Backing Up and Restoring SharePoint Data

To adequately administer WSS, it is important to be familiar with the unique aspects of backing up and restoring SharePoint sites. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, each WSS site depends on two separate SQL databases. One database stores the site configuration, and the other stores the site contents including list items as well as documents within site document libraries. To restore the Companyweb in a disaster-recovery scenario, you need to have a System State backup of your SBS server, as well as backups of your system partition, the MSDE installation directory, and all SharePoint databases.

The good news is that SBS includes built-in support to successfully back up and restore Companyweb in a disaster recovery scenario. SBS ships with NTBackup, as well as a backup snap-in and wizard within the Server Management Console. SBS's built-in backup wizard backs up all the components necessary to restore your Companyweb site in a disaster recovery scenario.

However, it is not only conceivable but probable that at some point in time you will need to perform an item-level restore within your Companyweb site. As mentioned earlier, all content within the Companyweb site lives in the content database for that site. As a result, what happens if one day at 4:30 p.m. one of your users accidentally deletes a file out of one of the Companyweb document libraries and needs to get it back? Traditional restore methods would require you to restore the entire content database. Sure, that would allow you to get this document back, but it would also result in losing all other work saved to the entire Companyweb site since the last backup, which is not acceptable.

Best Practice: Schedule At Least One Native SharePoint Backup Each Business Day

WSS includes the capability to back up SharePoint sites. Although NTBackup provides a means for disaster recovery of a SharePoint site, it does not provide many options for item-level recovery of individual documents, photos, or list items. To be able to perform item-level restores, you must have a WSS backup of your site.

In a typical Companyweb deployment, users may be using the Companyweb site constantly throughout the workday, adding, editing, and deleting documents, photos, and list items. As a result, having to roll back to a backup even 24 hours old could significantly impact your business. However, each business is different, and each will therefore have a different time period it is comfortable with potentially losing, whether it be 2 hours, 4 hours, or even a day. Determine what works best for your scenario and schedule your SharePoint backups accordingly. At a minimum you should schedule one SharePoint backup per day.

In this scenario, you can use a native WSS back up to perform a parallel restore to a temporary site. At that point, you have the production Companyweb site running without the deleted document, and a parallel Companyweb site running as it existed at the point it was backed up, complete with the document you need to recover. From here, you can go to the parallel site, open the document you want to recover, save it to the desktop, and then upload it to the production companyweb site. However, before you can perform this type of recovery, you must first schedule SharePoint backups:

1.	Log in to your SBS server, open My Computer, and create a new folder on a data partition on which to save your Companyweb backups.
2.	Open Control Panel, Scheduled Tasks, Add Scheduled Task. When the Scheduled Task Wizard starts, click Next.
3.	Click Browse. Browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\WebServer Extensions\60\bin\. Click on stsadm.exe and click Open.
4.	Change the task name to something meaningfulfor example, Companyweb Backup 11am.
5.	Select to perform this task weekly and click Next.
6.	Select the time you want the backup to start, and the days of the week you want it to run. Click Next.
7.	Enter Administrator credentials and click Next.
8.	Select Open Advanced Properties for This Task When I Click Finish and click Finish.
9.	On the Task tab, remove the command from the Run field and replace it with the following: [View full width] "%SystemDrive%\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared \Web Server Extensions\60\Bin \Stsadm.exe " -o backup -url http://Companyweb -filename target -overwrite Where target equals the full path of the backup location you created in step 1 plus a filename (for example, D:\Companyweb Backup\11am). Note that this filename does not require an extension but should be unique from any other filenames you are using for other Companyweb backups. For example, if you are scheduling Companyweb backups for 11 a.m., 2 p.m., and 5 p.m., each scheduled task must use a different filename.
10.	Click OK. Enter Administrator credentials if prompted and click OK.
11.	Repeat steps 2 through 10 for each additional scheduled backup you want to perform.

After you have created your Companyweb backup schedules, you should manually run each scheduled task to verify that the backup files are created where you expect them. When your scheduled tasks are successfully creating backup files for your Companyweb site, you have the means necessary to perform item-level restores of documents, photos, and list items within your Companyweb site.

As mentioned earlier, to restore individual items to your Companyweb, you need to create a new subsite and restore your Companyweb backup to this site. The procedure for restoring individual documents and photos is as follows:

1.	Log in to your SBS server and open a command prompt.
2.	At the command prompt, enter the following command to create the new subsite: [View full width] "%SystemDrive%\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Bin \Stsadm.exe " -o createsiteinnewdb -url http://companyweb/sites/RestoredSite -ownerlogin DOMAIN\administrator -owneremail [e-mail] -databasename STS_RESTORE
3.	At the command prompt, enter the following command to restore your Companyweb backup to the newly created subsite: [View full width] "%SystemDrive%\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Bin \Stsadm.exe " -o restore -url http://Companyweb/Sites/Restoredsite -filename target overwrite Where target equals the full path and filename of the Companyweb backup file you want to restore (for example, "D:\Companyweb Backup\11am").
4.	Open your web browser and browse to http://companyweb/sites/restoredsite to view your newly restored parallel site. To restore library items (documents, photos, faxes), for each item you want to restore, find the item in the restored site, right-click on it, and select Save Target As to save the document to the local hard drive. After you have saved each item you want to restore to your local hard drive, you can browse to http://companyweb and upload each item to the correct library. When it comes to individual list items (contacts, announcements, and so on), there isn't a way to actually restore these items. Instead, you find the items in the restored site and use that to re-create the item in your production Companyweb site.

After you have restored your individual library and list items, you will want to remove the restoredsite subsite from Companyweb, as well as corresponding databases. This is necessary not only to allow for future restores but also for proper disk space management. When you create the restoredsite subsite, you also create a new database for the restored site content, and this database is populated during the restore process. As a result, you end up with twice the disk cost because you have two separate databases with virtually all your Companyweb content. Additionally, by default the restoredsite database is created in the data folder under the MSDE installation directory. Therefore, it is important to realize that if your SHAREPOINT MSDE instance is installed on your C: drive, the restore process creates a new database on your system drive. So, to remove the restoredsite subsite and content database, follow these steps:

1.	On your SBS server, open SharePoint Central Administration (select Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, SharePoint Central Administration).
2.	Under the Virtual Server Configuration section, click Configure Virtual Server Settings; then click on Companyweb.
3.	Under the Virtual Server Management section, click Delete Site Collection.
4.	Type the subsite URL (http://companyweb/sites/restoredsite); then click OK and click Delete.
5.	To remove the content database, under the Virtual Server Management section, click Manage Content Databases.
6.	Click STS_RESTORE; then click Remove Content Database and click OK. Close SharePoint Central Administration.
7.	To delete the database from the SHAREPOINT MSDE instance, open a command prompt and enter the following command: osql -E -S <SERVERNAME>\SharePoint -Q "drop database sts_restore" Where <servername> equals the netbios name of your server.