoft Groove 2007 that offers an offline mode for some of the targeted data.
I've found this great tool that can mirror the SP site for cheap: http://www.metaproducts.com/OEPR.html
If WinHTTrack did satisfy you, why not just fix it?
There are solutions around the web to have WinHTTrack work with NTLM authentication: http://forum.httrack.com/readmsg/7513/index.html
However the download link seems to be broken (geocities..), but you could try to search for NTML proxy solutions and try to setup your own.
I'm in the process of moving a complete sharepoint install to a different server.
Can anyone tell me if it's possible to just move the existing Shared Services Provider rather than starting from scratch?
All the best
You really need to move the SSP in concert with everything else in the farm. The two things to move are 1. databases and 2. the file system.
A .doc file for moving all of the SharePoint databases has been published here. Microsoft will soon have an updated procedure for this published on TechNet, according to the To The SharePoint blog.
Then to cover off any file system changes, I would set up a clean install of SharePoint (if you didn't need to already by following the document mentioned above) and do a file comparison between your source and destination SharePoint application servers. I usually use WinMerge as its free but Beyond Compare is also good. Also check any custom solutions are deployed on your destination server.
By ensuring your databases are moved correctly and all of your files are in place you should be OK. Make sure you test every custom component on your destination server before erasing the source databases and files (even better, archive the source).
Yes, create a new SSP and move the applications.
How to on migration of applications here
For moving the SSP to a new farm
Or try the Microsoft SharePoint Administration ToolKit v2.0
For another view of this
Is it best practice to not use C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\ for SharePoint? My concern is that the configuration wizard seems to look for this C: path and it may be too complicated to not use the default path(s),
What would be the reason for using an alternate location?
You should not be changing anything in the sharepoint IIS sites through IIS Manager, except through the sharepoint Central Admin site. There are dependencies in the sharepoint configuration that are not just stored in IIS, especially around the users that are applied for app pools etc. This website does most of the things you need to do (i.e. host headers etc)
So best practice is to create a folder in the C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\ that is easy to map to the web application and then leave the folder as is.
Although it is hard to find stuff in the Central Admin site, the Infrastructure Update for SharePoint helps.
Having failed miserably in the past merely trying to change machine names on a VM after Sharepoint was installed, it is hard to imagine a goal more likely to frustrate than this idea!
The only arguments I've heard for not running IIS websites out of the Inetpub directory is that it's a commonly known location for evildoers to look at when attacking a system, but if security is your concern you're far past screwing the pooch if an attacker has file system access.
We've always let the configuration wizard pick that location for us. There's a lot of aspects of the underlying configuration that rely on that location and it's never seemed worthwhile to explore changing the home directory.