How to Copy a Site Collection in SharePoint?

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

Copy a Site Collection in SharePoint using PowerShell:

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 a 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?