4.2. Granular Backup
SharePoint 2010 provides a way for you to back up more granular items stored in SharePoint including site
collections, sites, lists, and libraries. In previous versions you
could only accomplish more granular backups using STSADM commands.
Furthermore, you can now also recover data from a database that is no
longer part of your SharePoint farm. For instance, if you were working
on a project that had a site collection or site collections stored in
one database that was not used to store any other site collections, and
after the project was completed, the database was deleted, you could
restore the database using a SQL Server restore so that you could again
access the content in that database.
4.2.1. Perform a Site Collection Backup
Site collection backups allow you to use the Central Administration GUI to back up an entire site collection using the interface shown in Figure 48.
You begin by locating the site collection that you want to back up in
the Site Collection drop-down menu on this page. You then specify the
name of the backup file and the location where you want to store it. If
you choose the Overwrite Existing File check box, the backup overwrites a
file that currently exists in that directory that has the same file
name. Click Start Backup to back up the site collection to the file you
specified.
4.2.2. Export a Site or List
The Site Or List
Export interface lets you locate a list or library contained within a
site and site collection and then export it to a specific directory in
the specified file name. The file extension used when exporting content is .cmp, which you specify in the File Location area shown in Figure 49.
Optionally, you can export the SharePoint security settings as well to
keep the existing security configurations of the content intact. If you
are using versioning on the library you are exporting,
you can also choose what versions are exported using the Export
Versions drop-down list. You can choose from the following version
options when configuring your export.
Note:
Be very careful when
selecting a version to use when exporting a library! The default for
this setting is All Versions, which means that every version of every
document in the document library will be exported. This can create a
very large file, and it can impact the duration of the export process.
4.2.3. Recover data from an unattached content database
SharePoint 2010 introduces the
capability to access databases that are available in SQL Server but
aren’t currently part of the farm’s content databases. This eliminates
the need to build a second farm to perform granular recoveries, which
was the method recommended in SharePoint Server 2007 to recover data
from an unattached database. Accessing unattached content databases
directly in SharePoint allows you to restore site collections, sites,
libraries, and lists from these SQL Server databases.
What does this mean? You can
now access any restored SharePoint content database on any SQL server
and use SharePoint to connect to it. Using the interface shown in Figure 50,
you can browse the contents of the database, back up a site collection,
or export a site or list to retrieve content from this database. After
the backup or export completes, you can restore the content to the
appropriate place in your existing SharePoint farm.
4.2.4. Check Granular Backup Job Status
The Granular Backup Job Status page (shown in Figure 51)
allows you to view the status of site collection backups or site, list,
or library export processes. The page is divided into two sections—one
that displays the progress of a site collection backup
and the other that displays the progress of an export operation. Each
section on the page contains two categories of jobs—current and
previous. This allows you to see information about jobs that have
already completed as well as jobs that are currently in progress. You
can use the Refresh link to refresh the data on the screen with current
information.
