In any typical SharePoint implementation, we have customizations stored in the 12 hive. It is very important to backup these customizations from time to time. In a recent white paper “Data protection and recovery for Office SharePoint Server in small to medium deployments” from Microsoft there is a nice rundown on how to backup your customizations using Windows Server 2003 Backup tool.
This procedure assumes that you are scheduling only the backup of the 12 hive on a computer. Perform this task on all front-end Web servers.
1. Click Start, point to Accessories, point to System tools, and then click Backup.
The Backup or Restore Wizard appears.
2. On the first page of the wizard, click the Advanced Mode link.
3. On the Backup tab, select the 12 hive: Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12.
4. Select File or a tape device in Backup destination.
5. In Backup media or file name, type a path and file name for the backup file, or select a tape.
6. Select any backup options you want, such as the backup type and the log file type, by clicking the Tools menu and then clicking Options. When you have finished selecting backup options, click OK.
7. On the Job menu, select Save Selections to save your selections as a backup job file (.bks).
8. Click Start Backup and click Schedule in the Backup Job Information dialog box.
9. In the Set Account Information dialog box, specify the user name and password that you want the scheduled backup to run under.
10. In the Scheduled Job Options dialog box, in Job name, type a name for the scheduled backup job, and then click Properties on the Schedule data tab to set the date, time, and frequency parameters for the scheduled backup. When you have finished, click OK, and then click OK again.
The white paper is definitely worth reading to understand various backup/restore and disaster recovery strategies.
<Update>
There are two new whitepapers recently published in MSDN regarding upgrading up your SharePoint Customisations from 2003 to 2007. Please have a look them too!
Part 1 -http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb954662.aspx
Part 2 – http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb954661.aspx
</Update>
