Sharepoint site and Farm Backup Stratergies

Hello All,
since many days I was searching on the way to perform sharepoint site backup and restore.
I came across many documents and many web pages containing such Information.
Finally I am summarizing the whole story which is very powerful.

Sharepoint BackUp/Restore Using Central Administration Tool:

As we all know that sharepoint central administration tool (UI) is a great tool which comes by default with WSS and MOSS.
for taking backup of the site or the entire farm you just have to follow simple steps:

Farm Backup:

1. open the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, on the Operations page, in the Backup and 2.Restore section, click Perform a Backup.
3. Select Component to Backup page, select Farm, and then click Continue to Backup Options.
4. On the Select Backup Options page:
5. In the Backup Content section, ensure that Farm is displayed.
6. In the Type of Backup section, select Full.
7. In the Backup File Location section, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to the backup folder.
8. Click OK.

and thats done!! you will have back up of entire farm with you!!

Farm Restore:

1. Open SharePoint Central Administration Web site, on the Operations page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Restore from Backup.
2. On the Select Backup Location page, in the Backup File Location section, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to the backup folder.
3. On the Select Backup Package to Restore page, select the backup file you want to use to restore, and then click Continue Restore Process.
4. On the Select Component to Restore page, select the farm you want to restore, and then click Continue Restore Process.
5. On the Select Restore Options page:
6. In the Restore Component section, Ensure that Farm is displayed.
7. In the Restore Options section, select Same configuration.A message is displayed, notifying you that the current farm will be overwritten. Click OK.
8. In the Login Names and Passwords section, type the user name and password for your Farm Administrators account.
9. In the New Names section, type new names and URLs for each component, or accept the default values.
10. Click OK.

(Note:- If you facing any error like backup/restore job already in process then go to operations tab in central administration and navigate to timer job page, see If there exists any backup/restore job, delete that job and try again with backup/restore process.)


Backup/Restore using Command Line Tool :- stsadm

Taking backup using Central Administration tool might be easy because of UI but the command line tool i.e. stsadm.exe offers you some great feature to work with. Lets have a look.


For site collection backup

stsadm -o backup
-url
-filename
[-nositelock]
[-overwrite]

For catastrophic backup (Farm's backup)

stsadm -o backup
-directory
-backupmethod
[-force]
[-item]
[-percentage]
[-backupthreads]
[-showtree]
[-quiet]

Lets have look at the parameters:
url :- URL of the site collection that you want to back up
filename :- Name of the backup file (.bak)
nositelock :- Specifies that the site collection lock during a site collection backup is not set to read-only.
overwrite :- To overwrite an existing backup file.
directory :- The path where Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 should store the backup package it generates. (mostly used in case of entire farm's backup)
backupmethod :- (Full or differential) :- Type of backup file to be created. The values are full or differential.
A full backup is a backup of all the selected data. A differential backup is a backup of all the selected data that has changed since the last full backup.
force :- Ignores the disk space check and proceeds with the backup.
item :- Indicates which part of the farm should be backed up.
percentage :- Requests backup operation progress updates to be displayed in increments of that percentage
backupthreads :- An integer value between 1 and 10 to show the number of threads that should be used during the backup. For Windows SharePoint Services, the recommended value is 3
threads.
showtree :- Displays which objects in the farm will be backed up based on the other parameters passed to the backup operation, namely the -item parameter.
quiet :- Suppresses the output of backup progress information to the display window.

For site collection restore

stsadm -o restore
-url
-filename
[-hostheaderwebapplicationurl]
[-overwrite]

For catastrophic restore


stsadm -o restore
-directory
-restoremethod
[-backupid]
[-item]
[-percentage]
[-showtree]
[-suppressprompt]
[-username]
[-password]
[-newdatabaseserver]
[-preservechangelog]
[-quiet]