Protecting and recovering data when working with software updates (Office SharePoint Server)

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

Topic Last Modified: 2016-11-14

In this article:

• Back up the SSP that provides search

• Back up databases

• After backing up, and before you apply a software update

• Using database backups after a software update

Before applying software updates, after you have taken your servers offline, you should back up the Search Shared Services Provider (SSP), and all databases related to your environment.

For more information about deploying software updates, see Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Back up the SSP that provides search

Use the full backup operation from SharePoint Central Administration or the Stsadm command-line tool to back up search. The backup operation includes both the Shared Services database and search index file.

Back up databases

The following sections describe recommendations for how to back up each type of database for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Configuration database and Central Administration content database

Perform a full backup operation on the configuration database and the Central Administration content database by using either the Stsadm command-line tool or SQL Server tools. If you are using SQL Server tools, use the simple recovery model so that your transaction log is truncated.

Content databases

Perform a full backup operation by using either the Stsadm command-line tool or SQL Server tools to back up all content databases. If you are using SQL Server tools, use the simple recovery model so that your transaction log is truncated.

Profile database

Perform a full backup operation by using either the Stsadm command-line tool or SQL Server tools to back up the profile database. If you are using SQL Server tools, use the simple recovery model so that your transaction log is truncated.

SSO database

If your environment includes a single sign-on (SSO) shared service, perform a full backup operation by using SQL Server tools to back up the SSO database. Use the simple recovery model so that your transaction log is truncated. To successfully back up SSO, you must back up both the SSO database and the SSO encryption key.

The SSO encryption key can be backed up from the Manage Encryption Key page in Central Administration. You should back up the encryption key after initially setting up SSO and then back up the key again each time it is regenerated. The encryption key cannot be backed up remotely. You must be a member of the SSO administrator account and logged onto the encryption-key server locally to back up the encryption key. The encryption key can only be backed up to a removable storage media.

The removable storage device that contains the SSO encryption key must be physically located at the farm before you attempt to recover.

After backing up, and before you apply a software update

After backing up, verify that you can restore the databases.

After you have backed up all of your databases, use SQL Server Management Studio or the SQL Server DBCC shrinkfile command to free unused log space, making the logs as empty and large as possible. For more information, see Shrinking the Transaction Log (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=105233&clcid=0x409).

Using database backups after a software update

After you apply a software update, verify that the update applied successfully across the farm. For details, see the "Verify installation" section of the topic Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007.

A recommended practice is to restore a farm to the same version that you backed up from. You can restore a content database to a later version.

Download this book

This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

• Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007, part 2

See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for Office SharePoint Server 2007.

See Also

Concepts

Protecting and restoring a farm (Office SharePoint Server 2007)