Overview of Backing Up and Restoring Data in Windows SharePoint Services

This topic is provides some basic facts about how to back up and restore data in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. In order to alleviate some of these challenges, Fast Track IT Training(http://fasttrackitc.com/sp2.html) suggests:

What Can Be Backed Up and What Can Be Restored

There are six types of content components built-in to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that can be backed up and restored through either the Central Administration application's UI, the stsadm.exe command-line tool or a custom application that uses the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 backup and restore object model.

Site collections, each of which might contain multiple Web sites.

Content databases, each of which might contain multiple site collections.

Web applications, each of which might contain multiple content databases.

Content publishing "Web services," each of which might contain multiple Web applications.

Limitations

There are some limitations on what can be backed up and restored through either the Central Administration application's UI, the stsadm command line utility or a custom application that uses the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 backup and restore object model.

You cannot backup (or restore) an individual Web site, list, or list item except by backing up (or restoring) the entire site collection to which it belongs. (However, you can migrate such content types individually. For more information about content migration, see Content Migration.)

You cannot back up a Windows SharePoint Services farm's configuration database or the content database of the Central Administration application separately from backing up the whole farm.

You cannot restore a farm's configuration database or the content database of the Central Administration application. (The backups of these components that are included in a backup of a farm provide a snapshot of these components at the time of the backup. Such snapshots might be useful for troubleshooting because they can be used to compare with the present state of the components using SQL Server tools.)

You cannot back up the Internet Information Server (IIS) metabase.

The following kinds of content cannot be backed up with either the Central Administration application's UI or the stsadm command line utility, but you can create custom backup solutions with the Windows SharePoint Services SDK that include these types of content.

Registry keys.

Files that live on the front-end servers; that is, outside any content database, such as certain master pages, .ascx files, web.config files, and other configuration files.