Sharepoint Backup

Bill English promised to backup, destroy, and recover a sharepoint installation in an hour and a half using the default tools:

Spsbackup.exe - backup and restore an entire far, an individual server, or an individual component. (In two steps you could back up the SQL Server database, and use SPSBackup to backup the index files.)

What gets backed up?
All SQL Databases
Some configdb info
Index files and sps.edb (metadata on crawed data)
2001 Document Library
SSODB
Selected virtual servers / site collections

What should be backed up separately?
All WFE customizations such as templates, web part Files, and other file-based info
OS and binaries
System State
IIS

How to tear down a portal farm
Delete all portals
Shared Services : remove your Shared Services portal last
Remove each server from its farm roles
Detach each server from the configdb

Join Existing Share Point Servers to a new farm

Restore in this order
Files
Metabase
Server

3 Steps Overview
1) Backup your portal and index (and sps.edb)
SPSBackup.exe Backup to a //UNC (Can't used map drive, etc. must have UNC.
2) Backup the IIS Metabase on each Web Server
3) Backup the virtual server files for each virtual server

50000 Site per content database - then you should create another content database.


Index Server Two Search Servers for Support of Large Farm (REQUIRED)
Web Server, Job Server, Web Server supported. (If you add a third search has to be pulled.)
Make sure you understand the supported topologies before proceeding with backup and restore.