FAQ: Administration in SharePoint Server 2007

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This topic contains answers to commonly asked questions when administering Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 programmatically. This topic is by no means complete and will be refreshed periodically with your questions.

What is the difference between taking a full farm backup and restore operation of SharePoint Server 2007 and taking a backup and restore operation of the databases only (SQL Server backup)? If you don’t have any customized templates, features, or other solutions, would a backup of the database be good enough to restore later on?

The backup you take from Central Administration also includes the following:

  • Information about the Web applications. If you don’t back these up, you need to recreate them when doing a recovery.

  • The Shared Services Provider (SSP) databases and the Search index.

So, if you don’t care about the SSP on the source farm, you can back up just the databases.

What about custom Web Parts? Do we still need to restore them separately?

Yes, you do. Neither a backup/restore nor an import/export operation takes the Web Parts. You need to deploy the Web Parts on the target environment before doing a restore or an export operation.

My backup/restore job failed the first time it was run and I'm not able to run backup/restore anymore. What do I do?

If you hit any error during the backup/restore process, you must delete the failed “Backup/Restore” timer job before you can run the next backup/restore process. You can delete the job from the following page: http://<adminsite:port>/_admin/ServiceJobDefinitions.aspx. You do not have to do this if you run backup/restore via stsadm.

What do I do if the backup (or the restore) operation failed?

Details on why the operation failed are available in the spbackup.log file (sprestore.log for a restore operation) in the backup location. You can look for errors in the log file to determine why the operation failed.

What can I do with the spbackup.xml file?

Nothing. Do not modify this file. Doing so can corrupt your backup and/or your restored farm in an unrecoverable manner.

What is the difference between "New" and "Overwrite" during a restore operation?

Use "new" when migrating to a different farm, or when restoring and you want to refer to a new server or new database. Use "overwrite" when you are restoring on the computers and databases that the original farm backup refers to. "Overwrite" is used for the catastrophic restore scenario and does not give you the option to use a different computer or database name.

What rights do I need to run a Backup and Restore operation?

To perform a backup, you need to be an Administrator on the farm. To run a restore operation, you need to be a Farm Administrator and a local administrator on the front end Web servers.