SharePoint: Back up a Farm through Central Administration

On the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, on the Operations page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Perform a Backup.

1. On the Select Component to Backup page, select Farm, and then click Continue to Backup Options.
2. On the Select Backup Options page:
   
   1. In the Backup Content section, ensure that Farm is displayed.
   2. In the Type of Backup section, select Full.
   3. In the Backup File Location section, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to the backup folder.
3. Click OK.
   You can view the backup job status on the Backup status page by clicking Refresh. The page also refreshes every 30 seconds automatically. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs, so it may take few seconds for the backup to start.
   If you receive any errors, you can find more information by looking in the spbackup.log at the UNC path that you specified in step 3.

Error message:
Object SharePoint_Config failed in event OnBackup. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory. SqlException: Cannot open backup device '<backuplocation'. Operating system error 3(The system cannot find the path specified.). BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

Solution:
Use UNC path, ex. \\<servername>\Backup. Make sure the folder is shared to everyone. Sharing this to just lawlex_crawl will give you an error that the backup device cannot be opened. You can just unshare it later once the backup is done.

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Error message:

The backup/restore job failed. In order to rerun the backup/restore the timer job must be deleted from the Timer Job Definitions page. Failure Message: Access to the path '\\<server name>\<shared folder>\spbrtoc.xml' is denied.

Solution:
On the folder, right click on Properties. Under Sharing > Permissions, add the user account that will perform the SharePoint backup (this is normally the SharePoint administrator) with full control. Under Security tab, add the same account with full control rights.