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I am running a Sharepoint Server 2010 Stardard on a Windows 2008 R2 server. This server also has SQL Server 2008 R2 installed. I want to move the Sharepoint and SQL to 2 completely new machine. What could be the procedure?

Another question is that the current site collection URL is based on server name. Let's say http://sharepointserver. Would it matter when I move to the server?(What if the new server name is sharepointnewserver?)

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I would install a new instance of SharePoint 2010 (same patch level) to the new server, with the correct service accounts etc.

Install all customisations to the new environment (eg deploy WSPs).

Then backup and restore the content databases to the new SQL server, and attach them to the farm.

SharePoint will update the URL of the new server. I would suggest setting up DNS records which point to the server. This will make this kind of transition more transparent to users, and allow load balancing and other techniques more readily. SharePoint access mapping allows you to configure multiple urls to be used for accessing SharePoint.

Note there are some instances where web parts will use absolute Urls, which may point to the old server. You could disconnect the old server, thus making the links break and fix them as they come up. Alternatively through scripting you could iterate through each page and replace any instance of the old server to the new one. Again this is where DNS entries make server transitions much easier (but hindsight is a wonderful thing. :D )

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  • Thanks Russel I will try that. Few questions: What do you mean by correct service accounts? What could be the steps to create DNS record if I have old server called "SharepointOld" and new server named "SharepointNew"?
    – Asado
    Mar 28, 2012 at 5:56
  • You create an A record in DNS with a hostname (e.g. SharepointOld, or intranet.myorg.com), which points to the IP of the server.
    – Russell
    Mar 28, 2012 at 23:00
  • I was just talking about the standard set of service accounts used to install and configure a SharePoint farm.
    – Russell
    Mar 28, 2012 at 23:00
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Just something to be aware of with regard to backup and restore of the content DB(s), have a look at this post:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2008/03/12/common-error-situation-with-when-using-backup-restore-to-transfer-a-database-to-a-new-farm-on-moss-2007.aspx

It refers to MOSS but I've found it also applies to SharePoint 2010.

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  • Good point @Howard - we got around this using a PowerShell script iterating over publishing pages to update URLs to the correct values.
    – Russell
    Mar 27, 2012 at 8:31

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