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We have an existing (production) Hyper-V VM that I want to clone to create a staging server.

This server is NOT on a domain/active-directory - uses all local computer accounts.

It is Windows 2008 OS, SharePoint 2007, SQL server 2008, Reporting Services, and some custom line-of-business web-applications.

We rename the server etc as per the documentation we have, but are having troubles specifically with SharePoint. Some of the sites do not come up, and some issues adding/updating site settings such as site owners.

Does anyone know of a definitive resource to this process?

thanks

Update:
We seem to have most working, but the Shared Service Provider, and the SSP's admin site, are not working. In addition, the custom web-parts that reference IIS Session objects are failing (which seem to be related to the Share Service Provider). All the Windows user accounts for various services are renamed during the server cloning, but the windows account names in SQL server are not automatically changed. We've tried to change them in SQL server but still does not seem to work

Seems like allot of work - and am thinking that there must be some guidance out there.

also getting this:
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.] Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SqlSessionStateResolver.System.Web. IPartitionResolver.ResolvePartition(Object key) +135

Rob
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3 Answers3

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I have never tried it before this way. Wouldn't it be easier if you removed all of the existing applications, sites and site collections from the cloned (non-production) server?

After you removed all of the SharePoint data, create a new Application (without site collection). Then use stsadm to backup everything from the productionserver and import it to the test-server.

I think it would be much easier that way.

More info on stsadm: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261956(office.12).aspx

Bart De Vos
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  • Thanks - we might need to do that if we cannot solve the cloning issues. I was trying to avoid all the setup as we have Forms Based Authentication and users/roles in the SP sites tied to that. – Rob Feb 17 '11 at 21:48
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I don't know much about Sharepoint so I can't comment on that but I'm not too surprised that changing the name of the Windows server it is running on might cause some issues. Is it possible to "clone" the VM and not change the name? We do this in some cases to be able to test things in our lab. In this case, you just shut down the production server, copy the VHD to the lab, and then fire it up there. It doesn't matter in this case that the servers have the same name because they are on different networks.

icky3000
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  • Hi, we do need to change the name as they will be on the same network (although not on a domain). And the server needs to be on the internet too for use as a testing platform. – Rob Feb 17 '11 at 21:47
  • Understood. Sounds like you do need a Sharepoint-related solution then. Good luck! – icky3000 Feb 18 '11 at 04:52
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I'd look into creating some VPNs, one with your production environment and the other with your dev environment. This will enable you to export your VM and maintain the exact config of your production VM.

ErnieTheGeek
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