Many times in development teams you use a virtual machine to implement your Sharepoint solutions, typically in a big development team you have multiple developer’s using clone machines.In this post we will see how we can rename our cloned Sharepoint2007 VM to grant that we can have in the same network multiple developer’s using the same VM.
1: Clone machine
First off, copy the virtual machine (works sort of the same if it’s a physical one).
In virtual Server or VMware you should add the new VM, and make sure it does not have access to the LAN.
As long as you remove LAN access it does not really matter if the original machine is turned on when you follow these steps.
2: Alternate access mappings
Start the “Central Administration” -> “Operations” tab -> “Alternate Access Mappings” under “Global Configuration”
Click the link “Edit Public URLs”.
In the “Alternate Access Mapping Collection” drop-down, choose the first mapping.
Edit the URL to match the new machine name.
Click on “Edit Public URLs” again and repeat for rest of the mappings.
3: Tell SharePoint the Server has been renamed
We now tell SharePoint the server has a new name. It is done with STSADM which can be found in 12-hive in the BIN folder.
The command is:
stsadm -o renameserver -newservername YourNewServerName -oldservername YourOldServerName
4: Update farm credentials
Open a command prompt and go to the 12\bin folder and type the following command:
stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin “YourDomain\YourUserName” -password “YourPassword”
Then type this: IISRESET /noforce.
5: Application Pool identities
Now go to “Start” -> “Administrative tools” -> “Internet Information Services (IIS) manager”.
Windows Server 2008:
Expand the tree to reveal the application pools. Right-Click the application pools and choose “Advanced Settings”.
Under “Process Model” click the “…” button next to “Identity”.
If it is set to “Build-in” “Network Service” then skip it.
If it is set to a “custom account” click “Set” and update the user name with the correct machine-name if it is part of the user name.
Repeat for all App pools.
6: Windows Server 2003:
Expand the tree to reveal the application pools. Right-click the application pools and choose “Properties”.
Click the “Identity” tab.
If it is set to “Predefined – Network service” then skip it.
If it is set to “Configurable” update it with the new machine name if it is part of the user name.
Usually it’s only a couple of places you need to change this.
That’s pretty much it.
You may have to do a full search crawl to update the links.
If you are using MySites then you should go to Shared Services Administration in “Central Admin”.
Choose “My Site Settings” and rename references to the old server names.
Digital Mind Ignition 