Controlling your admin content database name (or avoiding having a GUID in its name)

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I am often asked, how to control the name of the admin content databases when you install and configure Project Server 2007 or MOSS.

The databases are not automatically created when you install the product. The installation just install the binaries. You then need to configure the product using the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard, and this is when the first 2 databases in a SharePoint farm are created by default: 

  • The configuration database (SharePoint_config by default)
  • The Admin content database (SharePoint_AdminContent_XXXXXXXX_XXXX_XXXX_XXXX_XXXXXXXXXXXX)

You can specifiy the configuration database name in the GUI, but not the name of the Admin content database.

In order to choose the Admin content database name, you need to use the PSCONFIG command line utility before starting the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard (psconfigui.exe)

  1. Create two empty databases and name them for example: SharePoint_Config and SharePoint_AdminContent using the required collation Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS
  2. Use the tool psconfig.exe with the right parameters
  3. Start the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard to finish the initial configuration of the farm

psconfig.exe is located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN

Here are the parameters to use with psconfig.exe

psconfig -cmd configdb -create -server %DB_INSTANCE_NAME% -database SharePoint_Config -user %ACCOUNT% -password %PASSWORD% -admincontentdatabase SharePoint_AdminContent

SharePoint_Config and  SharePoint_AdminContent are the 2 databases we created.

%DB_INSTANCE_NAME% is the SQL instance name where you created your 2 databases

%ACCOUNT% is the windows account (using the syntax DOMAIN\USER) used as the SharePoint farm administrator

%PASSWORD% is the password of %ACCOUNT%