We are running a WSS 3.0 Intranet Site with https for external access. The last guy who was responsible for the Sharepoint Server left the company without teaching us the ways of a Sharpoint Master. We dont know a lot about the BackEnd of Sharepoint and most of us only worked with Sharepoint Designer to edit Sites, but he was the only guy running the server.
I looked at the configuration of the Server and we have the following Setup:
WSS 3.0 runs on a Virtual Windows Server 2k3 Machine ( via Hyper-V ) It uses the Windows Internal Database It is connected to our Active Directory for User Auth.
He made weekly backups of the whole VM and made daily backups using stsadm.exe doing a differential backup at farm level, which at this moment is 24GB big.
Since none of us is familiar with the Restore Process, we would like to set up a Testing Server as a new VM to mess around without compromising the active production Server.
Most articles i found were about restoring to the actual production Server, but how should we proceed on a new Server? If we just setup a new Windows Server 2k3 VM, install WSS3.0 Sp2 using the Windows Internal Database, can we use the AD we have and then do a stsadm restore or will this mess with the other Sharepoint Server in the Network?
Sorry if anything isnt clear, but we arent experienced with the sharepoint serverside things and are screwed if the server stops working.
