SharePoint 2010 backup and restore to test SharePoint environment

Hello,

If you're restoring to the same AD environment you won't be able to restore everything from the Sharepoint backups because many of these resources cannot be redirected to a different server.  If you want to stay in the production domain,I would recommend building another Sharepoint environment similar to your production environment (same server OS, SQL, and Sharepoint version/build but different server names/IPs).  Create Web Applications with the same compliment of content databases as original and redirect your production content database backups to these newly built Web Apps. 

If you want to fully duplicate the Sharepoint environment, create an isolated AD domain network from your production network with a DC duplicating your production DC and follow the technote referenced above. Restore your Web server first without selecting any Sharepoint resources.  Then follow the technote to restore the SQL server and the Sharepoint resources. This process will use the same server names/IPs as original and will be direct restores rather than redirected.  Pay close attention to the restore order from the technote for the Sharepoint resources.

Russ