How to Refresh a SharePoint Sandbox Collection with Production

Monday, March 09, 2009

4:51 PM

This guide has been created to provide the necessary steps to ‘refresh’ a Sandbox Collection (Different Web Application) with Production Data, so that it can be ‘played with’ without breaking the Production Implementation.

Note on Authentication/Permissions: Ensure you perform these tasks with an account that has full SharePoint Administrative privileges such as an ‘SPSAdmin’ account.

• First, determine the Web Applications for the Source (Production) Web Application/Site Collection and the Destination (Sandbox) Web Application/Site Collection.
  • Open Central Administration and choose the “Application Management” tab
     

    

       

  • Open the Web Application List
     

    

  • Make note of the URL’s
     

    

  • Document the URL’s in the table below

     

• Perform a current Backup of the Production Site Collection
  • Go to a DOS Prompt and if the path to the STSADM.EXE application is not already in your System Path (a good idea for convenience), then change to the appropriate directory in order to run the utility.
    • cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%Microsoft sharedWeb server extensions12Bin
  • Perform the following command, using the URL of the Source Collection and modify your Output destination of the backup file, to suit (in this example, the path is going to be D:TOPProductionToSandBoxTransferMarch-3-2009-Backup.bak
    • stsadm -o backup -url http://harvey:56000 -filename D:TOPProductionToSandBoxTransferMarch-3-2009-Backup.bak
  • Ensure the backup completed successfully. Your result should look something like this:
     

    

       

• Restore your latest backup over your existing Sandbox Web Application (the assumption is you have one in place already), being sure to use the -overwrite option. Note that the restore typically takes much longer than the backup, to complete.
  • Go to a DOS Prompt (if you aren’t there already) and if the path to the STSADM.EXE application is not already in your System Path (a good idea for convenience), then change to the appropriate directory in order to run the utility.
    • cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%Microsoft sharedWeb server extensions12Bin
  • Perform the following command, using the URL of the Destination Collection and utilizing the file you created in step 2 – D:TOPProductionToSandBoxTransferMarch-3-2009-Backup.bak
    • stsadm -o restore -url http://harvey:56001 -filename D:TOPProductionToSandBoxTransferMarch-3-2009-Backup.bak -overwrite
  • Ensure the restore completed successfully. Your result should look something like this:
     

    

       

• Login and test that the application is healthy
• Finally, if you have any customizations to perform, such as modification of the Quick Launch or Top Link Bar (hard coded URL references to the Production Site), be sure to make those now. As well, we always recommend setting the ‘Theme’ for the Sandbox site to a different colour scheme. This is a simple solution for ensuring that you know when you are working in the Sandbox and when you are working in production (I often go for the ‘lime green’ look, as it is especially eye catching and ugly).
  • To change the theme to Lime Green
    • Login to the Sandbox Site
    • Choose Site Actions, Site Settings
       

      

         

    • Choose Site Theme, under Galleries
       

      

    • Select the Verdant Theme and click Apply
       

      

         

• Repeat Step 5 for any remaining sub sites (For example our test site has Manufacturing and Quality Assurance Sites)