Sharepoint Backup

Types of Backup in Sharepoint V3.

As Every product or any business Disaster Recovery is very importand and in similar way, Sharepoint has some very good options for the same. Below are the methods that can be used in WSS 3.0 only or also for MOSS 2007.


1. GUI mode from Sharepoint Central Administration.

This Method is very common and most of the Administrators use this Method.

Go to Sharepoint Central Administration page -> Operations Tab -> Backup Operations.

This method will need a UNC path to store the back. It automatically creates a folder starting which will have various files in it and the most important file is the .xml file which get created, which has all the information about the backup.

The .xml file will contain data about the backup ID, The type of Backup, the Components selected during the backup.

GUI Backup is the same like the stsadm -o backup [catostrophic]. Both work the same way and the backrgound process is the same. Only difference here is the GUI interface.

By Default this backup will take the entire Sharepoint Farm backup

2. STSADM -o backup

This method is a command line backup which needs to be run from the BIN folder of Sharepoint.

This method can backup any top level sites or site collections of a Web application.
You will need to specify the URL address of the site to be backed up.

By default in this method the security or permissions are also backed up.

stsadm -o backup -filename c:\back.bak -url http://siteurl/

This is the standard command. It is not necessary to give the backup file extension as .bak, it can be anything or you may not even give any extension. Using this command you can backup only 1 top site at a time within the Web Application. If you want you can create a batch file which will include the commands having different URL's and schedule te batch file to run accordingly. It also includes other parameters for which you can use

stsadm -help backup

3. STSADM -o backup [catostrophic]

This method is similar to GUI Central Adminstration backup, its only Command line interface. You will need to manually specify the parameters and components to be backed up using this command. By default if the component is not specified, Enter Farm level backup is taken. Using this command as well a UNC path is to be given, where again and .xml file will be created.

stsadm -o backup -directory \\server\backup -backupmethod full [This will take the default Farm level backup]

You can use stsadm -o backup -showtree to see the list of the items in the Farm and then use stsadm -o backup -directory \\server\backup -backupmethod full -item

4. STSADM -o export

This method will help you to take backups of subsites separately which is not possible in any of the above backups. Using this method, subsites and top level sites backup can be taken but by default User permissions are not exported, you have to manually specific to export User permissions.

stsadm -o export -filename c:\exp.back -url http://siteURL -includeusersecurity

If you do not use -includeusersecurity, User permissions will not be exported by default.

5. SQL Database backup.

This method is the usuall maintenance method from SQL Management Studio. It is recommended to have the Sharepoint Content Databases backup from SQL as well, just in case Sharepoint Backup's don't work.