SharePoint Interview Questions And Answers: Content database

1. What is mean by content database?
2. What is the max recommended SharePoint content database size?
3. Why my Content Databases are named WSS_Content_<Guid>?
4. Difference between configuration database and content database?
5. Can we restore the content database to the existing web application using central administration?         
6. How to add content database to the web application?
7. How to delete the content database from the web application?
8. How to move Site Collections between Content Databases?
9. How can I check my content database size?
10. How can we attach more than one content database to a single web application?
11. Is it possible to have multiple content databases for a single Site Collection.?
12. How to get site collection list per content database?
13. How to change the existing database name using central administration?
14. How to monitor the content database size?

Here are the answers to the above questions:

What is mean by content database?

Ans: The content database is the repository for a lot of information such as web applications, site collections, sites, documents, lists, etc. By default SharePoint creates and associates only one content database with each web application created and all the site collections within a web application are also created within a single content database.

What is the max recommended SharePoint content database size?

MS recommends having content database not more the 100 GB for MOSS 2007 and 200GB for SP 2010.Use multiple content databases if necessary.

Note: A site collection should not exceed 100 GB [In sp2007] and 200GB [in sp2010] unless it is the only site collection in the database.

Why my Content Databases are named WSS_Content_<Guid>?
The moment you create a Web Application, you will be asked to fill in details regarding your content database. By default, SharePoint will fill in this field for you with the following syntax: WSS_Content. If a content database with this name already exists, it will add a GUID to it.

Difference between configuration database and content database?

Can we restore the content database to the existing web application using central administration?         

No. we can’t restore the content database to the existing web application but we can create a new content database using central administration. Only possible way is either by using PowerShell or stsadm. 

How to get site collection list per content database?

How to add content database to the web application?

Through Central Admin:

http://www.etechplanet.com/blog/create-and-associate-multiple-content-databases-with-a-sharepoint-web-application.aspx [Best article]

Through STSADM:

STSADM.EXE -o addcontentdb -url http://Mywebapp:1010 -databasename WSS_Content_01

Through PowerShell:

 New-SPContentDatabase -Name <ContentDbName> -WebApplication <WebApplicationName>

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc825314.aspx#ProcCA

How to delete the content database of a web application?

Moving Site Collections between Content Databases:

Msdn comments: You can move site collections between content databases by using the Stsadm command-line tool or Windows PowerShell 2.0 commands. There is no graphical user interface for this task [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc825328.aspx ]

 Rules:

·         The source content database and destination content database must be located on the same instance of SQL Server.

·         The source content database and destination content database must be attached to the same Web application.

If you have a content database that is getting too big, you can move one of more of its site collections to a different content database.  Run the STSADM -o enumsites command described above and redirect the output to a file; e.g.: STSADM.EXE -o enumsites -url http://Mywebapp:1010  > sites.xml

Edit the output file using Notepad and delete the sites that you do not want to move; i.e. edit the sites.xml file so that it contains the list of site collections in a single content database that you want to move to another content database.  You can then use a command like the following to move the site collections to another content database:

STSADM.EXE -o mergecontentdbs -url http:// Mywebapp:1010 -sourcedatabase <databasename> -destinationdatabase <databasename> -operation 3 -filename sites.xml

How can I check my content database size?

http://sharepointrelated.com/2012/03/07/content-database-size-report-using-powershell/

How can we attach more than one content database to a single web application?

Yes, but we cannot create/use more than one content database to single site collection.

How can we create a site collection in a specific Content Database?

Yes, but you can only do this by using PowerShell using the New-SPSite cmdlet. You can use the "-ContentDatabase" parameter to specify in which Content Database the site collection will be created. You will get an error saying the content database could not be found if the "-ContentDatabase" doesn’t exist.

How to monitor the content database size?

STSADM.EXE -o enumsites -url http://MyWebApplication:1010

Is it possible to have multiple content databases for a single Site Collection.?

No, a site collection cannot be split into different content databases. You can put different site collections into different content databases. Means One site collection = One content database and Multiple Site Collections = One Content Database

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=988