How to Copy a Site Collection in SharePoint?

Requirement: Clone the Production SharePoint site collection to Test environment for UAT.

Solution:
While Copy-SPSite cmdlet on SharePoint 2013 or later serves the purpose, It can clone site collection only within the same web application. What if you want to copy site collection to another web application or another farm in SharePoint? Well, follow these steps to copy site collection to same/another farm.

1. Create a new Web application
2. Backup the live site collection
3. Restore the backup into the target web application

Backup the Source Site Collection:

Backup-SPSite -Identity "http://portal.crescent.com" -Path "D:\backup\portal.bak" -Force -NoSiteLock -Confirm:$False 

Restore the backup into Target Site collection:

Restore-SPSite "http://testportal.crescent.com" -Path "D:\backup\portal.bak" -Force -Confirm:$False  

You can use this method to copy a site collection to another server or another server or another web application in SharePoint.
Remember to do the following:

• Install & Deploy any Farm level feature to the newly created Web Application from Central Admin.
• Configure Web App settings, such as: Web Application policy, Outgoing Email settings, etc.

Related post: How to Copy SharePoint 2013 Site Collection using Copy-SPSite in PowerShell?