Moving Sharepoint 2013 Install to New Server

Question

Not great with SharePoint and am seeking some advice on moving a 2013 install to another server/farm.

We currently have an install of SP 2013 on a 2008 R2 box which is both the web and SQL server for SP. This is an issue as we are getting an third party add on which requires it to be on a 2012 server and have a separate server for the DB.

New servers done and SQL/SharePoint installed. Now I have tried a few methods to move the site based on advice here and elsewhere;

1 - SQL backup of the content DB and restore to new install using unattached DB method - could browse the contents but not restore? Sure I'm missing a step here in this method?

2 - Used stsadm backup, new install could not see restore DB.

3 - Use backup and restore within Central Administration, would not work because IIS site already existed, so deleted site and web application and attempted to restore. Restore successful but then can not browse to anything - I get a 'Sorry, something went wrong, File not found' when trying to browse the site. I see others have had this issue but they had nothing showing in their site collection listing, where we have everything - so the delete/addcontentdb solution did nothing for us.

Any advice on what my best option is would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Answer 1

Couple of things to make sure.

• New SharePoint Farm should have the Same version level.
• Same set of Services, Authentications & configuration should be in the new farm.
• Create the Web Application in target farm.
• Update your DNS to point to new Server(WFE)

Now you can do the following things.

• Perfom the SQL Back up of the content DB from Source farm.
• Now restore the DB on new farm's sql server
• Now Mount the DBs to the desired web app, either from central admin or using the mount-spcontentdatabase
• Now test it, go to central admin > application management > view all site collections.
• Run Full Search crawl.