Migrate entire web application

Question

I have one SharePoint Farm with two servers:

• SERVER1
• SERVER2

I have one web application "SharePoint 80". The alternate access mappings (AAM) for this app are pointing to http://server1

I want to decomission SERVER 1 and host the content on the second server SERVER2 in the same farm.

Answer 1

SharePoint is providing a role on each server that is called "Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web Application". if you check the "services on server" option in central administration you can see which server are currently configured to have the iis sites created.

To unjoin the SERVER1 from the farm you have to update the alternate access mapping for the web application to point to the new server. You have to validate the needed role is started on the new server. Than you have to tell all users the url has changed. Under all circumstanses i would try to avoid such an operation.

I would recommend creating the web application in the first place always with a host header information and create a DNS entry to the server (or servers if some kind of load balancing is used). There are some additional todo's if kerberos is used, but in general not using the servername is a best practice.

Answer 2

I dont see how you can migrate data by just starting/stopping services. If you don't have any custom solutions, or if your custom solutions are available at server 2, mounting the database is the way to go. Make sure that you have the same buildversion on both servers

additional question: * is it a migration from SP2010 to SP2010? or is it an upgrade too?

Answer 3

I was correct in starting/stopping the services. The only thing required, was to change my AAMs to point to the new Server. Sharepoint takes cares of Syncronising and configuring IIS Sites when you start the Sharepoint Foundation Web Application Service on that Server. Anyways, I managed to figure it out. All sorted now.