Merging Content Databases...!

It’s not uncommon to have multiple SharePoint content databases for a single SharePoint application. The separation of site collections into different content databases is typically done in an attempt to work around content database size recommendations provided by Microsoft (see Microsoft’s Plan for Software Boundaries document for more information). In many cases organizations have one content database per site collection. After deploying StoragePoint into your existing SharePoint farm the next logical step is to run the externalize job(s) which will relocate your existing content outside of the content database. Once completed you will be left with very small content databases that can now be merged (note that you will have to run the DBCC_ShrinkDB script several times to reclaim your unused database space or rebuild table indexes before running dbcc_shrinkDB. For more information consult the StoragePoint Administrator’s Guide). Merging SharePoint content databases can be done using the stsadm command. Execute the steps below to merge your content databases.

Prerequisites

1. **** Important! Microsoft recommends applying the April Cumulative Update before you merge content databases. There are known issues with this merge database command prior to this update.
2. Even though your content databases will be very small after relocating BLOBs with StoragePoint’s externalize job, you must make sure you have enough free space to merge content databases. The general rule is that you must have at least three times the size of source site collections database size. *** Note: Do not use the value returned for theStorageUsedMB property when running the stsadm -o enumsites -url webappurl to determine your database size. With StoragePoint deployed this property will reflect the total space used by content in SharePoint but not the actual size of the content database.
3. In order to execute the following STSADM command you must be a member of the Farm Administrators group and be an Administrator on the local computer. Additionally you need to have Full Control permission for any site collection being moved. For SQL Server, you must be a member of the db_owner database role.

Steps to Merge Content Databases

1. From a SharePoint server in your farm, open a command prompt and navigate to %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft shared\Web server extensions\12\Bin
2. Type the following STSTADM Command
   STSADM –o mergecontentdbs –url –sourcedatabasename –destinationdatabasename –operation2
   
   Note that the URL is the URL of the web application that contains the site collection. This is not the URL of the site collection itself.
   Operation2 = full database merge
3. Restart IIS by running iisreset/noforce from a command prompt.