Tips and tricks for Site Recycle Bin (Previous Site Deletion Capture) on SharePoint 2010

The Microsoft IT SharePoint 2010 Site Recycle Bin previous named Site Delete Capture tool has been released from CodePlex. It  that has been has been heavily used on SharePoint 2007 and a recommended tool for SharePoint Administrators by the IT Pro community. Most of the functions are identical to previous version and here are some tips and tricks to help you maximize the tool and avoid the pitfalls.

1. How to backup sites created form customized site definition using Recycle Bin tool?
By default this tool will only backup sites created form default Microsoft site templates. If you have sites created from customized site definitions, you need to staple both web and site scope features to ALL site definitions. If you add the following two line, ALL sites created from site definition will be captured.

•  Goto 14 hive 14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\SiteRecycleBinDeleteFeatureStapling open FeatureStapling.xml file and add the below entry

   <FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="78B263D4-FF62-415e-B609-F01B06FA54E0" TemplateName="GLOBAL" />

• Goto 14 hive 14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\SiteRecycleBinSiteFeatureStapling\FeatureStapling and open FeatureStapling.xml file and add the below entry

   <FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="78B94E15-23CE-43f9-8036-BABD847497D1" TemplateName="GLOBAL" />

2. How can we backup the sites already existing on SharePoint 2010 before the Recycle Bin tool installed?

You do not need to do anything. By default the deployment of this solution will activate the site feature and site collection on ALL existing sites on the farm. Here are the powershell command.

Install-SPSolution -Identity "SharePoint Site Recycle Bin.wsp" -GACDeployment
install-SPFeature -path "SiteRecycleBinSiteFeatureStapling\feature.xml" -force -confirm: $false  
install-SPFeature -path "SiteRecycleBinDeleteFeatureStapling\feature.xml" -force -confirm: $false 

As a result, you do not need to manually enable the features to make it affective. Cool!

3. Will Recycle Bin tool backup sites created form Fab 40 templates?
Yes. 2007 version described previously will not backup Fab 40 sites. However, new version will backup fab 40 sites as long as you add GLOBAL template in the feature stapling as described in #1. We have tested it with 12 different templates that were deployed as wsp on 2010.

4. Will Recycle Bin tool backup sub sites created form sandbox solution templates?
Unfortunately, this tool will NOT backup any sub sites created form templates user saved to templates and then uploaded to the solution gallery. When you check the site created from the saved template, features are activated and the site could be backed up using backup stsadm or powershell. It seems like this is the limitation for this tool. You could refer other blog on the ways to create sites using saved templates.

5.  Will Recycle Bin tool backup sub sites created form farm site templates?
As we described before, you could save the site to a template and deploy it to different farm as global farm based site template. So far so good. However, we found that the sites crated from this type of template could NOT be backed up by Site Recycle Bin. As a result, there is a risk those sites will not be easily recovered.

This is same as item #4, when you check the site created from the saved template, features are activated and the site could be backed up using backup stsadm or powershell.

6. Can we restore the site into the same content DB?
One of my college tested this and confirmed you could not backup the original site into the same content DB where site got deleted. You should be aware this when you backup the site.


7. What is Recycle Bin Backup Share size you should prepare
The answer depends on the governance policy and the SharePoint usage. You should answer the following questions before making the decision.

• Size of active used sites and growth rate
• Frequency of users will delete the site collection or sites based on previous experience
• Size of the each site collections you setup that is depends on your quota setup
• How long will backup the deleted sites

By answering these questions based on company's policy if there is any, you could calculate the necessary size needed. In normal case, we setup small size and monitor the deleted site.

8. How to resolve "The security validation for this page is invalid Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException" when activating feature 'SiteRecycleBinSiteFeature'?
Please see solution published in http://sharepointconnoisseur.blogspot.com/2011/05/security-validation-for-this-page-is.html for details.

Since Site Recycle Bin tool is using SharePoint stsadm backup command as internal mechanism to backup the sites, you will restore the site same as stsadm restore. You will noticed everything will keep same except the site collection GUID is different. You could refer to other blogs on the difference between backup/restore and export/import of the sites.