SharePoint User Group UK

Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to back-up the two Search components  - Index file (file system), and the SSP Search Database (SQL) so that they can be restored?

I know backing-up one without the other invalidates a restore of search, so that rules out SQL back-ups.

From what I read, Stsadm or using the Central Admin is the best way to achieve this, but there only seems to be the ability to back-up/restore at the top level (SSP)?

I only want to back-up the sub-components of the SSP (The Search index file, and Search database). I have tried to do this, using the following stsadm command but I get an error:

stsadm -o backup -directory %sharename% -backupmethod full -item MOSS_SSPSearch

Item Moss_SSPSearch not found

If I back-up at the SSP level, this works - but as I mentioned, this is no good to me if I just want to restore an Index, and not the entire SSP.

 

Thanks

Rookie

 

Sorry Rookie there is no way to do this and remain in a supported state. What you should probably think about is whether you have a real business need to backup search in the first place versus a recrawl if you ever need to recover the search indexes. If you look at DPM I believe it may be able to do a granular restore of search without all the rest of the SSP but I could be wrong on that.

The ITEM you are referring to above needs to refer to the GUID of the component you want to backup (in this case the SSP Application GUID)

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Regards

Neil
Microsoft Certified Master : Office SharePoint Server 2007
Microsoft EMEA Office Servers Technical Lead

Thanks for the advice Neil.

Rebuilding indexes in our current environment would be quicker than trying to restore  - but, I am raising DR awareness and have been trying to cover all scenario's to the hieracrchy, one of which being 'Search'.

I'll have a look at DPM, but from what I've seen, this can be a nightmare to adminster and configure - I even heard a rumour that MS don't even use it in there Moss farms.