SharePoint : Backup and Restore

Hi Friends, 

SharePoint is a popular enterprise application to enhanced collaboration. As the quantity and value of data stored in SharePoint platform arises. The need of backup and restore become critical for SharePoint Administrator.

Here are some option, which can help you in some critical scenarios

1. Restoring a Site Collection with PowerShell: 

After a site collection has been deleted, the Recycle Bin for the site is gone right along with the site collection.  Now, if the site collection was deleted through PowerShell or some other code, it cannot be restored using this method, but if it was deleted through the browser, then you can use this command to restore a Site Collection from the Recycle Bin by using PowerShell. 

1

Get-SPDeletedSite | Where-Object –Property URL –eq –Value “http://address.to.sitecollection/to/restore”) | Restore-SPDeletedSite

2. Use version history on lists and libraries

Enabling version history on lists and libraries is the other feature that will help your users be able to restore their own data. Version history keeps a copy of the documents and list items each time they are saved. Thanks to improvements in how SharePoint 2013 saves those changes, each saved version only uses space in the content database for the item changes. That’s right – the whole document isn’t saved again with each version of the document, which greatly reduces the impact on content database size.

Reverting back to a previous version of a file is easy and straightforward to the end users, and it makes you look like a superstar without you even doing anything.

3. Backing up sites, lists, and libraries

All of your Webs (the individual sites that make up your site collections), as well as the lists and libraries they contain, can be backed up either through Central Administration or through PowerShell.

You can find the Web backups in Central Administration under the Backup and Restore link on the Quick Launch navigation. From the Backup and Restore page, follow the Export a Site or List link under the Granular Backups heading.

If you’re going to use PowerShell, then you’ll want to use the Export-SPWeb cmdlet. This is a basic example using the two only required parameters – Identity (the Web to export) and Path (the file location):

1	Export-SPWeb –Identity “http://Sites/Projects/SharePoint2013” –Path “E:\Backups\SharePointProjectSite.cmp”

You may also want to get a backup a single site collection by using the Backup-SPSite cmdlet. Just as when you’re exporting a Web, you can get by with the basics:  – Identity and Path for your parameters.

Configure SharePoint settings to improve backup or restore performance

 1. You can only configure file compression and log file settings in Windows PowerShell. You can configure backup and restore threads in both the SharePoint Central Administration website and Windows PowerShell to increase backup or restore efficiency and performance.

 

If you use the Export-SPWeb Windows PowerShell cmdlet, you can use the NoFileCompression parameter. By default, SharePoint 2013 uses file compression while exporting web applications, site collection, lists, or document libraries. You can use this parameter to suppress file compression while exporting and importing. File compression can use up to 30% more resources. However, the exported file uses approximately 25% less disk space. If you use the NoFileCompression parameter when you export, you have to also use it when you import the same content. 

 2. You can also use the NoLogFile parameter. By default, SharePoint 2013 always cr

es a log file when you export content. Although you can use this parameter to suppress log file creation to save resources, we recommend that you always create logs. Logs are important for troubleshooting and log creation does not use many resources such as CPU or memory.

3. When you use the Backup-SPFarm cmdlet, you can also use the Backup Threads parameter to specify how many threads SharePoint 2013 will use during the backup process. A higher number of threads will consume more resources during backup. But the overall time to make the backup is decreased. Because each thread is recorded in the log files, the number of threads does affect log file interpretation. By default, three threads are used. The maximum number of available threads is 10. 

Note:

The backup threads setting is also available through Central Administration on the Default Backup and Restore Settings page in the Backup and Restore section

C    Consider site collection size when you determine the tools to use

If the business requires site collection backups in addition to farm-level or database-level backups, choose a backup tool that is based on the size of the site collection.

1.  Less than 15 gigabytes (GB): Use the Backup-SPSite Windows PowerShell cmdlet. For more information, see Back up site collections in SharePoint 2013

 2. 15-100 GB: Use a SharePoint 2013 tool, a SQL Server tool, or other database backup tool to protect the content database that contains the site collection. For more information, see Back up site collections in SharePoint 2013.
 

ü  3. Larger than 100 GB: Use a differential backup solution, such as SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1 or System Center 2012 - Data Protection Manager (DPM), instead of the built-in backup and recovery tools.