Restore a web applicaiton using Central Admin in SharePoint 2010

1. Open Central Administration > Home page > Backup and Restore section > click Restore from a backup.
2. The process consists of 3 steps

Step 1

Select Backup to Restore page > from the list of backups > select the backup job that contains the farm or Web application backup > and then click Next

Step 2

Select Component to Restore page > select the check box that is next to the Web application > and then click Next.

Step 3

Select Restore Options page > in the Restore Component section > make sure that Farm\<Web application>appears in the Restore the following content list.

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

4.      In the Restore Optionssection, under Type of Restore, select the Same configurationoption. A dialog box appears that asks you to confirm the operation. Click OK

5.      Click Start Restore.

Restore a Web application in SharePoint 2010 using Windows PowerShell

1. Open SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
2. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

Restore-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolderName> -RestoreMethod Overwrite -Item  <WebApplicationName> [-BackupId <GUID>] [-Verbose]

3.      If you do not specify the value of the BackupID parameter, the most recent backup will be used.

4.      You cannot restore a Web application by using a configuration-only backup.

5.      You can view the backups for the farm by typing the following

Get-SPBackupHistory -Directory <BackupFolderName> -ShowBackup

Restore a site collection using Windows PowerShell in SharePoint 2010

1.      Open SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

2.      At the Windows PowerShell command prompt

3.      Type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Restore-SPSite -Identity <Site collection URL> -Path <Backup file> [-DatabaseServer <Database server name>] [-DatabaseName <Content database name>] [-HostHeader <Host header>] [-Force] [-GradualDelete] [-Verbose]

4.      If you want to restore the site collection to a specific content database, use the DatabaseServer and DatabaseName parameters to specify the content database.

5.      If you do not specify a content database, the site collection will be restored to a content database chosen by Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

6.      If you are restoring a host-named site collection, use the Identity parameter to specify the URL and use the HostHeader parameter to specify the URL of the Web application that will hold the host-named site collection.

7.      If you want to overwrite an existing site collection, use the Force parameter.

Step by step SharePoint migration

Steps to migrate one moss server to other server
1. Take back up of all databases from SQL management studio (in .bak format)
2. You can also copy the .mdf and .ldf files of the content databases
3. Must remember the versions of the databases.
4. Copy the backed up files to some safe location
5. Create a new MOSS server
5.1 Install .NET 3.0 or later version
5.2 Install SQL Server 2005 or later version with SQL management studio
5.3 Install MOSS
6. Do not run PSconfig after installation of MOSS
7. Before that we have to copy the backed up databases files to the new server
8. Restored the databases form the .bak files to the newly installed SQL server
9. You can attach .mdf files to the new databases.
10. After copying the backed up data to the newly created MOSS machine run PSConfig wizard
11. In PSConfig wizard if you want the same customization as it was in the previous one then connect the MOSS to the existing farm and in the existing farm select the old configuration database.
12. Wait till the PSConfig wizard will be completed.
13. Open the Central admin page and check whether you get the same customization or not.

Now how to up your previous sites back in to the new MOSS machine.
1. Create a new site in new MOSS machine
2. Go to the content databases option in Application management of the central admin page.
3. Dropped the existing database , now your site comes down
4. Open the command prompt and type the following command to attach the content DB of the previous machine

Stsadm –o addcontentdb –url -databasename

5. The database which you want to attach must be restored in the SQL server