Sharepoint portal Server 2003 Sp1 Redirected Restore

I have been at work, sorting out a Share Point restore for one of our customers. I started off having no clue about SharePoint, and now feel slightly enlightened.

Points of note:

• SharePoint Portal
  
  
  
  • When installing make sure you create your portal before applying SP1 (STS & SPS)
    
    
    
    • else you may get the "Invalid configuration" on your valid configuration.
    
    
    • Whilst the invalid configuration error is present in the SPS administration pages you CANNOT perform restore.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • When trying to redirecting restores STS sites below your portal. name the DB that same as it was on the original server (This is stupid Symantec should really sort that out)
  
  
  • Make sure you have all the web parts & themes installed else you will get alot of scary looking errors
    
    
    
    • This can easyily be achieved if you have a backup of your sharepoint shared dir ( c:/program files/common/microsoft shared/web server component/60 )
      
      
      
      • that path was from memory so please be careful and check.
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


• Backup Exec
  
  
  
  • When using BackupExec to restore run SGmon.exe (in the program files etc)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    
    
    
    • This tool will give you actual info about your restore, as apposed to FAILED. This tool proved in valuable highlighting authentication issues
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • When you redirect to you new SharePoint site leave off the trailing slash
    
    
    
    • i.e. http://redirectserver.domain.com
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Some resources I noted whilst doing the restore:

• http://tiredblogger.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/migrating-sharepoint-2003-without-spsbackup/  Blog of same "Invalid Config" issue, with a different resolution.


• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/887164 List of supported topologies


• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885263  The hotfix that supposed to cure the "invalid config issue" however was pulled, and put in to SP2 (availble from Microsoft Support, I may post the fix if im allowed)


• http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/190979.htm SGmon.exe if i'd known about this tool years ago, id would of been a happier bunny.


• SPExtract Tool that will strip out all the documents out of a Sharepoint DB,  doesnt appear to care what patch level the DB is at, so can be handy in a crisis. If you have document versioning switched on it will only extract the latest version of that file.