How to create a test environment from a production environment

[Matteo]

Dear all,
I would like to create a test enviornment exactly the same of production
environment:
Application and Front-end server with wss 3.0 and project server 2007
Db server with sql server standard 2005 sp1
The main problem is that to perform a full farm backup and restore i have to
keep machines name the same and this is not possible, because i cannot get
offline my production environment, how can I create an "image" of the
production to a test environment? Using stsadm I have the same limits...
Using only Sql server backup I cannot only attach db to the test db server to
get it working...
Is there an official way to create a wss 3.0 / project server 2007 test
environment starting from a production env. ???

Thanks to all.

Matteo

 

[Paul Conroy]

Have you read this article ?

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/7319e1e2-0126-4776-86bf-96f6c02c8cb71033.mspx

 

[Mike Mahoney]

Have you read this article ?

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/7319e1e2-0126-4776...







- Show quoted text -

Presumably the starting point is that you have installed WSS/PS2007
and SSP applications ina new environment and that the restore process
lets you select one or all of he databases from the previous
environment to be restored. You cannot restore the Sharepoint Config
DB but I am not certain what other branches of the tree are required.
Each time I poke around in this area problems arise either with ssp
application or project server datbases. So has anyone got this to
work?

regards

Mike

 

[Matteo]

Dear Mike,
at the end I did it as here:
1. install project server 2007, it cares to install wss 3.0 (I don't write
here known prerequisite)
2. create the web application that will hosts shared services
3. restore db from the production environment to the test environment (just
to have db with the same names)
4. restore server farm from central administration (using a production
backup), here is the trick, you don't have to restore everything because you
cannot write over the sharepoint config and the central admin db, all the
others are "restorable" certainly specifying the new farmm, new db server and
new file system db location.
After that I restarted IIS and everything is working... but for me was not
completely a success, because problems verified into the production
environment disappeared into the test environment with same db... so for
troubleshoot, where is possible, the only true way to reproduce it is get an
image of all the farm machines.

Thank you all
Matteo

 

[Mike Mahoney]

Dear Mike,
at the end I did it as here:
1. install project server 2007, it cares to install wss 3.0 (I don't write
here known prerequisite)
2. create the web application that will hosts shared services
3. restore db from the production environment to the test environment (just
to have db with the same names)
4. restore server farm from central administration (using a production
backup), here is the trick, you don't have to restore everything because you
cannot write over the sharepoint config and the central admin db, all the
others are "restorable" certainly specifying the new farmm, new db server and
new file system db location.
After that I restarted IIS and everything is working... but for me was not
completely a success, because problems verified into the production
environment disappeared into the test environment with same db... so for
troubleshoot, where is possible, the only true way to reproduce it is get an
image of all the farm machines.

Thank you all
Matteo






- Show quoted text -

Hi Matteo

Just to check my understanding.

1. Install PS/Sharepoint/SSP app, but not PWA app.
2. Restore all db's (project server and content)
3. Using central admin to do sharepoint restore of same db's

regards

Mike

 

[Matteo]

Yes, I did it and it works.

Hi Matteo

Just to check my understanding.

1. Install PS/Sharepoint/SSP app, but not PWA app.
2. Restore all db's (project server and content)
3. Using central admin to do sharepoint restore of same db's

regards

Mike

 

[Mike Mahoney]

Hi Matteo

Just to check my understanding.

1. Install PS/Sharepoint/SSP app, but not PWA app.
2. Restore all db's (project server and content)
3. Using central admin to do sharepoint restore of same db's

regards

Mike- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Sorry 1 should say "PWA instance"

Mike

 

[Matteo]

Exactly you don't have to create it from your test environment but you have
to restore the prdocution pwa db via a sql restore, after then restore via
central admin over it.

Matteo Stagni