Backup a SharePoint Site

There are two methods to take a backup of a SharePoint site.

1.) Using SharePoint Central Administration

To take a site backup follow the steps below.

a. Go to the SharePoint Central Administration site by clicking,

Start -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> SharePoint Central Administration

b. Click on Operations.

c. Click on Perform a backup under Backup and Restore.

d. Select the site or the farm to backup the entire SharePoint farm.

e. Click on the Continue to Backup Options button on the top of the list.

f. Select the type and the location of the backup and click Ok.

2.) Using the STSADM tool.

Even though Microsoft had provided a UI method to backup a SharePoint site the best way to get it done is by the STSADM tool. If you are unfamiliar with STSADM refer the following post http://arjunachith.blogspot.com/2009/11/stsadm.html.

You will be able to use the following command to get a backup of a site using STSADM.

STSADM.EXE -o backup -url http://MySharePoint:10000/ -filename E:\Folder_Name\SiteBackup.bkp -overwrite

o - Mentions that the backup is an operation.

url - URL for the site collection that you need to backup.

filename - Path to the backup file, even a network path such as \\Machine_Name\Folder_Name\File_Name.ext can be provided.

overwrite - Will overwrite an existing back file if found in the backup location.

Instead of giving the path in the filename you can use the directory parameter to mention the location as well it is shown below.

STSADM.EXE -o backup -url http://MySharePoint:10000/ -directory E:\Folder_Name -filename SiteBackup.bkp -overwrite

directory - Location for the backup, even a network path such as \\Machine_Name\Folder_Name can be provided.

filename -The name of the backup file.

The status will be shown in the command prompt.

If you would like to know the full set of available parameters for the backup operation visit the Microsoft at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263441.aspx.

Google prOgramming language - GO

Google had released a new programming language named GO.
Their one goal behind this is to increase the developer productivity and efficiency by giving them a faster compiler.
As Google says this is even capable to be used in developing system software and it is powerful than C but not than C++.
Read more on this at http://mashable.com/2009/11/10/go-google-language/.
Get Going at http://golang.org/.

STSADM

STSADM is a command line tool which we can use to perform administrative tasks on SharePoint Server, this is very powerful since it provides features that are not available in the Central Administration site.
You will be able to find this executable at,
%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\
For example - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN

To learn more visit the following TechNet link.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261956.aspx
Following link will have the list of operations and properties.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263384.aspx

STSADM Error

Recently I faced a curios error while using the STSADM.exe command line tool.
If anyone of you are not knowing wht STSADM is please refer my earlier post with links to get more information.
However powerful STSADM is, while using it suddenly Windows might tell you that STSADM is not a valid Win32 application.
If you check the file you will also notice that the Windows icon of that exe is disappeared and also the file size is 0.
The good thing is that you will be able to get the file from another SharePoint installation and replace, then everything will start working normally.

Flight Simulation

After some pause I again started my flight simulation activities.

To celebrate I thought to put some nice screen captures I made on one of my flights.

WSUS

Recently I had to install and configure WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) on our company.

I feel this is a very handy way to distribute the software updates through out the company.

In configuring it the following articles was helpful to me so thought to share them with you.

This is the main Microsoft site for WSUS,

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.aspx

This is the main TechNet site for WSUS,

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc706995(WS.10).aspx

Following pages show how to configure clients,

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708574(WS.10).aspx

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/chakkaradeep/4564

Editing NTFS Drive Contents on Mac OS

In Mac OS if you mount a disk formatted in NTFS file system, you will be able to view the contents and even to copy contents from that disk (Read) but you will not be able to save, delete or paste (Edit) anything.
To enable editing in the disk you will be needing to install the NTFS driver.
If you are searching for a driver, download NTFS-3G Stable Read/Write Driver from NTFS-3G.