Back up and restore an entire farm (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Updated: 2008-07-24

There are several methods you can use to back up and restore data for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Key factors to consider in determining which tools to use include:

Backup type supported (full, differential, incremental).
Completeness of recovery and types of objects that can be recovered.
Complexity of managing solution.
Ability of solution to adapt to the maintenance window and database size.

Back up and restore a server farm

You can back up and restore data for Office SharePoint Server 2007 by using any of the following mechanisms:

Back up a farm by using built-in tools (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Restore a farm by using built-in tools (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

You can use the tools included with Office SharePoint Server 2007 to back up and restore the server farm. The Central Administration Web site offers a simple, UI-based method to manage farm backup and recovery and to view job history and status. The Stsadm command-line tool offers a faster and more flexible command-line-based approach to farm backup and recovery. You can use the Stsadm command-line tool in conjunction with Windows Scheduler to schedule delayed or periodic backups.
Back up a farm by using SQL Server tools (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Restore a farm by using SQL Server tools (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

You can use SQL Server 2005 to get a full-fidelity, complete backup of the databases used by Office SharePoint Server 2007 in the server farm. You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local server computer that is running SQL Server. Using SQL Server 2005, it is also possible to implement alternative backup strategies such as database mirroring or log shipping.
Back up and restore a farm by using DPM (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
Protecting Office SharePoint Server 2007 by using System Center Data Protection Manager (white paper)

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) is a server software application designed to help automate and streamline data protection. With DPM, an administrator can perform a complete or partial backup and recovery of Office SharePoint Server 2007 farms. As a part of farm backup, the configuration data stored in the Central Administration content database and the SharePoint configuration database will be backed up.

For more information about choosing a specific backup and recovery method, see Choose backup and recovery tools (Office SharePoint Server).

Back up and restore a server farm

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