Backup of SharePoint

Backing up SharePoint is not just backing up the databases and hoping for the best. Best Practice is actually using the tool stsadm and create backupfiles that can be then be backed up to tape (or similar). So, how to create a script that takes backup?

Example of script for catastrophic backup:
@echo offecho start Catastrophic backup >> backup.log
date /t >> backup.log
time /t >> backup.log
“C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12BINstsadm” -o backup -directory \srv01BackupCatastrophicBackup -backupmethod full >> backup.log
date /t >> backup.log
time /t >> backup.log
echo end Catastropic backup >> backup.log

This will create a new folder in the directory \srv01BackupCatastrophicBackup where backup of all databases will be done.

However, the problem with this is that you can’t restore just one file… so what to do?
Two alternatives:
1. Just export all site data to file using “stsadm -o export”, and when needed, restore to secondary sharepoint (not public) and retrieve file.
2. Use 3:rd party backup solution like DocAve 4.1 by AvePoint that has single-item-restore.

An example of how to uses stsadm for creating a normal export is:

stsadm -o export -url http://portal -filename “\srv1Backupportal.bak” -version 4

This will export everything from http://portal to \srv1backupportal.bak including all versions of all files. Please note that if you have lots of data, it might take som time to do this.

Note that there is also a version of “stsadm -o backup” that backs up entire sitecollections but for “simpler” backup set ups I don’t find that necessary.

Also note that this is how you handle backup for smaller installations where you can acctually run an export of all data each night. For larger installations, more complex backup methods based on incremental backup or snapshotting can be used.

Since we’re using sharepoint for backing up, we don’t really have any need for maintaining transactionlogs in SQL server som make sure you have selected “Simple Recovery Model” for each SharePoint database.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Getting lots of copies of your mails

The new feature of email enabled document libraries in SharePoint 3 is great, but I recently experienced problems with getting a new copy of the mail every five/ten minutes. After a bit of error searching, I found that it was due to the fact that SharePoint didn’t have delete access rights to the “drop” folder in the c:inetpubmailroot directory, hence after sharepoint has read the mail, it can’t delete it. The next time sharepoint polls the directory, it will find the same mail and add it again, and again, and again… so just make sure the access rights are right.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Excel Services as report system for CRM

Today I held a presentation at this years SharePoint and Exchange Forum in Nynäshamn, close to Stockholm, here in Sweden. Lots of very interesting experts here like Patrick Tisseghem, Michael Noel and Nick Swan, not forgetting my boss, Göran Husman and other great speakers from Microsoft and other companies.

The presentation I held was BDM-focused and concerned the power of simple mesh-up integration between SharePoint and MS CRM 3. The main point being that SharePoint has a lot of great features that can be used by other applications.

One of the most powerful ones is excel services that can very powerfully be used as a reports tool for MS CRM. The main advantages being the ease of use for the end users and report owners since they easily can modify their own reports with Excel.

It is almost too simple to write a blog about it, since it is very straight forward, but I will see if I can get something together anyway.

By the way, I am expecting to be a father around the 1:st of june (my first child!) and I migth be a bit absent for a week or two after this event, but I will be back.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Updated CRM List WebPart

The CRM Team blog has announced that MS now have released the next version of CRM List WebPart.

I have tried it on a system with English CRM and SharePoint and it works great!

However, I tried the previous version on a Swedish version of CRM and SharePoint and that did not work as well, especially the installation. I was able to install it manually after quite a lot of work. If this version has the same problems I cannot say.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Service account for central Admin in SharePoint

As most of you probably know, SharePoint should be installed with two service accounts. One, lets call it spserviceaccount, should be the account that runs all SharePoint web applications, all mysites etc and the otherone, lets call it spappserviceaccount, should only run the central admin app-pool.

So why, well, imagine if you hade the same account even for central admin, what could happen? If, someone bad, was to hack the SharePoint so that it could start running bad programs, they would also be able to create new sites, delete sitecollections and more. Not very nice, hence we use a special app account central admin to make sure that we are just a bit safer.

How do we do set it?
Best way is to actually run the installation wizard as spappserviceaccount and make sure you set the right user in every step of the installation.

Already up and running and want to change it?
Well, I havn’t tried this, but it is supposed to be doable using stsadm, please check this kb-article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838

It should be something like:
stsadm –o updatefarmcredentials –userlogin DomainNameUserName -password NewPassword

But please check the article.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se