Full System Recovery of SharePoint Server Agent

Full system recovery of SharePoint Server client involves the following phases:

Disaster Recovery Using a Pseudo Client

You can use a pseudo client to back up and recover web applications, content databases, and web front end data like SharePoint hive, IIS settings and SharePoint registry entries.

Farm backup set does not back up Web Front End data like SharePoint hive, IIS settings and SharePoint registry entries. To back up these components, you can use a pseudo client to perform a farm level disaster recovery.

The following is a high-level process for performing a disaster recovery using a pseudo client:

1. Create a pseudo client.

2. Install SharePoint Server agent on all the servers residing in the farm.

3. In the CommCell Browser, expand the pseudo client and create a user-defined subclient. On the Contents tab, include web front end data.

4. To protect the web front end data, perform a backup operation from the newly created user-defined subclient.

5. In case of a failure, perform a restore operation to recover one or more components of the web front end data using the pseudo client.

Preparing for a Full System Recovery

Before you begin a disaster recovery, ensure that the following backups are performed:

• Servers

  In your SharePoint farm setup, backup all the servers configured on virtual machines by using the Virtual Server Agent for VMware. For details on running a virtual server backup, see Backups for VMware.

  However, in your farm setup, if the servers are configured on physical computers, then use the File System Agent to back up the farm servers.

• Content Databases

  To back up content databases in your farm setup, on the Content Database Options tab, select a SQL server.

• SharePoint Farm

  In your farm setup, use the SharePoint Server Agent farm backup set to back up all the components excluding the content and the configuration databases. For more information, see Backing Up SharePoint Farm.

Recovering the SharePoint Server Farm

To recover the SharePoint Server farm, you must restore the following components:

• Servers

  To restore the virtual machines hosting the servers, use the Virtual Server Agent for VMware. For details on restoring a Virtual Server, see Restores for VMware.

  However, in your farm setup, if the servers are configured on physical computers, then use the File System Agent to restore the farm servers.

• Content Databases

  In your farm setup, on the Content Database Options tab, select a SQL server to restore content database.

  If you do not select a SQL server on the Content Database Options tab, the content databases are restored using the SQL agent.

• SharePoint Farm

  In your farm setup, use the SharePoint Server Agent farm Backup set to restore all the components excluding the Solutions. For more information, see Restoring a Content Database with Web Application.

  You can also restore configuration database and content database of the central administration using the SharePoint agent.

  For more information, see FAQ - Is SharePoint farm restore of configuration database and content database restore of the central administration supported?

Related Topics

Disaster Recovery