Moving SharePoint 2016 on prem to new server

Question

Moving SharePoint 2016 on prem to new server

bsim365 116

This is in reference to SharePoint 2016 on prem

Our contractor has made a copies of our SharePoint farm servers (front-end with distributed cache, application with search) and moved to a new host and server (on same domain). The servers have a different name.

The copy was successful, I can see the sites, databases, etc...but nothing works. I can't open Central admin, sharepoint 2016 management shell, sharepoint configuration wizard etc. Also noticed ISS still references old server name.

Is there anyway to make this work as a copy since it references old servers or do we need to start over with new servers, fresh install of SP, recreate web apps, restore databases, deploy custom solutions and all the other fun stuff that is involved in a normal migration?

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Answer 1

Xyza Xue_MSFT 30,176 Microsoft External Staff

Hi @bsim365,

1.What are your steps in the operation? In your description, I can't check if your steps are correct, please refer to this document and check if the steps are correct.

2.Finally, don't forget to restart IIS server.

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bsim365 116 Reputation points

2024-01-05T16:35:42.1066667+00:00

Your document assumes a new SP farm is already built and simply copying a web application.

My question is about cloning or copying SP Farm servers to new hosted servers that have a different name than the source farm servers.

I know the traditional way of building out a new farm from scratch, then creating new web applications, moving source databases, detach, reattach to new sql server, deploy all the custom code, etc..

My question is if there is a way to not have to do all that and simply clone the existing servers.
Xyza Xue_MSFT 30,176 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-01-08T06:22:59.8533333+00:00

Typically, if we need to replicate SharePoint farm servers, we we need to create a new farm first and then backup and restore. You want to simply clone these servers directly from e.g. Vmas to achieve replication of the entire farm. There is no way to verify if this will work. You can make an attempt. But we still recommend you to use the traditional method.
Xyza Xue_MSFT 30,176 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-01-16T01:39:37.9533333+00:00

Hi @bsim365, Please kindly consider this comment as a warm follow up, I want to know if your problem has been solved. If you still have any other questions, please feel free to comment here and I'm glad to provide further support.

Answer 2

bsim365 116

Your document assumes a new farm has already been built and you are simply moving a web application from one server to another.

I'm aware of the traditional method of building a farm from scratch, create a new web app, detaching db, reattaching newly restored source db, deploying all custom code, etc..

My question is if there is a way to not have to go through all those pain points and simply clone the servers essentially creating a new named farm.

Xyza Xue_MSFT 30,176 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-01-25T08:52:58.9066667+00:00

Hi @bsim365,Please feel free to reach us if any questions or concerns you may have.If the above info is helpful to this question, Please remember to "Accept as answer" to close this case and this will help people in this forum who have similar questions to yours find the answer easier.

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Moving SharePoint 2016 on prem to new server

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