Here's a quick dump of random thoughts and info. I will get to organizing the site and making it more presentable when I have some free time (probably: never).
23 Sep 2009:
Very recently, I received a new case whereby the customer needed to physically
move the MOSS 2007 server from one location to another, joining the server to a
different AD forest/domain in the process. I found some technet documentation
addressing the issue of moving Sharepoint from one server to another, but I
could not find anything specific to this domain change request. So, after some
thought, I recommended to him the "Rebuild the farm from scratch without
re-installing Sharepoint" approach that I - sometimes - use in troubleshooting
hard-to-fix problems:
Before the move:
In SQL Management Studio, backup the Sharepoint databases and the configuration
database.
Then, do a backup of your Sharepoint site(s) using stsadm:
stsadm -o backup -url http://<site> -filename <filename>
Take note of any currently deployed solutions (Central Administration,
Operations, Global Configuration, Solution Management), make sure you have those
solutions installation files available.
Then run the Sharepoint Products and Technologies configuration wizard and
disconnect the server from the farm.
Move the server to the new location and join it to the new domain. Then:
1. Run the configuration wizard again and create a new farm, thus creating a new
configuration database.
2. Start all services (Central Administration, Operations, Services on Server).
The main reason for that is that all user GUID's will change after connecting
the server to the new domain.
3. Create a new SSP, configure User profile Import Import (do a full import to
test it), also configure Incremental and Full crawls.
4. Create a new web application (on the same TCP/IP port that was used by the
old web application before the move), then go to Central Administration,
Application Management, Content Databases, select this new web app and remove
from it the content database that was created with it.
5. Add to this new web application the content database of your old site.
6. Repeat these steps for every content database that existed before the server
was moved.
7. Deploy any solutions that were previously deployed.
A better approach would be to install MOSS from scratch on a new server in the
new domain and to then move only the content databases to the new server:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263037.aspx
Feel free to email me: webmaster@mosschronicles.com