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Renaming a MOSS Server

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Renaming a MOSS server is meticulous job. If anything goes wrong along the way chances are that you need to reconfigure your whole MOSS environment.

Here are the steps to take, and the order in which to take them if you want to rename a server that has MOSS already installed and configured on it:

*** NOTE: Use only letters, digits and minus for the machine name (so no underscores), max 15 characters.

  • Change each alternate access mapping for your MOSS/WSS deployment in Central Administration:
    • Open Central Administration, "Operations" Tab, "Alternate access mappings" link
    • Modify each mapping item to reflect your newly chosen server name
  • Use stsadm.exe to invoke the "renameserver" command option:
    • Open a command prompt window
    • cd "C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12BIN"
    • stsadm -o renameserver -newservername <newname> -oldservername <oldname>
  • Rename your Server via Change Name Operation in Windows Server 2003:
    • Start Menu | Control Panel | System, "Computer Name" tab, "Change" button.
    • Input your new server name
  • Reboot the server NOW.
  • After reboot, open command prompt
    • cd C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12BIN
    • stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin <domainuser> -password <password>
    • iisreset /noforce
  • Check all application pool identities in IIS, update where the old machine name is still there.
  • If you already have a search index drop this, and rebuild it

Your server is now renamed.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 5:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Renaming a MOSS Server”

  1. Tariq says:
    September 29, 2009 at 12:36 am

    Hi Mirjam,

    I tried these steps after a long time, and would like to highlight a issue I came across.

    In following the above steps, what is the precaution if the database server is on the same machine as the moss server being renamed?

    If this is the case, updating the farm credentials will not be sufficient since the name of the db server also has changed.

    One option I tried is to update the config db location stsadm -o setConfigDb, but that didnt work.