Ways to Backup/Restore SharePoint - Part 1

I have deployed both SharePoint 2003 and 2007 to companies that span industries. With each deployment, I had to address the same technical concerns around proper backup/restore operations for SharePoint. The proper answer varied based on the deployed version of SharePoint and restore time requirements. Therefore, it is safe to say that my answer was always appropriate for the customer and based on the variables provided.

I did want to share some of the ways to perform backups for the different versions of SharePoint.

Collaborative SharePoint Versions

• Windows SharePoint Services v2 (WSS v2)
  • Stsadm –o backup –filename [file path & name] –url [http://WSSv2Server] [-overwrite]
    • backups the SharePoint site collection to a known location
  • Stsadm –o restore –filename [file path & name] –url [http://WSSv2Server]
    • restores the SharePoint site collection to a known IIS web application
  • SQL Server 2000 backup/restore of SharePoint content and configuration databases
  • Vendor: Veritas Backup Exec Agent for SQL Server
• Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSS v3)
  • Recycle-bin site restore
  • Recycle-bin List/Library restore
  • Recycle-bin List/Document Library item restore
  • stsadm –o backup –filename [file path & name] –url [http://WSSv3Server] [-overwrite]
    • The above backups the SharePoint site collection to a known location
  • stsadm -o backup -directory "[UNC Path]" -backupmethod full -item "farm"
    • The above backups the SharePoint farm to a known UNC path
  • stsadm -o backup -directory "[UNC Path]" -backupmethod full -item "Windows SharePoint Services Web Application"
    • The above backups all SharePoint web applications to a known UNC path
  • stsadm –o restore –filename [file path & name] –url [http://WSSv3Server]
    • The above restores the SharePoint site collection to a known IIS web application
  • stsadm -o restore -directory "[UNC Path]" -restoremethod overwrite -item "farm"
    • The above restores the SharePoint farm
  • stsadm -o restore -directory "[UNC Path]" -restoremethod overwrite -item "farm\Windows SharePoint Services Web Application"
    • The above restores all the SharePoint web applications that is in the farm only
  • SQL Server 2000 backup/restore of SharePoint content and configuration databases
  • Vendor: Veritas Backup Exec Agent for SQL Server

Enterprise SharePoint Versions

• SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS 2003)
  • stsadm –o backup –filename [file path & name] –url [http://SPS2K3Server] [-overwrite]
    • backups the SharePoint site collection to a known location
  • stsadm –o restore –filename [file path & name] –url [http://SPS2K3Server]
    • restores the SharePoint site collection to a known IIS web application
  • SharePoint Portal Server Data Backup and Restore windows application
  • SQL Server 2000 backup/restore of SharePoint content and configuration databases
  • Vendor: Veritas Backup Exec Agent for SQL Server
  • Vendor: Veritas Backup Exec Agent for SharePoint Portal Server 2003
  • Vendor: AvePoint DocAve 3.0 Backup/Restore application
    • Provides item level backup and restore to a global SharePoint deployment
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007)
  • Recycle-bin site restore
  • Recycle-bin List/Library restore
  • Recycle-bin List/Document Library item restore
  • stsadm –o backup –filename [file path & name] –url [http://MOSS2K7Server] [-overwrite]
    • backups the SharePoint site collection to a known location
  • stsadm -o backup -directory "[UNC Path]" -backupmethod full -item "Windows SharePoint Services Web Application"
    • The above backups all SharePoint web applications to a known UNC path
  • stsadm -o backup -directory "[UNC Path]" -backupmethod full -item "SharedServicesProvider"
    • The above backups the Shared Service Provider to a known UNC path
  • stsadm –o restore –filename [file path & name] –url [http://MOSS2K7Server]
    • restores the SharePoint site collection to a known IIS web application
  • stsadm -o restore -directory "[UNC Path]" -restoremethod overwrite -item "farm"
    • The above restores the SharePoint farm
  • stsadm -o restore -directory "[UNC Path]" -restoremethod overwrite -item "farm\Windows SharePoint Services Web Application"
    • The above restores all the SharePoint web applications that is in the farm only
  • stsadm -o restore -directory "[UNC Path]" -restoremethod overwrite -item "SharedServicesProvider"
    • The above restores the SharePoint Service Provider database and index files
  • SQL Server 2000 backup/restore of SharePoint content and configuration databases
  • Vendor: Veritas Backup Exec Agent for SQL Server
  • Vendor: Veritas Backup Exec Agent for SharePoint Portal Server 2003
  • Vendor: AvePoint DocAve 4.0 Backup/Restore application
    • Provides item level backup and restore to a global SharePoint deployment

FYI, to find the stsadm utility in your instance of SharePoint, you must access the SharePoint web server and navigate to "[Hard_Drive]:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Bin". The executable contains a number of useful operations other than backup/restore for SharePoint. I recommend that the IT administrator get to know some of the other possible operations that can make administrating SharePoint easier. For simply backups, I like to create batch file scripts that contain something like the following: "stsadm –o backup –url [http://MySharePointSite] –filename [\\MyBackupServer\BackupShare\[Monday|Tuesday|Wednesday|Thursday|Friday]]". This allows me to ensure that every day of the week there is a backup to disk that I can restore. In addition, best practice tells me to ensure that you have a backup system that always backs up the files to tape. This would allow for restores that is past one week.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each backup method above. I will discuss this in my next backup/restore blog entry.

Comments

[Jeff Aven]

HyperBac for SharePoint (www.hyperbac.com/sharepoint/), will allow you to perform stsadm, spsbackup operations as well as native SQL Server EM, maintenance plans and TSQL commands with streaming high-performance compression and AES encryption, can make these operations anywhere up to 5 times faster and save up to 90% in storage costs, compression and encryption is done on the flat files as well as the SQL data and fully supports all of the native SharePoint backup/restore utilities eg stsadm.exe(unlike many other products on the market), worth a look.

[Jens]

Hi, will you provide a part 2 as well?

regards,
Jens

[Carl Campos]

Any idea how one might go about restoring or migrating a WSS 3.0 Windows Internal Database site to SQL 2000? I've run into a version mismatch issue trying to restore a WSS 3.0 database originally backed up with STSADM.

STSADM restore error:
Your backup is from a different version of Windows SharePoint Services and cannot be restored to a server running the current version. The backup file should be restored to a server with version '1162887508.196608.17694860.0' or later.
---------

The error message appears to be because my WSS 3.0 production box doesn't have last Tuesday's security updates, while my WSS 3.0 restore box does. In a disaster recovery, there's no way for me to know definitively what updates the production server may have had. Tracking them manually is unreasonable and unreliable, so I have to consider STSADM an unreliable backup method.

Management isn't going to buy off on purchasing SQL 2005, so I'm hoping there's a way for me to migrate my WSS 3.0 site, currently using Windows Internal Database, to an existing SQL 2000 Server. Once I'm using the full version of SQL, I can use its built-in (RELIABLE) backup process rather than risk this version mismatch issue in a disaster recovery.

[Scoutman]

The bug in stsadm is still there.
Solution to solve he problem:
On the destination machine create an webapplication
Remove the contentdatabase from that aplication in Central Admin
Restore by SqlServer studio the database with the overwite checkbox checked.
Add the contentdatabase to that aplication by Central Admin

Done! for now…

Mail me if anybody need help.
stationsolutions@gmail.com

Best regards

Scoutman

[Ramesh]

I did get the same Version error noted in the comments

I was able to find out the issue. The size of the file is 10Gb and we;re trying to copy from Production Datacenter to dev box using Robocopy and it seems robocopy failed to copy after so many items and it leaves a same size file with some junk in the file.

So, breaked up and compressed the backup using 7zip utility ( you would think, backup is compressed:), but it is not) using the and used robocopy to copy the file and it worked like a charm when we restored the site.

I hope this saves some one some (or a lot of) time

Thanks
Ramesh

[Vikash]

Hello All
I have Formated my server few days back i have already taken the full backup of share point 3.0 from the Central administration page
now i want to restore my backup the task has been complated but it generates an error message that wss content already exist's and it cant be overwritten .

Please let me know how to restore from my existing backup
i have some important and crucial data stored on it

Please help me to resolve this Query .

Thanks & Regards
Vikash Kumar Shrivastava .

[Peter]

We have just combined our backup solutions to allow backup and restore at the farm level (all servers with all config) as well as the site, sub-site and item level for SharePoint. This is of course a full fidelity restore. If anyone has questions I can be reached at Peter.Morris@avepoint.com

[Douglas Kwong]

did sharepoint can restore the backup date from A machine to B machine? Any step?

thank you

[Jean Bujold]

Is it possible to backup and restore the recycle bin content so that you can have a snapshot in time of deleted content. I have a user that wants to restore a document that was deleted, stored in the recycle bin for 45 days then auto-deleted. This of course is at day 60 after the initial deletion. How can I get my hands on the file?

[Rocky]

Hi there

Lovely article. My query is slightly off topic

But before you reply let me confess that I am a non-technical guy and completely zero about Sharepoint.
Please feel free to comment if am asking the wrong questions

My Q is related to websites developed in Sharepoint 2007 for Internet sites. Suppose the present website content (text, images & databases) are in .asp files/format. I use the content and recreate / redesign the website in MOSS 2007 for Internet sites.

1. Will Sharepoint covert the content to Sharepoint format?
2. Will I be able to use content again in non-Sharepoint platform?
3. What kind of backup and precaution I shld take before converting .net content into MOSS so that in future the MOSS content is still reusable but .net or other platform?

[Faisal]

I want to transfer one site from sharepoint 2003 to MOSS. The servers have got different settings. I have tried to backup/restore technique but it seems not working because it shows me a message “Your backup is from a different version of Windows SharePoint Services and cannot be restored to a server running the current version. The backup file should be restored to a server with version ‘6.0.2.8165′ or later.”

Please suggest me what to do. Do I need to use stsadm -addcontentdb command to upgrdae complete SP2003 box.

Many Thanks