Restore site collection within the same farm: SharePoint 2010

One of our users requested such kind of strange request that he wanted the backup of one of the web application to get restored in the same farm with different web application, I tried my level best to convince him that I can get this one restored in development/stage and not understanding the logic of same replica within same farm! But he seems to get this one done so I tried my research and started taking the backup by SQL console.

Backup completed successfully and now the turn of restore – keeping my fingers crossed! Let me tell you guys- you might have done so many backup-restorations across multiple farms but this seems to be unique.

Why unique? – Because you are restoring that backup within the same farm.

As soon as I hit the restore command-BOOM :) it got failed!

Resolution:-

Please refer this TechNet thread- http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/e61ddaad-e00d-42f7-8365-728e0b224811/how-to-restore-existing-sharepoint-site-collection-on-same-farm?forum=sharepointadminlegacy

As per this reference- It is not possible to create a duplicate site collection using Content Database backup method. This is because when you restore the content database backup on another empty database the site collection ID remains the same.

Because of this, even if you add the new restored content database both the content databases will have the same site collection ID and that is the reason why the central admin shows only one site collection.

Pretty straight forward to understand and the only possible way to accomplish this requirement are either by PowerShell or by stsadm.

Step –by- details:-

1)   Create a web application by the generic way either by central administration or by PowerShell

2)   By this way – a new database will be created which has an altogether different ID

3)   Take the backup of the main web application that you want to restore on new one by using PowerShell command- Backup-SPSite -Identity “http://amolsharepointgalaxy.com” -Path "E:\Backup\galaxy.bak"

4)   Restore the backup on to the web application that you have created in the step#1

5)   That’s it- you are done.

Applies to : SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013

The operation that you are attempting to perform cannot be completed successfully

Problem description:

We have received the following error message while creating the site collection underneath one web application.

Error message:

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.

Troubleshooting done:-

If you see the error message then you will experience it is somewhat misleading. How?

See-

1)     Checked the content database is attached or not [By means of Central Administration] - Yes, it’s already there.

2)     Checked the maximum & minimum site collection number and its already max 5000 and min 2000. The actual numbers of site collections are only 50! Strange!

3)     Checked the status of web application – whether its Read Only / content prevented/locked/unlocked [By means of Central Administration]

4)     checked the status from SQL end and it was fine.

This issue can be resolved in multiple ways-

Resolution:-

1)     Create a new content database and check new site collections are getting created or not.

2)     You can also test this by creating a site collection in a different web application – By this way you are trying to isolate the problem. Whether it’s restricted to single web app/single content database/complete farm.

3)     checked the database status –

                                i.            Central administration

                              ii.            Application management

                            iii.            Manage content databases

                            iv.            Select the appropriate web application from the dropdown

                              v.            Check the status

                            vi.            In my case, it’s showing error

 

Note: I would like to highlight that the above mentioned ‘error’ status does not make any impact on the existing site collections so nothing to worry about it.

4)     Execute IISRESET and check the results

5)     Check the status from the SQL end and make sure there is no problem with the logs as the database consists of mdf and ldf files, this problem might be occur due log files gets full!

 

 



In my case, it’s showing the database status as “Error” so I performed the following steps-

1.      Detach the content database from the web application

2.      IISRESET

3.      Attach the content database back & check the results.

Now site collections can be created without any problems!

Issue resolved! Happy SharePoint…

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you.

Reference:

1)     http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300226

2)     http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927917

Product applies to:

1)     SharePoint Server 2010

2)     SharePoint Foundation 2010