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So, some mistakes were made, and one of our 2 front-end servers in our SP2013 farm was reverted (VM snapshot deleted) to a state that is about 2 years old.

Now I'm wondering what might need to be done (and if it can be done without any weird side effects in the farm) to get it operational again.

I believe in the time since the machine was last online, we have updated SP2013 to service pack 1, changed the SSL certificate, and some upgrades to Symantec endpoint protection running on the server.

Now, because we're load balancing with a 3rd party product I can easily keep the new server out of the load balancing config so that no clients will ever be accessing the server, but is there anything else I need to be concerned about with bringing a server that has effectively been turned off for 2 years, back online in the farm?

Should it be as simple (haha) as turning the server back on, applying the SP1 update and updating the SSL cert?

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  • Note that SharePoint does not support VM snapshots or online backups as they cannot be made consistent throughout the farm. This puts your DR strategy in jeopardy.
    – user6024
    Mar 4, 2016 at 2:19

1 Answer 1

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As Server was not Part of the farm, Now you have to perform some work to bring back him in farm.

  • Install the same SharePoint version as on other servers(i.e in your case you said SP1)
  • Add the farm account into local admin
  • Run Config wizard on new server and join him to the farm
  • Now Apply the customization if any( any manual change like web.config)
  • Now add the Server into the Exchange Relay for email
  • Add the server in AV exclusion list
  • Now configure the LoadBalancer to add that server...if you want this as Web front end
  • Now test it.
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  • Thanks for the answer, however the server has always been part of the farm - so that part is simpler. So it's effectively a front end server (1 of 2) that has been turned off for 2 years. What I'm wondering is if there's any special considerations if I simply turn it back on.
    – dkr88
    Mar 4, 2016 at 8:43
  • if server is part of the farm but turned off for large time. I would remove that server from farm without turning on....reason this server is out of sync with config db, will cause issue to your farm...block the updates to the server, unknown errors..
    – Waqas Sarwar MVP
    Mar 4, 2016 at 12:31

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