Copying a Content Database to another Farm?

Question

I have a Sharepoint Farm and I want a clone of it, under a different hostname (Preprod vs. prod).

We setup the Preprod farm from scratch, with new Web Applications. We then restored a backup of the WSS_Content database and attached it using Central Admin.

When browsing the main site collection (/), I get a HTTP 404 not found. If i go into Central Admin and View All Site Collections, I don't even get the box that has the URL, Title, Description etc. fields. When trying to get to it from PowerShell using Get-SPSite and site.OpenWeb(), it's not returning a site.

Other site collections work fine though, and there is nothing obvious in the logs, so I really don't know where the 404 comes from and how to troubleshoot it.

Answer 1

You'll need to detach and re-attach your content database.

If you go to the central administration and your site collection information are missing do the following (Post restoration of your database)

Stsadm -o deletecontentdb -url {Site Url} -databasename {Content Database Name}
Stsadm -o addcontentdb -url {Site Url} -databasename {Content Database Name}

Later on, for similar scenario, you should use stsadm -o export (-o import) functionalities or stsadm -o backup / restore if you want to avoid this (or the powershell equivalent)

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

At the end, the issue was that the target web application didn't have the exact same Managed Paths setup. Apparently, if they don't match, attaching the database creates the wrong IDs in the SiteMap table within the Config database.