Stsadm Command Line tool

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes the Stsadm tool for command-line administration of Office SharePoint Server 2007 servers and sites.

Location:Stsadm is located at the following path on the drive where SharePoint Products and Technologies is installed: %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin. You must be an administrator on the local computer to use Stsadm.

Use:Stsadm provides a method for performing the Office SharePoint Server 2007 administration tasks at the command line or by using batch files or scripts. Stsadm provides access to operations not available by using the Central Administration site, such as changing the administration port. The command-line tool has a more streamlined interface than Central Administration, and it allows you to perform the same tasks. There are certain operations and certain parameters that are only available by using the Stsadm command-line tool.

The command-line tool provides access to the complete set of Office SharePoint Server 2007 operations. You can use Stsadm from the command line or with batch files or scripts. Stsadm must be run on the server itself.

To use Stsadm, you must be a member of the local Administrators group on the server. When you invoke Stsadm, you supply an operation and a set of command-line parameters in the form:

-operation OperationName -parameter value

List of operations stsadm can perform:

• Backup and restore: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Database: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Enterprise Content Management: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Excel Calculation Services: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Features and solutions: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Forms Services: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• General: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Import and export: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Installation: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Logging and events: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Search: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Security: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Shared Services Provider: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Site management: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Upgrade and migration: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

• Workflow management: Stsadm operations (Office SharePoint Server)

An index of stsadm operations is http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263384.aspx#section1

Disadvantages:

• Stsadm is not interactive

Stsadm is not an interactive tool. With Stsadm, you type the operation and parameters all at once. You will not be prompted to fill in missing parameters while the operation is running. If a required parameter is missing, the operation fails, and you must type the operation and parameters again.

This behavior allows better flexibility for batching commands, because the tools do not prompt you for information after you have submitted a command. If you want a more interactive tool, try using the administrative object model or Central Administration pages.

• Do not use the Stsadm backup operation for site collections larger than 15 gigabytes (GB)
• Cannot back up directly to tape. Backup location must be a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path.
• Does not provide automatic deletion of old backup files. You may want to use the backup file deletion script provided in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article, How to automate the deletion of backups in SharePoint Server 2007 and in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by using a Visual Basic script.
• As part of a farm backup, can back up the configuration database and the Central Administration content database, but will not restore them.
• Does not back up any custom solution files in the Inetpub hive or in the 12 hive (that is, %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12).
• Does not back up alternate access mappings.
• Does not back up Internet Information Services (IIS) settings including host headers, dedicated IP addresses, and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.
• Site collection backups affect performance, and can cause access errors. They are not designed to be used when the server is under active load. Site collection backups can be slow when working with site collections larger than 12-15 gigabytes (GB). We recommend that you use SQL Server backups if you are working with site collections larger than 15 GB.

• In addition to your hardware configuration, the size of the database, site collection, or Web application that you are working with can significantly affect backup and recovery performance.

  The Stsadm command-line tool can be used to back up the configuration database and the Central Administration content database, but the configuration database and the Central Administration content database can only be restored to a server of the same name in the same location.

  We recommend that you use differential backup tools outside of SharePoint Products and Technologies for your backup and recovery needs, such as Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager, if backing up your system exceeds the maintenance window that you have available or if your system exceeds the following limits:

  • Content databases larger than 100 GB.

  • Site collections that you want to back up individually that are larger than 12 GB. If you want to back up a site collection individually that is larger than 12 GB, we recommend that you move it to its own database.