Backing Up and Recovering SharePoint Components

Backup options in SharePoint 2010 have been scoped across wider areas in comparison to its predecessors. SharePoint 2010 administrators have an array of options to choose from and combine, per best practices outlined in this chapter, to back up and restore SharePoint 2010 content.

In comparison to earlier versions, SharePoint 2010 administrators, can now back up the farm configuration, complete farm, and site collection only or even do a granular level of backup and restore. In addition to this, SharePoint 2010 administrators can now connect to an unattached content database and restore content from it.

The tools covered in this chapter for backup and restore are the following:

• Recycle Bin— Introduced in SharePoint 2007, this has been a popular tool widely used by the end users and by the SharePoint administrators. Because the data can be restored by the end user within 30 days of deletion and thereafter by the site collection administrators, it has led to reduced IT overheads in data restoration.

• Central Administration— Central Administration GUI is one of the tools that can be used to back up and restore the SharePoint environment. However, not all backup and restore options are available when using the Central Administration site.

• SharePoint 2010 Management Shell— SharePoint 2010 introduces Administration Management Shell, which is built on top of Windows PowerShell. Windows PowerShell is a command-line tool that SharePoint Administrators can use to administer the SharePoint environment. Windows PowerShell provides additional options for the SharePoint administrators, which are not available to execute using the Central Administration GUI.

• STSADM— Although STSADM is available with SharePoint 2010, it has been deprecated and is provided only to support backward compatibility. Windows PowerShell is the preferred option for managing SharePoint 2010 environment. In certain situations, Windows PowerShell is the only option to administer SharePoint 2010 environment.

• IIS backup— II7 configuration on Windows Server 2008 can now be backed up using the appcmd executable file. The IIS 7 configuration file is composed of web.config files and applicationHost.config files. In a situation in which a system failure occurs, systems administrators can restore the IIS7 configuration from the backup file.

• SQL backup— SharePoint configuration and content databases stored in SQL Server can be backed up using built-in backup functionality, either by the DBA’s initiating this as a once-off task or can schedule tasks to do a full backup. SQL database backup can be combined with other SharePoint backup options, such as Central Administration or SharePoint 2010 Management Shell. Unlike SharePoint restore procedures, SQL restore procedures cannot restore item level objects, only complete database restores.

• Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010— DPM 2010 is Microsoft’s enterprise backup tool. DPM does snapshot-level backup and restore of SharePoint content, providing for full farm or individual item level recovery. DPM is a separate component and is not included with SharePoint 2010.

• Third-party backup tools— Vendors such as Idera and AvePoint already have backup tools for SharePoint 2007 that facilitates item-level restores. These vendors are currently working on releasing backup tools for SharePoint 2010.