Chapter 30: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Disaster Recovery

Overview

Many organizations have backup and restore procedures but yet are ill-equipped to handle any type of disaster recovery or continuity of operations. Don't make the mistake of being poorly prepared and having a catastrophic event destroy data without the possibility of recovery. Organizations that document and prepare can swiftly react and remain operational after a disaster. It is no accident that large banks and brokerage firms are able to access data following a major disaster; their disaster recovery plans are well documented and executed.

Disaster recovery in the modern IT professional's vocabulary has come to reference routine content recovery, recovery from accidental or natural disasters, and high availability. All the backup, restore, and continuity of operations procedures, along with thorough documentation, should be assembled into a disaster recovery plan. Your disaster recovery plan should be one of the most important document sets in your organization's process library.

Design your disaster recovery plan for a worst case scenario, and then use only the pieces required for data restores. For example, if you store your backup tapes offsite, it is a simple matter to retrieve those tapes for restores when a user deletes a document library. In this example, your data is protected for a disaster, but the same process is used for daily backups and restores. Design your disaster recovery plan to prevent duplication of effort by using the same processes for many types of events, whether man-made or natural. It is also important to understand that Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a multi-tiered application, and traditional backup and restore methodologies might not be applicable.

This chapter will use typical backup and restore procedures as a foundation for discussing disaster recovery and business continuance for Office SharePoint Server 2007. In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

• Document your environment.

• Back up and restore SharePoint Server 2007.

• Design for high availability.