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One of our customers use to have a sharepoint enterprise farm 2013, with the following architecture:-

  1. windows 2008 R2 which contain sharepoint on-premises farm 2013.

  2. windows 2008 R2 which contain Sql Server.

Our customer was backup-ing the sharepoint databases on daily basis, while the sharepoint application server was not backup-ed or even tracked. and the application server had a sever damage and they could not restore it. so now our customer have a full backup for all the sharepoint databases including; content database, managed metadata databases, configuration database, etc...

But per my knowledge is that to be able to integrate a new sharepoint farm with existing databases, the farm need to be on the same farm build number + have the same sharepoint patches installed as the source farm... but in our customer case these info (farm build number + patches involved) are not available.

So i have these 2 questions:-

  1. Is there a way from the databases' backups we have to build a new farm which works on these databases?

  2. Now our customer have a valid license for sharepoint and the windows server, so can we open a ticket with Microsoft regarding this? and will Microsoft cover such scenarios? where we need to build a new SharePoint farm which work on existing databases?

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You can define SharePoint build version by executing SQL query on SharePoint config db.

SELECT Version, TimeStamp FROM Versions     

WHERE VersionId = '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000'   

ORDER BY Id DESC

After that you can install SharePoint with necessary CU and restore dbs.

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    Just install the CU with the same build number. That will be sufficient.
    – user6024
    Apr 26, 2019 at 14:47
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    It does not matter. If build versions are the same - it will be possible to restore your dbs on new env with the same build number.
    – Raf
    Apr 30, 2019 at 14:12
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    Your customer was right not to backup a SharePoint Server. They're disposable and cannot be restored from a VM backup anyways. Just install a full CU. By the way, your customer has been out of support for the past year - blog.stefan-gossner.com/2017/12/13/…
    – user6024
    Apr 30, 2019 at 15:05
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    Yes, it can given those databases are not attached to another farm.
    – user6024
    Apr 30, 2019 at 15:15
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    No, after you create the new server with SP1 + new CU, I would bump the existing servers up to the same supported CU (keep in mind, most 2013 CUs are just a collection of security fixes at this point in the product lifecycle). Then run the config wizard on the existing servers. Finally, join the new server to the farm.
    – user6024
    Apr 30, 2019 at 15:20

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