Host Header based Site Collections & Database Sync Errors

As we painfully discovered this month, if you’re getting DB sync errors, (Event ID 5555, 5553) you cannot detach, and reattach to resolve the sync problem.

Basically what we discovered was with most stsadm commands there is an option -hostheaderwebapplicationurl, which does not exist for stsadm -addcontentdb.

After opening a ticket with Microsoft, we did the following to resolve our database sync problems.

1. stsadm -o sync deleteolddatabases 1

2. Restarted the timer service on all servers in the farm.

So anyway, if you go the other route of:

stsadm -o preparetomove

stsadm-o deltecontentdb

stsadm -o addcontentdb

And you have host based site collections residing in their own database you will have no means of reattaching them.  I spent several hours in a support call with Microsoft in the middle of the night trying to get these reattached, and ultimately had to rebuild the affected sites, and restore from backup.