Re: stsadm.exe

• From: "Aaron D. Sanders" <joe@xxxxxxx>
• Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 17:22:59 GMT

Aaron

1) Stsadm only works at the site collection level. When you back up a site collection with Stsadm you get everything in that site, including subsites (also called subwebs).

2) Yes, Stsadm will create the site for you on restore, and it will maintain all permissions (unlink smigrate). It will not create a Content DB for you, it will put your restored site into an existing one.

3) Stsadm only backups up data that is stored in the database, so any changes you make to the IIS server's file system you'll have to back up via some other method. Other than that the file Stsadm creates is comprehensive and contains your whole site.

You mentioned you haven't actually restore a file yet because you don't have a place to do it. You can restore that file as any URL, so go ahead and restore it to the server you backed it up from, just give it a different name. For instance, if you ran the following command to back your site up:

stsadm -o backup -url http://server1 -filename server1.dat

Then create an explicit inclusion managed path with something like this:

stsadm -o addpath -url http://server1/restore -type explicitinclusion

Then you could restore your backup and see exactly what is backed up and what isn't:

stsadm -o restore -url http://server1/restore -filename server1.dat

tk
"Aaron D. Sanders" <joe@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:Gjxie.40060$ia6.16571@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I would like to clarify a few points about stsadm.exe before using it as my only backup. This newsgroup seems to be the best place to do so.

1) Does stsadm.exe backup all files, documents, pictures, settings, pages, etc. for the top-level site and all subsites?

2)When restoring, is it true that you only need to run stsadm.exe with the restore switch and it will recreate the site for you, along with all of the permissions? Will it recreate the actual databases as well?

3) What if you are recovering to an entirely new server in an entirely new location with a different infrastructure. For example, your production environment is IIS/WSS on one server, SQL Server on another. If you have to grab your backups and run to a temporary location where you only have one server to run IIS and SQL Server, what is the process? Would you need to have WSS installed and ready, with the content and configuration databases set through Central Administration? I'm thinking purely disaster recovery here. With the current regulatory environment in the U.S., I need the capability to quickly recover everything in a less than optimal situation.

It's just hard to believe that it rolls everything into one file. I've made a few backups, but haven't gone about restoring them yet because I don't have a place to try. It's just a little scary because the .dat file created by stsadm.exe is so small, I can't believe that everything is in there. But maybe it is. I just keep thinking that maybe I should copy off the folders from IIS and SQL Server as well or do a database backup from SQL Server.

Thanks for any help,
Aaron

.

• References:
  • stsadm.exe
    • From: Aaron D. Sanders
  • Re: stsadm.exe
    • From: Todd Klindt

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