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Restore-SPSite : Access Denied
You do not have permission to perform this action or access this resource.

This is the error I get when trying to restore a Site Collection backup from the integrated development environment to my personal development environment. At this point I am unable to nail down the issue and it's driving me mad! Thoughts anyone?

I am logged in with Administrator privileges both for the Farm and Domain.

Thanks in advance.

Scott

UPDATE 1

Thank you all for your quick responses!

I should have mentioned this in my prior submission. I have successfully performed this action with the same site collection backup on domain c (a different CloudShare environment).

So, let me provide some more context:

  1. Backup of site collection is from domain a
  2. I'm trying to restore the site collection on domain b (CloudShare Environment)
  3. I have verified that both Farms have SP1 and June 2011 CU applied.
  4. On domain b I am able to do the following: backup a site collection, create new content databases, and create site collections from Powershell using the same account used to restore the site collection.
  5. I have tried creating a new content database within the web application and specifying the new database name in restore parameters. I have used the -force parameter with no success.
  6. I've looked through the Event Viewer logs, SharePoint logs, and even used SQL Profiler to see what is going on with no hint of where it's complaining.

The very first time I try to run this command it does start the process and runs for a minutes and then I get this error. Subsequent tries, it fails immediately.

Does anyone have some suggestions of where else to look or what specifically I should be looking for? I would expect that there's an issue with permission against a database but this account has dbo permissions on the content database and the SP Config DB. Any additional thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated!!!

Here is the latest error after I've created a blank site collection from Central Admin and then tried to restore over top of it using the -force parameter.

PS C:\Users\Administrator> restore-spsite -identity http://sp2010/apps/procedures/sites/pps -path C:\temp\20111010091_spdd-dev08.bak -force

Confirm Are you sure you want to perform this action? Performing operation "Restore-SPSite" on Target "http://sp2010/apps/procedures/sites/pps".
[Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [S] Suspend [?] Help (default is "Y"): y Restore-SPSite : The operation that you are attempting to perform cannot be completed successfully. No content databases in the web application were available to store your site collection. The existing content databases may have reached the maximum number of site collections, or be set to read-only, or be offline, or may already contain a copy of this site collection. Create another content database for the Web application and then try the operation again. At line:1 char:15 + restore-spsite <<<< -identity http://sp2010/apps/procedures/sites/pps -path C:\temp\20111010091032_spdd-dev08.bak -force + CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Share...dletRestoreSite:SPCmdletRestoreSite) [Restore-SPSite], InvalidOperationException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletRestoreSite

Thanks! Scott

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  • Make sure 1) You have satisfy permission requirements as documented technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748655.aspx and 2) you choose "Run As Administrator" for Powershell snapin.
    – Ashish Patel
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 2:45
  • Im pretty sure this is it too. You should set it as answer not comment
    – Anders Rask
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 6:05
  • also make sure that both accounts actually have the same name (i.e. domain\Administrator) and not just administrator provileges.
    – int32
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 9:07

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Another option that I have found for restoring a site collection to a different domain to the source domain (and where the source site collection cannot be set up with the site collection admin for the destination domain) is to grant the user account doing the restore access to the web application.

$w = get-spwebapplication http://[urltodestinationwebapp]
$w.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("[destdomain\restoreaccount]")

Now, this will probably only work if you are also restoring to a clean content DB. What I mean is that if you have attempted to restore and received the access denied error, then you will need to create a new content db to run the restore successfully.

Ref: http://www.brightworksupport.com/access-denied-when-restoring-site-collection/

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  • Yes, yes, yes. Many hours of work with no help, thank you for surfacing this critical piece of advice. For anyone else wondering, this may be necessary in a single domain environment as well (it was for me for some reason I can not fathom). In my case the administrator on the source site collection was the exact same domain account that is a farm admin on the destination account. However apparently that user was missing some application level permissions, or something, which this bit of powershell resolved.
    – TCC
    Commented Jun 10, 2015 at 1:26
  • This is brilliant!
    – Paiman Samadian
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 0:46
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Can you access Central Administration? I'd check under Application Management > Manage Content Databases. In this screen:

  • Limits on the number of number of site collections allowed per content database are set.
  • Also in this area, databases can be set to 'Offline'. This can be confusing, it means that the database will still serve content, but new Site Collections can not be created within it.

If via power shell, you can create a new content db, you can target and your restore operation at that database. It may be worth a try:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748655.aspx

I don't know whether CloudShare offers Central Administration access.

The last half of this article offers ideas on using powershell to find Content Database information: http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2011/04/28/powershell-doesn-t-show-all-of-your-sharepoint-2010-content-databases.aspx

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4
  • Thanks Panter. I have full CA access on the CloudShare environment. I think I've figured the issue out on my own and I should have known since I went through this before on this project. My clients server team has been applying updates to the environments without notifying me of the changes. The first was applying the June 2011 CU back in August. Since we had already been through this once I didn't think we needed to review this again but it apparently they install Office Web Apps which is causing my CloudShare environment heartache since I don't have that installed. Testing tonight....
    – Scott Rooke
    Commented Oct 13, 2011 at 3:24
  • Good luck Scott.
    – Panter
    Commented Oct 13, 2011 at 17:06
  • 1
    Here's another update. Unfortunately, after reviewing both servers and getting each to the same SP and CU level, I'm still having NO FUN with my SharePoint servers. I've reviewed the Log file and there isn't anymore details.
    – Scott Rooke
    Commented Oct 18, 2011 at 1:20
  • Here's another update. Unfortunately, after reviewing both servers and getting each to the same SP and CU level, I'm still having NO FUN with my SharePoint servers. I've reviewed the Log file and there isn't anymore details. Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can do to diagnose why the restore process does kickoff but then fails towards the end. I've tried looking at SQL Profiler and looking through SP logs. Thanks! Scott
    – Scott Rooke
    Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 15:25
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"To restore a site collection, user must be site collection administrator." to quote "Matt" from http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/6b728bb4-cb77-4db0-a907-0544eef6cdc6/why-is-spsitecollectionrestore-thrrowing-access-denied-errors-even-when-run-with-elevated

I was trying to restore using Administrator login. So I added user Administrator as a site collection admin. (site settings > Site collection administrators) of the source site.

After I did the backup again on the source site I was able to restore sucessfully to the new location.

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PS C:\Users\Administrator> restore-spsite -identity sp2010/apps/procedures/sites/pps -path C:\temp\20111010091_spdd-dev08.bak -force

  • I suggest to change the location .bck file from C drive another drive or another server.
  • Check the folder and provide read / write permissions
  • C:\temp\ replace C and use server ip 192.168.*.\temp\20111010091_spdd-dev08.bak
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