Backup and Restore: Overview

Data backups are a necessity in today's workplace as protection for any unforeseen event or circumstances that might warrant restoring a database or a complete disaster recovery. Developing plans and procedures for recovering from failures before they occur is critical for minimizing lost productivity in the event of a server crash, database corruption, or any other form of data loss.

Backup and Recovery Data Protection Solutions

This section provides an overview of the tools you can use for content backups and retrieval at various levels of granularity in Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Content Recovery

Content recovery applies to being prepared for accidental updates or deletions of data, usually by end users. This happens frequently and the impact is usually small. Content can be recovered in the following ways:

• From the Recycle Bin

• Through versioning of content

• Site Collection Backup and Restore (Referred to as SC B/R in the table below)

• By using the Web delete event. The SharePoint object model allows developers to build custom backup applications at the Web Delete event.

Disaster Recovery (Catastrophic Restore Operation)

Disaster recovery operations are performed only when a fatal disaster occurs, which usually involves replacement of hardware and sometimes re-installation and setup of software. Disaster recovery requires a full server farm or database. SharePoint Server provides the following for disaster recovery:

• Provides an extensible framework for third-party applications via SharePoint Backup and Restore (Referred to as SharePoint B/R in the table below).

• SharePoint Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) Writer. VSS provides a centralized framework for all server applications.

• SQL-only backup and restore operation.

• Log-shipping mirror farm.

Solutions Matrix

The following table shows the various backup and restore solution options supported by Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the level of granularity offered by each solution.