It's a Migration Thing...
I was recently working with a customer in North Carolina. They were in the process of upgrading the hardware that was running their SharePoint 2003 farm. Part of what they wanted to accomplish was to move from a SQL 2000 cluster for their backend to a SQL 2005 cluster. This included not only the backup and restore of the databases, but the reconfiguring of their portal farm and all the servers in it.
The problem arose when we tried to get a good set of instructions on how to do this. I searched the internet and spoke with many colleagues before I finally got the steps right. But the information I got was very rough and not as detailed as I wanted. So I built out a document that walks you through the process. In this document, you will get a basic plan on backing up and restoring your SPS/WSS databases. Since the process may be different based on the backup/restore process of each company, I left that up to you. But I did provide a step-by-step walk-through of how to tell SharePoint that the databases are somewhere else. This includes screen shots and should provide a good guide.
Something to note before you start this. You should be on Service Pack 2 of WSS and SPS before migrating over to SQL 2005. I also recommend that you have all the latest hot fixes available for SPS/WSS before starting this process. That being said, open the attached document and see what happens.
Until the next time, I wish you happy travels.
