• Article

Restore a Project Server 2010 farm by using built-in tools

 

Applies to: Project Server 2010

Topic Last Modified: 2012-08-30

Microsoft Project Server 2010 provides two methods for restoring a server farm, Web applications, and content databases. Restoring by using the SharePoint Central Administration Web site offers the convenience of working from the user interface, while restoring by using Windows PowerShell 2.0 offers a wide range of parameters and allows automation of your recovery process.

Before restoring your farm, ensure that the following requirements are met.

  • To restore your farm by using the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, the database server's Microsoft SQL Server account, the Timer service account, and the Central Administration pool account must have Read permissions to the backup locations. (The Timer service account and the Central Administration pool account are generally the same.)

Consider the following before restoring your farm:

  • Restoring from one version of SharePoint Products and Technologies to a different version is not supported. For information about migrating, see Migrate a Project Web App instance in Project Server 2010.

  • After recovery, Search might take up to 15 minutes to be available again and could take longer if Search has to re-index all of the content. To avoid having Search do a full search and re-index, you can back up and restore the entire Service Application node.

  • You cannot perform more than one recovery from the same backup at the same time. Moreover, you can only perform one recovery or one backup operation at a time.

Use Central Administration to restore a Project Server farm

To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Farm Administrators group on the computer that is running Central Administration.

To restore a farm by using SharePoint Central Administration

  1. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Restore from a backup.

  2. On the Restore from Backup — Step 1 of 3: Select Backup to Restore page, from the list of backups, select the backup job that contains the farm backup, and then click Next.

    Note

    If the correct backup job does not appear, in the Current Directory box, enter the UNC path of the correct backup folder, and then click Update.

  3. On the Restore from Backup  — Step 2 of 3: Select Component to Restore page, select the check box that is next to the farm, and then click Next.

  4. On the Restore from Backup  — Step 3 of 3: Select Restore Options page, in the Restore Component section, ensure that "Farm" appears in the Restore the following content list.

    In the Restore Only Configuration Settings section, ensure that the Restore content and configuration settings option is selected.

    In the Restore Options section, select the Type of Restore option. Use the Same configuration setting unless you are migrating the farm or using a recovery farm. If you select this option, a dialog box appears that asks you to confirm the operation. Click OK.

    Note

    If the Restore Only Configuration Settings section does not appear, then the backup that you selected is a configuration-only backup. You must select another backup.

    Click Start Restore.

  5. You can view the general status of all recovery jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current recovery job in the lower part of the page in the Restore section. The status page updates itself every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the recovery to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Sprestore.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 2.

Use Windows PowerShell to restore a Project Server farm

You can use Windows PowerShell to restore a Project Server 2010 farm.

To restore a Project Server farm by using Windows PowerShell

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.

  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.

  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.

  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Restore-SPFarm -Directory <BackupShare> -RestoreMethod [new/overwrite]

    Note

    If you are not logged on as the Farm account, you will be prompted for the Farm account’s credentials.

    To restore to the same farm, use the -RestoreMethod Overwrite parameter. To restore to a different farm, such as a recovery farm, use the -RestoreMethod New parameter. To view the progress of the operation, use the -Verbose parameter.

  6. If you do not use the -Verbose parameter, the Command Prompt window displays no message if the operation succeeds. If the job does not finish successfully, the Command Prompt window displays an error message, such as the following.

    Restore-SPFarm: The job failed. At line: <line> char:<column>.+ Restore-SPFarm <<<< <Error Message>

  7. If there are errors or warnings, or if the job does not finish successfully, review the Sprestore.log file in the backup folder.

For more information, see Restore-SPFarm.

Note

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.