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Fastest way to recreate a test environment RRS feed

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    Let's say our Sharepoint 2010 test environment (one VM but installed not in the standalone mode) is corrupted and we don't have any backups of it.  What are the best/fastest ways to recreate this environment?  The options we are considering:

    Option 1:

    Create a brand new VM, install Sharepoint on it.  Then restore the backups of our production content databases.  This is probably the cleanest solution

    Option 2:

    Somebody at my company suggested the solution of closing the production VM (that has our production Sharepoint farm on it) and then follow the instructions from this videothat discusses VMware’s ability to add “uniqueness” to a cloned machine to deal with things like computer names, IPs, and SID, etc.

    Note: the production VM and the test VM are on the same domain and network.  They both point to the same AD and the same Office Web Apps.

    thanks,

    Tuesday, February 9, 2016 4:54 PM

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    You _cannot_ clone the VM with that scenario. VMware does not have the capability to deal with the unique objects that reside within SharePoint. If you do clone the VM and keep it on the same network (or a network that has IP access to production), you'll end up with a scenario where the cloned VM acts as the production VM and starts working against your production databases.

    The absolute fastest way is to script your installation of a farm, and as you said, restore from backup.

    Trevor Seward

            

    This post is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion or view of Microsoft, its employees, or other MVPs.

    • Proposed as answer by Victoria Xia Tuesday, February 23, 2016 8:17 AM
    • Marked as answer by Victoria Xia Wednesday, February 24, 2016 8:43 AM
    Tuesday, February 9, 2016 6:07 PM