Supported scenarios for using the Stsadm.exe command-line tool to back up and to restore Windows SharePoint Services Web sites and personal sites in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (889236)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, when used with:
    • Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003

SUMMARY

This article discusses supported scenarios and lists some things to consider when you use the Stsadm.exe command-line tool to back up and to restore Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Web sites that are hosted in a Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site and My Site personal sites. This article clarifies contradictory information that is contained in the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit about when to use the Stsadm.exe command-line tool for backup and restore operations.

INTRODUCTION

This article discusses supported scenarios for using the Stsadm.exe command-tool to back up and to restore the following items in SharePoint Portal Server 2003:
  • Windows SharePoint Services Web sites that are hosted in a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site
  • My Site personal sites
The original, published version of the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit contains contradictory information about when you can use the Stsadm.exe tool to back up and to restore Windows SharePoint Services Web sites and personal sites.

This article clarifies the information that is contained in the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit. This article contains information about when you can use the Stsadm.exe command-line tool to back up and to restore Windows SharePoint Services Web sites that are hosted in SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Additionally, this article discusses some things to consider when you use the Stsadm.exe command-line tool to back up and to restore personal sites.

Use the Stsadm.exe command-line tool to back up and to restore top-level Windows SharePoint Services Web sites. The backup file for a top-level Windows SharePoint Services Web site includes any subsites that are contained in that top-level Windows SharePoint Services Web site. The Stsadm.exe command-line tool does not back up or restore individual subsites in a top-level Windows SharePoint Services Web site.

Using the Stsadm.exe command-line tool to back up Windows SharePoint Services Web sites and My Site personal sites

You can use the Stsadm.exe command-line tool to back up and to restore Windows SharePoint Services Web sites that are hosted in a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site. You can also use the tool to back up and to restore My Site personal sites. Supported scenarios where you can use the tool to do these things are as follows:
  • Use the stsadm.exe -o backup command and the stsadm.exe -o restore command to back up any Windows SharePoint Services Web site or any personal site. You can also use the stsadm.exe -o backup command and the stsadm.exe -o restore command to move Windows SharePoint Services Web sites between a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm and a Windows SharePoint Services server farm.
  • Restore Windows SharePoint Services Web sites and personal sites to a virtual server on a Windows SharePoint Services server farm or to a virtual server on a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm.
The following lists examples of supported backup and restore scenarios:
  • You back up a Windows SharePoint Services Web site from a Windows SharePoint Services server farm or from a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm. You can restore the data to a virtual server if one of the following conditions is true:
    • The virtual server contains a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site.
    • The virtual server does not contain a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site, but the virtual server is located on a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm.
    • The virtual server does not contain a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site, but the virtual server is located on a Windows SharePoint Services server farm.
  • You back up a My Site personal site in SharePoint Portal Server 2003. You can restore the personal site to a virtual server if one of the following conditions is true:
    • The virtual server contains a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site that is configured to host personal sites. The portal site is the same portal site that was associated with the personal site when you performed the backup operation.
    • The virtual server contains a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site that is configured to host personal sites. The portal site is a different portal site from the portal site that was associated with the personal site when you performed the backup operation.
    • The virtual server contains a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site that is not configured to host personal sites.
    • The virtual server does not contain a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site, but the virtual server is located on a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm.
    • The virtual server does not contain a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site, but the virtual server is located on a Windows SharePoint Services server farm.

Limitations

Limitations of using the Stsadm.exe command-line tool to back up and to restore Windows SharePoint Services Web sites and My Site personal sites are listed as follows.

Important Before you use Stsadm.exe to back up a Windows SharePoint Services site in an active farm, you should lock the site collection. To do this, use the "No Access" lock. For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/ha011608261033.aspx

  • Do not use the Stsadm.exe command-line tool as your only backup tool or as your main backup tool. Use the SharePoint Portal Server Data Backup and Restore tool (Spsbackup.exe), or use the SQL Server Backup tool in SQL Server Enterprise Manager as your main tool to use for backup and restore operations. Performance issues, such as unscheduled recycling of the application pool, may occasionally occur. These issues are caused by a resource contention that occurs when you back up lots of data. For example, you may experience performance issues when you back up Web site collections that are larger than 2 gigabytes (GB). To avoid resource contention issues, add more memory, or try moving the indexing process to a different server on the server farm.
  • Use the Stsadm.exe command-line tool only to back up and to restore top-level Windows SharePoint Services Web sites. The SharePoint Migration Tool (Smigrate.exe) is a more flexible tool to use in certain backup and restore scenarios. Although the SharePoint Migration Tool does not back up or restore security information, you can use the SharePoint Migration Tool to back up and to restore individual subsites that are contained in top-level Web sites. You do not require local administrative credentials on the server to export a Web site when you use the SharePoint Migration Tool. However, you must be a member of the Administrator site group on the Web site that you want to back up and on the Web site that you want to restore to before you can use the SharePoint Migration Tool (Smigrate.exe) for backup and restore operations.
  • To enable full functionality of the personal site, restore the personal site to the same portal site that was associated with the personal site when you originally performed the backup operation. If you only want to recover data from the personal site and you do not require full functionality of the personal site, you can restore the personal site to any virtual server.

Things to consider when you back up and restore My Site personal sites

This section lists different scenarios and contains information about things to consider when you back up and restore My Site personal sites in each scenario.

Scenario 1

In this scenario, the virtual server contains a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site that is configured to host personal sites. The portal site is the same portal site that was associated with the personal site when you performed the backup operation.

The following list contains information about the restore behavior when you restore personal sites in this scenario:
  • Data that is retained when you restore a personal site to SharePoint Portal Server 2003 includes the following:
    • All data is retained
  • Data that is not retained when you restore a personal site to SharePoint Portal Server 2003 includes the following
    • No data is lost
Things to consider
  • A portal site cannot contain two identical personal sites. For example, you cannot restore a backup of a personal site that uses the http://ServerA/Personal/UserName URL to a personal site that uses the http://ServerA/Personal/UserNameX URL.
  • The following URL is displayed in the Address box of the Web browser when a user locates their My Site personal site:

    http://ServerName/MySite/Default.aspx

    This is not the URL that is passed to the Stsadm.exe command-line tool when you use the tool to back up and to restore personal sites. Generally, the URL that is passed to the Stsadm.exe command-line tool is as follows:

    http://ServerName/Personal/UserName

Scenario 2

In this scenario, the virtual server contains a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site that is configured to host personal sites. The portal site is a different portal site from the portal site that was associated with the personal site when you performed the backup operation.

The following list contains information about the restore behavior when you restore personal sites in this scenario:
  • If you restore a personal site to a different SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm, some information in that personal site is not retained.
  • Custom Web Parts that were added to the personal view of the personal site are not retained in the restored personal site.
  • The Up To link that appears on some pages of the restored personal site displays the name of an incorrect portal site.
  • Data that is retained when you restore a personal site to SharePoint Portal Server 2003 includes the following:
    • Security settings that are configured for the My Site personal site
    • Themes
    • Lists and the data that is contained in the lists
    • Custom Web pages and Web parts that are contained in the custom Web pages
    • Workspaces
  • Data that is not retained when you restore a personal site to SharePoint Portal Server 2003 includes the following:
    • User profile data
    • Changes that are made to the personal view, including custom Web Parts that were added and changes that were made to the default Web Parts
    • My Links data
    • Alerts
    • Links for You data
    • News for You data
Things to consider
  • To change the incorrect Up To link that is displayed on pages of the personal site, follow these steps:
    1. Locate the personal view of the personal site.
    2. Click Site Settings, and then under Administration on the Site Settings page, click Go to Site Administration.
    3. Under Site Collection Administration on the Top-level Site Administration page, click Configure connection to portal site.
    4. Specify the correct name of the portal site, and then click OK.
  • The following URL is displayed in the Address box of the Web browser when a user locates their My Site personal site:

    http://ServerName/MySite/Default.aspx

    This is not the URL that is passed to the Stsadm.exe command-line tool when you use the tool to back up and to restore personal sites. Generally, the URL that is passed to the Stsadm.exe command-line tool is as follows:

    http://ServerName/Personal/UserName

  • A user has already created a MySite personal site on the destination portal site. For example, http://ServerB/Personal/UserName. You can restore the backup of the user's personal site from the source portal site to a personal site on the destination portal that uses a different URL, such as http://ServerB/personal/UserNameX.

    In this situation, when you perform a restore operation when the user already has a personal site, the Home link of the http://ServerB/Personal/UserNameX personal site is automatically redirected to http://ServerB/MySite/Default.aspx. Therefore, you are connected to the http://ServerB/Personal/UserName personal site. To view the restored data on the personal site, manually locate the specific pages that contain the data that you want to view.

Scenario 3

This scenario includes any one of the following configurations:
  • The virtual server contains a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site that is not configured to host personal sites.
  • The virtual server does not contain a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site, but the virtual server is located on a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server farm.
  • The virtual server does not contain a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site, but the virtual server is located on a Windows SharePoint Services server farm.
The following list contains information about the restore behavior when you restore personal sites in any one of the configurations:
  • Data that is retained when you restore a personal site in any one of the configurations includes the following:
    • Security settings that are configured for the My Site personal site
    • Themes
    • Lists and the data that is contained in the lists
    • Custom Web pages and Web parts that are contained in the custom Web pages
    • Workspaces
  • Data that is not retained when you restore a personal site in any one of the configurations includes the following:
    • The home page of the public view and the home page of the personal view of the personal site

      Note When you locate the restored personal site, you receive the following error message:
      Object reference not set to an instance of an object
    • Links
    • User profile data
    • Alerts
    • News for You data
    • Links for You data
Things to consider
  • Restoring personal sites in these configurations is useful if you want to retrieve information that was stored in the personal site. Do not restore personal sites in any one of these configurations if you require full functionality of the personal site.
  • The home page of the personal view and the home page of the public view of the restored personal site are not rendered. Use the following URLs to view the Document and Lists page and to view the Site Settings page, where LCID is the Locale ID (LCID):
    • To view the Documents and Lists page, use the following URL:

      http://VirtualServerName/Personal/MySite/_layouts/LCID/Viewseclsts.aspx

    • To view the Site Settings page, use the following URL:

      http://VirtualServerName/Personal/MySite/_layouts/LCID/Settings.aspx

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about the Stsadm.exe command-line tool, see the "Backup and migration" section, and see the "Command-line operations" topic in the "Reference" section of the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide.

For more information about the SharePoint Migration Tool (Smigrate.exe), see the "Backup and migration" section of the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide. To obtain the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a637eff6-8224-4b19-a6a4-3e33fa13d230&displaylang=en

For more information about how to manage personal sites, see the "Managing personal sites" topic in the "Administration" section of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:8/25/2006
Keywords:kbBackup kbtshoot kbinfo KB889236 kbAudITPRO
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