Create a Replica of Content DB and use it as content database of new web application in the same SPFarm

Question

Am having a Single Server Farm Environment wherein I am having 1 WFE and 1 SQL Server machine . in the SQL server box, I have taken a backup of SharePoint's web application's content DB.

• Content DB of web web application is "wss_content_npdwebapp".

• The backup of this content db, I have take is "wss_content_npdwebapp_june14_backup.bak"

Now my question is, how can I use this backed-up content DB as a content database of another web application in this same server farm? can I create a replica of this content DB? and once this replica is created I can mount this content DB as my new web application's DB.

If I restore it on a new content DB, it won't allow me to do that, as the GUID of existing content DB conflicts with the restored-renamed content DB.

Answer 1

Yes it's correct, you can't restore a content database to another web application on the same farm because the Content Database GUID is already existing.

So to overcome this issue, you have to do the following:

• Create your new web application
• Create the root site collection.
• Backup and restore the site collections from source content database to new one using PowerShell

To Get site collections list within content database

Get-SPSite -Limit All  -ContentDatabase "Content Database Name" | select url

To Backup site collection

Backup-SPSite https://source-sitecoll-url -Path "C:\Backup\sourcesitecollection.bak"

To Restore site collection

Restore-SPSite https://destination-sitecoll-url -Path "C:\Backup\sourcesitecollection.bak"