SharePoint DB restore

Question

Hello, 

Content in your staging and production are lot different due to constant changes in production. I want to restore content DB from production to staging to solve this. We only have one site collection which utilizes out of the box features, CSS , infopath. 

Is it ok to restore this and should I expect issues if I do this ?. 

Environment:

SharePoint 2013, 

Windows 2012

SQL server 2012

Thank you 

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@R

Answer 1

Technically it's possible but not advisable. There will be a data loss.  

Answer 2

Hi youlearn.

You can do that, but it is recommended to restore the content database to a separate web application to avoid any kind of interference or data loss.
Anyway, it would be better using a different strategy (i.e., using a migration tool) if possible.

Bye.

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Luigi Bruno
MCP, MCTS, MOS, MTA

Answer 3

this is not safe operation. More often people restore production db on staging to keep environments in sync but not vice versa. So I would recommend to consider this option only if absolutely necessary. If there is another way (e.g. migrating content using some migration tool) I would recommend to use it instead.

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Answer 4

Hello, 

I want to restore from production to staging and wrote the opposite in my original post . I apologize for the confusion. 

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@R

Answer 5

then you're fine. Use this resource on how to do this:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/administration/move-content-databases

Answer 6

Hi,

You can also refer to below thread:

https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/198814/restore-production-content-db-to-test 

Best regards,

Allen Bai

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Answer 7

Hello, 

I want to restore from production to staging and wrote the opposite in my original post . I apologize for the confusion. 

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@R

Thanks for clarifying the scenario.
You can either backup and restore the content database using SQL Server or use the Backup-SPSite and Restore-SPSite cmdlets.
Also take a look at the article at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/administration/move-content-databases.

Bye.

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Luigi Bruno
MCP, MCTS, MOS, MTA

Answer 8

Hi,

If you think the replies are helpful, you could mark them as answers. It will help others who meet the similar issue.

Best regards,

Allen Bai

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Answer 9

Hi,

I am willing to hear from you. 

Best regards,

Allen Bai

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Answer 10

Allen, 

I was cleaning up old posts and realized that I did not reply to this. 

I took your advice and was able to restore from production to Staging and it worked fine. All the points mentioned about are still valid based on different scenarios. 

Thank you for your help. 

@R 

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@R