Copy the whole production environment to staging

Question

There is the following WSS solution deployment scenario:

1. Copy the whole production WSS to staging
2. Deploy new solution/update to staging
3. Run automated tests & human tests on staging
4. Deploy new solution/update to production

Now I wonder how to achieve point 1. Copy the whole production WSS to staging.

Is it possible to simply run stsadm -o backup/restore to copy to whole production to staging? Or are there better approaches for this?

Additional information:

• Content DB < 500mb
• Production/Staging environments share the same network & same AD
• I am not looking for a commercial wss sync tool

Answer 1

There are a couple of options here:

1. Use STSADM -o backup/restore
2. Use STSADM -o export/import
3. Use Content Deployment, perhaps with the SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard (a tool I wrote)

When you use backup/restore, you get everything - including recycle bin content, running workflows, alerts etc etc. This may or may not be what you want. Such 'environment-specific' things are not captured in 2 and 3 - the principle difference between 2 and 3 is that you can specify you wish all the objects (e.g. lists) to keep the same IDs. This can be important in some scenarios. An article I wrote some time ago, STSADM export, Content Deployment, Content Migration API, Features/Solutions - deployment options compared might provide you with some additional info on some of the options.

One thing I can't emphasise enough, is that if you've made any customizations in the file system (e.g. in the 12 hive/SharePoint root), none of these options will capture those (they all only deal with database content). Such customizations are typically deployed in Solution packages (.wsp files), meaning you effectively combine a couple of mechanisms to get everything to other environments.

Answer 2

The best option for me is usually stsadm backup and restore.

http://www.sharepointboris.net/2008/01/backup-restore-and-migration-of-sites-on-sharepoint-3-pt-23/