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Before you create your first backup of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, it's important to create a location to save the backup files. This demo guides you through the process — from creating a backup location, to setting permissions, to adding accounts to the file share.

You don't need to take notes during the demo, or stop and restart it if you miss something. When you finish watching the demo, just print this article, which includes a summary of the information presented in the demo.

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Summary

Creating a backup location

For performance reasons, we recommend that you create your backup location as a file share on the computer running Microsoft SQL Server, because all content in SharePoint sites is stored in SQL databases. If this is not possible, we recommend that you use an isolated network segment between the server running SQL Server and the server hosting the backup location in order to minimize the impact on other network traffic.

The following table shows the accounts for which you must grant permissions on the backup location. The accounts that are required differ depending on whether you are using the Perform a Backup page in Central Administration or the STSADM command-line tool to perform a backup.

Note that only members of the Administrators group of the server on which the STSADM command-line tool is installed can use the STSADM command-line tool. Only farm administrators or equivalent can access the Central Administration Web site.

Grant the Full control permission to the accounts (shown in the previous table) at the share level and write permissions at the folder level. All accounts must be domain accounts if you are backing up to a location that is not on the same physical server from which you are initiating the backup.

If you installed Office SharePoint Server using the Basic install option, then the predefined Network Service account is assigned to the Database access account, SharePoint Central Administration V3 application pool, and SPTimerV3 service, by default. If you installed Office SharePoint Server using the Advanced option, then you specified the Database Access account in the Post Configuration section of the Setup Wizard. The Setup Wizard automatically assigns the domain account that you specified as the Database access account to the application pool for the Central Administration Web site and the SPTimerV3 service.

Verifying accounts

If you're unsure about what domain account is assigned to the SharePoint Central Administration V3 application pool for your SharePoint server farm, you can view this information on the Identity tab of the SharePoint Central Administration V3 application pool in IIS Manager. You must be a member of the Administrators group on the server hosting the Central Administration Web site to do this.

If you don't know what account is assigned to the Database access account for your SharePoint server farm, you can ask your SQL Server administrator. But typically this is the same account that is used to run the MSSQLServer service on the computer running SQL Server. If you are a member of the Administrators group on the computer running SQL Server, you can view the account assigned to the MSSQLServer service by using SQL Server Configuration Manager.

You can use the Services snap-in of the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to see the account that is assigned to the SPTimerV3 service. Note that the display name of this service is Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Timer. If the SPTimerV3 service is running as "network service," you must grant the front-end Web servers write access to the backup location by using the following format:

Domainname\servername$

Creating a file share

To ensure that you don't have authentication problems, the file share should be on a server that is in the same forest of the same domain as your SharePoint server farm.

To create a file share, log on to the server on which you want to create the share, and then create a folder. When you share the folder:

• Remove all spaces in the Share name box.
• Remove the Everyone group from the share, so that everyone does not have access to your backup files.
• Grant Full control permissions on the share and write permissions on the folder to the user accounts that you need.
• When adding multiple accounts, be sure to add a semicolon between them.

Other information

You must ensure that the Windows SharePoint Services Administration service is started on all servers in the farm. You can use the Services snap-in of the MMC to view the status of this service. Note that this service is not started by default if you installed Office SharePoint Server by using the Basic install option.