What to backup doing a user profile data import

Question

We have a custom console application (using Sharepoint API) for SharePoint 2007, which adds users and updates user profile properties for users.

As part of the release we want to take a backup of the user profile store to restore if required.

We have a very large farm (approx. 1TB databases, 10000 users).

Do we only need to backup the default SSP database and restore if it fails?

A lot of MS information recommends doing SharePoint backups by backing up databases. Does this apply to the SSP database too?

Answer 1

Normally when you back up the User profile SSP, all the databases are also backed up, but SSP content databases can be backed up and restored separately from the SSP. If the SSP has more than one content database and database changes are not evenly distributed, backing up the more active databases separately can save time and consume fewer resources than backing up the entire SSP.