Backing Up a Site Collection

To back up a site collection using the SharePoint Central Administration tool, perform the following steps:

1. Open the SharePoint Central Administration site on a SharePoint Server (Start, All Programs, Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products, SharePoint 2010 Central Administration).
2. Select Backup and Restore in Quick Launch.
3. Select Perform a Site Collection Backup, under the Granular Backup section.
4. On the Site Collection Backup page, select a site collection to backup from the drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 10.8.

   Figure 10.8. Performing a granular SharePoint site backup.

   

5. Enter the backup location and the filename ending with extension .bak in the Filename box. Select Overwrite Existing File if you want to overwrite, and then click Start Backup.

After starting the backup, SharePoint 2010 displays the Granular Backup Job Status page. On this page, the granular backup progress can be monitored and displays site collection backup status and content export status (discussed later in this chapter).

Unlike the Farm Backup and Restore operation, a detailed history of the granular backup operations cannot be viewed. Second, a backup of the site collection done using SharePoint Central Administration cannot be restored via the SharePoint Central Administration GUI. This backup can be restored only using Windows PowerShell cmdlet Restore-SPSite, which will be covered later in this chapter.

This method is recommended in situations in which a once-off backup of a site collection is required, either in a scenario in which the site collection content needs to be archived or in a scenario in which the site collection needs to move under a different web application.