Renaming SharePoint Servers

I made a virtual dev environment for SharePoint because visual studio demanded we have it installed on a SharePoint server if we wanted to make web parts with it and VSeWSS. That part went okay. Next step was either build 2 more from scratch for the rest of the team, or copy and rename the one I already built. I chose to copy and rename (don’t want duplicate machine names on the network).

The server was a MS virtual PC machine running Server 03 R2 x86, MOSS 2007, and SQL express 2005 (or whatever a standalone install of SharePoint installs).

Renaming the server is the easy part. So I changed my server name from spdev-old to spdev-new like it was NBD (don’t restart yet). Wasn’t sure how to make SharePoint know I made the change though…

As it turns out… that’s easy too! Yay!
win+r | cmd | Enter

then type:
stsadm –o renameserver –oldservername spdev-old –newservername spdev-new

If that command doesn’t work… then you didn’t add the 12 hive BIN to your system’s path, and you’ll need to change directories to the 12 hive before running the stsadm command. The command to navigate to the directory is:
cd %programfiles%/common files/microsoft shared/web server extensions/12/Bin

However, I recommend adding it to your path because stsadm is a handy tool that you will use a lot. 
To do this:
right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced Tab > Environment Variables > find “path” under system variables > edit
At the very end of the variable value add:
;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN

You can restart after the stsadm command completes successfully.
shutdown –r –t 00

Now we’re almost done… just need to change the alternate access mappings in SharePoint Central Admin.

Open Central Admin. It fails. Change the name in the address bar to the new name. It works, Congratulations!

Go to: Operations | Alternate Access Mappings

Click on each address and change it to the new name.

If the browser doesn’t respond when you click OK on changing the name… then add the new computer name to your intranet sites in internet options | Security tab.

Once you’ve changed all 3 applications to the new system name(Central Admin site, SSP site, and default site) you are done.

Some people had trouble with user permissions after that… I did not. If you do, you will need to update your farm admin username to reflect the new machine name.