Backup a site collection from a farm with a version different than destination version

Question

As I know if we restore a backup that is taken from a farm that holds a different config database version than the destination then it will not complete the restore process due to that difference in versions.

So, I have the source farm with August 2014 CU applied (version:15.0.4641.1000) and the destination farm with August 2015 CU applied (version:15.0.4745.1000).

Does the mount database command line work or is there any work around? or should I make both (source and destination) similar in terms of the configuration database version ?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

First you test your database by running

Test-SPContentDatabase -name WSS_Content_DB -webapplication http://sitename

If you get errors, solve them. When you have no errors, continue with

Mount-SPContentDatabase "MyDatabase" -DatabaseServer "MyServer" -WebApplication http://sitename

This example mounts an existing database to the sitename web application. If upgrades are required, it triggers database schema upgrade and then performs only build-to-build upgrade actions on existing site collections if required. This operation does not changed the CompatibilityLevel for existing site collections in this database.

And just to make sure, run

Upgrade-SPContentDatabase WSS_Content

Provided that you don't have a root site collection in the second database, this should work well. Otherwise, you have to mount to another web application and continue from there.

Source: Mount-SPContentDatabase and Upgrade-SPContentDatabase