Beginning SharePoint® 2007 Administration: Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

Chapter 14. Backup and Restore

By now I am sure you agree that SharePoint 2007 is a great product and a fantastic tool for managing information for your organization, regardless of what type of tasks or activities you may have. When a SharePoint project goes from being a test installation into a production environment, it will suddenly contain important information that constantly grows every day. Sooner than you might expect, SharePoint will be a mission-critical application in your environment. How can you protect it? By making backups, of course! As the old SharePoint geek joke goes: "What do you call a SharePoint administrator who does not make backups?" The answer: "Unemployed!"

This chapter tells you how to keep your job as a SharePoint administrator. It starts by describing what information you need to protect and then lists all available options. You will learn how to perform backup and restore procedures. You will also read about other options, such as MS SQL backups and third-party backup tools.

Just remember this: If you do not regularly verify that your backup solution works (that it actually is possible to actually restore data), you can save a lot of time and effort by skipping the backup process completely; the result will be the same. During my 29 years in the computer business, I have seen a large number of backup solutions that do not work when you actually need them! A lot of IT administrators seem to think that it is enough to get some sort of backup solution, ...