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Moving databases or replacing the SQL server in your MOSS/WSS 3.0 installation
20Sep2008 Filed under: SQL, Sharepoint Author: Björn SållarpA while ago a customer invested in a SQL-cluster and naturally wanted to move all databases there. There are a number of articles on the net on how to migrate to a new server, some more complicated than others. In my case I had a working SQL 2005 instance which was dedicated to the MOSS installation and wanted to move to a new SQL 2005 cluster. Instead of rebuilding the entire farm like some people suggest i found it easiest to use the “rename server” command in stsadm. Here’s a step by step guide:
- Close your farm. Stop the IIS on all WFE’s and the indexing service etc.
- Backup all databases on the current SQL-server.
- Restore the databases on the new SQL-server.
- Make sure the configured user account in Sharepoint has the appropriate rights on the new SQL-server.
- Now all we have to do is rename the old SQL-server on all servers to the name of the new SQL-server in the farm using stsadm:
stsadm -o renameserver -newservername newsqlserver -oldservername oldsqlserver
(stsadm is located in: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN)
This is by far the easiest way to replace your SQL-server or move a certain installation to a new SQL-server. Depending on the size of your databases of course it doesn’t take longer than 30 minutes to complete. One important thing to remember is that this only works when the databases are hosted on a separate SQL-server. If you’ve been cheap and installed both SQL-server and MOSS/WSS3.0 on the same machine this won’t work obviously.
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8 Responses to “Moving databases or replacing the SQL server in your MOSS/WSS 3.0 installation”
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With this blog I try to provide useful tips and solutions for programming .NET, Objective-C and more. My name is Björn Sållarp, and I love writing code.
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Andy
September 25th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Wow Bjorn, I’m surprised to find you working with Sharepoint, but anxious to see what you have to say about it. I have been looked at it for our organization and have found it daunting due to it’s number of uses and functionality. I would be interested to see how your users and companies are using it in-house as well as maybe serving their customers.
Cheers from Colorado,
Andy
Björn Sållarp
September 27th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Sharepoint is a truly powerful platform which provide a lot of useful features out of the box. The collaboration part is really state of the art but still simple to use. I suggest you download the free version (WSS 3.0) and try it out. There are plenty of installation guides on Google. If you need any help or want to have a look without installing it I can give you access to a team site on one of our machines.
Cheers!
Des Owen
January 7th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Hi Bjorn
Did you move the config databases as well as the content ones?
Des Owen
UK
Björn Sållarp
January 7th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Yes, both configuration and content. After the move the old SQL server can be closed down entirely.
// Björn
Kevin
March 18th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Hi Bjorn
We are moving our SQL Server to a Cluster, much as you described. We are actually keeping the server name the same and shutting off the old server.
TechNet and others have such varying instructions on this it’s mind boggling. We have 3 WFEs (web front ends) and one IS (indexing server). Would this be as simple as stopping the the farm, backup and restore and then just starting again and it finding the same named server?
Björn Sållarp
March 18th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
If you are keeping the same name the procedure will work. Note that it is very important that you do not only backup and restore the databases on the new server. Setting up the account rights for the sharepoint sql account is also extremly important.
I suggest you:
1. shut the farm down.
2. Backup the sharepoint databases
3. Pull the ethernet plug on the current sql server
4. Assign the server name to new server
5. Mirror sql account settings on the new server
6. Restore the databases on the new server
7. Start your farm back up.
Good luck!
// Björn
Kevin
March 19th, 2010 at 3:34 am
Thanks for the prompt reply and the good wishes! Oh yes, I’ve duly noted the account musts. I hope to drop a line and let you know. I’ve got you bookmarked.
Kevin
March 29th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
I know it’s been more than a week, but in short…. it was successful. Definitely not as smooth stopping services and such as I would have liked. Due to that, I took the perhaps overly cautious route and disabled the services on all WFEs and the Index Server as we had to reboot to stop some of the services. Just kept a good list of how the services were set.
It was a lot smoother coming back up than it was stopping the services. The most important thing was, it came back up, even if it was 2:30AM.