Restore sharepoint 2010 web application on different domain

Question

We made a backup of a web application through the central administration to move it to a different server on a different domain and it's a domain controller actually.

So we made a restore operation on the destination server from the central administration but never managed to succeed.

with errors like: Object failed in event OnRestore. For more information, see the spbackup.log or sprestore.log file located in the backup directory.SPException: The specified user or domain group was not found.

I tried every user account possible with no success. any clues?

Answer 1

Generally not a good idea to install SharePoint on a Domain Controller if you can avoid it.

First I would try to diagnose the problem, which sounds as though it is user permission related, by examining the SharePoint logs and the Windows event logs.

You may be able to get this restored by extracting the database backup from your SharePoint backup cab and then restoring it in SQL Server. You can then try setting permissions and then creating a new web application and attaching this database. This is a long way round but does bypass the SharePoint restore logic and might enable you to solve the problems with permissions.

Answer 2

I'd try to do a content database only (and any features the web app needs of course) restore. Backup the web app's content DB, then restore it on the new farm. Now add it to the new web app. Now, after this is done, you can use the SharePoint management shell and "rename" all users and ad groups in the app using the Move-SPUser(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607729.aspx).

Make sure to get a list of all users that exist in the original before you do this, then just create a script and run it!