Hello,
I would like to restore a SharePoint 2010 Web Application to a different SharePoint farm from where it was originally backed up. I have followed the instructions exactly as specified in document HOWTO47543 and I can confirm that this works, however, I've noticed a potential issue that I'd like clarified.
The instructions say that in the Distributed Application Host Mapping, that the destination back-end SQL servers must be listed as components of the front-end source web server where the Web Application was originally backed up from. So for example, if my source web front end server is called lonwebwfe and my destination SQL server is lonsqldr, then I add to the Distributed Application Host Mapping that lonsqldr is a component host of lonwebwfe. This implies that the restore must be performed from the source web front end server, in my case lonwebwfe.
I ran the redirected restore from lonwebwfe to my destination SharePoint farm and yes, this does work. But I'd like to run the redirected restore from the web front end server of the destination farm - lonwebwfeDR. This is because in the event of disaster, my source web front end server may be destroyed.
However, when I tried to do this, the restore did not work, in fact, it didn't even start. It said the restore job had been submitted successfully, but no restore job appeared in the Activity Monitor and no restore job appeared in the "view status" window of the NetBackup GUI.
Therefore I have this question:
When performing a re-directed restore of a SharePoint Web Application, does the restore always have to be made from the original source web front end server where the Web Application was backed up from? If so, this is a problem as in the event of disaster where I lose the original web front end server, this effectively means I can't restore SharePoint, is there a way round this so I can restore it from a different server from where it was backed up?
I should also point out that neither the NetBackup PDF documentation nor the HOWTO linked above actually state that the restore must be performed from the source web front end server
Many thanks.