Add, split, and merge content databases (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)

Applies To: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

 

Topic Last Modified: 2008-08-06

Rather than rely on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to manage content databases automatically, you can manually associate databases with a Web application, merge existing databases, or split existing databases.

Some reasons why you might want to add, split, and merge databases for a Web application include:

• Some site collections within a database that hosts multiple site collections are growing faster than expected, and you expect the database to approach its size limit quickly. You can split the database to move the growing site collections to another database or even another server.

• A database is smaller than expected and it is convenient to combine several site collections into one database to help with load balancing.

• SharePoint databases perform best when they contain data that is accessed in similar ways. For example, a database that contains a read-write site collection and a read-only site collection may not perform as well as a database that contains only read-write site collections.

• To help maintain peak performance of your databases, we recommend that the number of data files should be less than or equal to the number of core CPUs.

Task Requirements

The following is required to perform the procedures for this task:

• To use the Stsadm command-line tool, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the source server computer and the destination server computer.

• To add a database, you must be a member of the dbcreator fixed server role on the destination server running SQL Server 2005 or instance of SQL Server.

To add a content database, see Add a content database (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0).

To split a content database, see Move site collections to a new database (split a content database) (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0).

To merge a content database, see Merge content databases (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0).

See Also

Concepts

Maintaining databases (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Database maintenance for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (white paper)
Planning and Monitoring SQL Server Storage for Windows SharePoint Services: Performance Recommendations and Best Practices (white paper)
Move content databases (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Move all databases (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)