Restoring a SharePoint Content Database

To restore only a SharePoint Portal 2003 or Windows SharePoint Services content database files:

  1. Before restoring SharePoint content, open Windows Service Control Manager and do the following:

    1. Stop IIS Admin Service, which also stops WWW Publishing Service, SMTP, FTP Publishing Service, and HTTP SSL. Stopping IIS Admin Service also stops all IIS Admin Service dependent application services.

    2. Stop SharePoint Administrator, which also stops SharePointPS Search.

    3. Stop SharePoint Alert.

    4. Stop SharePoint Timer Service.

  2. Begin to define a File Restore job using standard procedures. See Chapter 21: Restore.

  3. In the restore source tree, select the databases that contain the SharePoint Portal 2003 content or the Windows SharePoint Services content. For more information about SQL Server 2000, see Chapter 50: SQL Server Interface.

    • Content database names usually are in the format portalname_cccc, where:

      • portalname_cccc is the first eight characters, not including spaces, of the portal name. If the first eight characters are same in another portal name, the eighth character in the portalname string is an incremental numeric value.

      • cccc is PROF, SITE, or SERV. PROF, SITE, and SERV represent the profile database, the site database, and the services database, respectively, for the portal

    • Windows SharePoint Services content database names usually are in the format STS_Servername_n, where:

      • Servername is the name of the server.

      • n is a numerical value that is incremented if there is more than one virtual server in the Windows SharePoint Services server.

  4. In the restore destination tree, select where the SharePoint content is to be restored to.

  5. Finish defining and running the File Restore job using standard procedures. See Chapter 21: Restore.

  6. After restoring a SharePoint content, start IIS service and all SharePoint related services. If the SharePoint Portal doesn’t exist, the SharePoint administrator should do the following:

    • Open the SharePoint Central Administrator.

    • Click SharePoint Portal Server.

    • Click Create a Portal Site.

    • Select Restore a Portal and fill in the information.

Other Considerations when Restoring SharePoint Portal 2003

  • If you are restoring the Encrypting File System (EFS), you must restore the encryption key as explained in Microsoft’s documentation.

  • If you are restoring Certificate Authorities (CA), you must restore Active Directory data as explained in Microsoft’s documentation.

  • If you are restoring Single Sign-On (SSO), you must restore the Credential database as explained in Microsoft’s documentation.

  • If you are restoring Full Text Indexing Service, you must restore the indexing database(s) as explained in Microsoft’s documentation.

Last updated