Backup and Recovery Strategy

Use separate server for Disaster Recovery (DR)

Use additional server with installed SharePoint for DR. Do not connect this server to the existing SharePoint farm – it should be isolated environment with single SharePoint installation, or “3 servers farm”. Disaster Recovery servers must locate outside corporate networks, and ideally, outside corporation premises. Usually, it locates in different data centre. The reason for this to provide data availability in case of the network or data centre outage.

Configure mirroring

Configure SQL mirroring of content databases to provide data reliability. It should be done in the early stages, when content databases are very small, not for the hundreds gigs of content. The reason is that network bandwidth to DR is usually limited due to distant location of the servers, and setting mirroring for large databases became slow process.
Refer to the following document for more details about configuring SQL mirroring http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83725&clcid=0×409

Recovery data immediately

Highly available farms imply reliable strategy of data recovery. SQL Mirroring is only part of this strategy. Data restore in reasonable time is one of the factor of DR strategy

Consider several scenarios for backup/recovery:

1. OOTB backup/restore. SharePoint does not provide reliable mechanism of automatic backups. Backup/Restore feature available via Central Administration or via STSADM command. The only way to schedule this task is to use STSADM and windows scheduler to configure backups/restore.
Disadvantages:

• not reliable approach due to dependency of singe instance of scheduler;
• scheduler location on the single server, no multiple instances;
• no granularity of restored items;

2) SQL snapshots of content database (http://tinyurl.com/d2auns)
Disadvantage - lack of granularity in backup/restore

3) Data Protection Manager (DPM) – is one of the recommended solutions for data recovery strategy in large SharePoint farms.

a. DPM provides reliable and flexible functionality to backup, search and restore items.
b. Supports backup/restore of different servers in network – SQL Server, Exchange, file shares backups, and etc.
c. Adapts to the changes in Farm dynamically – add, delete or relocate servers.
d. Monitors and records all changes in SharePoint content DB by integrating into SharePoint VSS Writer.
e. Provides search functionality for any deleted items across content DB and restore data from content db.
f. Granularity in restoration of documents, sites, and applications.

One disadvantage of DPM is that it requires additional, clean, SharePoint instance to be used as temporary location of restored items to merge them with production content DB.

Some recommendation of DPM usage:

- Do not use existed SharePoint farm servers disconnected from the SharePoint farm – this approach has many bugs, and restoration fails in most cases.
- Iinstall SP1 for DPM – it provides significant performance increase for indexes and catalogue (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347836.aspx)

4) Third party tools – Quest Recovery Manager, DocAve and Idera Backup. They provide the similar functionality of the DPM, but in some cases address SharePoint behaviour only, and might not provide enterprise level of backup strategy.

Quest Recovery Manager is the preferable tool for data restoration – lightweight application that does not require additional servers to restore deleted items.