SharePoint 2007 Backup Steps Before a WSS or SharePoint Updates Deployment

1. Backup the SharePoint using the SharePoint tools (approximately 30 minutes)
   a. Log on to application server
   b. Open command line and change to the following directory “%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin”
   c. Execute the following command
   stsadm –o backup –directory \\servername\foldername -backupmethod full
   Note: the SharePoint backups should be put on another server because that server would not need to be reimaging in case we need to perform a full restore of the application server from tape. The SQL service account, Moss services account, and the user that is executing the command needs write access to the share location.
2. Stop all SharePoint services on each node and take a backup of all databases and a file system snapshot of the all front ends web servers. (estimate one hour for each server)
   a. Log on to each front end server
   From the services MMC stop the following services on all servers, include application server and web servers. Turn on the maintenance site.
   a. Office SharePoint Server Search
   b. Windows SharePoint Services Timer
   c. Windows SharePoint Services Tracing
   d. Windows SharePoint Services Administration
   e. Only on web servers, stop Windows SharePoint Services Search
   b. Log on to DB server
   c. Start Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio create a Maintenance task to backup all databases
   d. Reboot each one of the front end servers one at a time, making sure that each one is up before the reboot of the next one
   e. Once the systems are up and running, take a file system snapshot of the all front ends web servers, at least C:\inetpub, and SharePoint 12 hive
3. Stop Would Wide Web Publishing Services
4. Deploy WSS and SharePoint updates