SharePoint Backup best Practices

1. SharePointBackup and recovery for SharePoint Technologies
• Ron Charity
• roncharity@gmail.com
• 416-300-6033

2. Read me (Remove when presenting)
• This is a draft document
– Reviews are required by Penton and Metalogix
– Review each page and notes
– Edit as you see fit and highlight change in RED
• The presenter has 15-20 minutes to present
• The presentation contains 15-20 slides to
meet time slot

3. Abstract (Remove when presenting)
With SharePoint becoming more entrenched in
organizations its importance to the business has
increased significantly. SharePoint might not be directly
linked to revenue generation in your organization but
it’s most likely become a tool that people use daily and
when there is a failure or data loss, you hear about it.
This webinar will provide you with a holistic view of
SharePoint backup and restore with a focus on key
subjects that must be covered in order to plan, design,
implement and manage a SharePoint backup and
restore solution that meets requirements and is
sustainable.

4. BIO
Ron Charity
A published Technologist with 20 + years in
infrastructure and application consulting.
Experience working in the US, Canada,
Australia and Europe. Has worked with
SharePoint and related technologies since
2000.
Plays guitar in a band, rides a Harley
Nightster, owns a Superbird, and enjoys
travel, especially to beach destinations.

5. Agenda
• Scoping and alignment
• Stakeholder Requirements and SLAs
• Corporate policy / roadblocks
• Information architecture considerations
• Technical components
• Operational components
• Quality assurance, POCs and testing
• Training and Awareness
• Proof of Concept/Pilot
• Further Reading and Contact information

8. Stakeholder Requirements
• So where do you begin?
• Fully understand requirements and expectations you must
reach out to the business and all the IT stakeholders.
–Use SharePoint as a tool daily for collaboration
–Run applications (or thirdparty) on top of SharePoint
–IT persons that sustain related infrastructure
–Third-party support organizations
• Question for them include:
–Are clients impacted?
–Is there an impact to business operations ?
–Is the Brand impacted?
–Is there a compliance / records mgmt. impact?

9. Stakeholder Requirements con’t
• Are there outsourcing contracts associated with Backup and
Restore? Related infrastructure?
• What Backup and Restore tools are in place today? Do they
have SharePoint support?
• What Backup and Restore infrastructure is in place today?
• What skills are in place today related to Backup and Restore?
SharePoint and SQL?
• Are there constraints with the IT environment today? Network
bandwidths? Storage? Tape Libraries?
• What are the existing backup rotation schedules and windows?
• Where are the SharePoint farms located today? What is there
configuration? How much data?

10. Defining SLAs
• Defining the SLAs will require a mix of technical skills, financial
skills and political savvy
• The challenge is creating a solution that addresses business
and financial needs yet works within business an technical
limitations
–What is (isn’t) backed up and why (Think RTO/RPO)
–Data restore performance and administration implications
–Backup speed performance as it relates to capacity plans
–IT, Site Administrator and end user responsibilities
–The process for provisioning backup and restore
–The process for recovering data

11. Components of a solution
• Policy
–Application tier policy
–Data management policy
–Security policy
–Records Management
–Third Party contracts
• Process
–Backup and recovery process
–Tasks, activities and hand offs
–Farm rebuild process and
testing
–Operational ticketing,
reporting and escalations
• People
–Procurement
–Product management
–Staffing and skillsets
–Support and outsourcing
–Politics
• Tools
–Backup software
–Help Desk software
–Monitoring software
–Change management
–Code management
–Configuration management

12. Information Architecture
• As farms grow and the number of sites increase it can be
advantageous to structure site collections by value to
organization
• For example
–Critical Sites – those critical to business operations are
played in a site collection(s) separate from normal sites due
to their SLA being higher
–Normal sites are those that don’t impact business
operations and their SLA is lower
• This enables the operations to
–Manage backups and restores in a easier manner
–Help reduce backup windows and or stager jobs

13. Technical Architecture
• Generally the backup architecture consists of
–The SharePoint farm (and Backup agents installed on the
WFEs and SQL servers).
–Staging farm (usually a single server).
–Storage (a location for disk backups) and tape backup
systems.
–Backup operator console.
• Some backup tools are very complex and require multiple
servers for web, business logic and storage to manage backup
images, deduplication, backup job scheduling and logs.
• Also consider all the networking infrastructure between your
SharePoint farms and backup systems – this can be a
constraint.

14. Technical Architecture

15. Backup approaches
•SQL Server Backups
–Not application aware
–Not granular – content database level
–Generally faster but space and pipe intensive
–Leverage existing SQL investments
•SharePoint
–Application aware
–Granular control of backup and restore
–Generally slower but optimizes space and pipe
–Requires infrastructure

16. Slip Streaming and WSPs
•Optimize your farm rebuild.
•Document farm, server etc. rebuild processes.
•If you have customized your farm consider slip
streaming your SharePoint installation.
•Make sure they are packaged in WSPs
(Hopefully your developers created WSPs to
automate installation installation).
•Test the process on a regular basis.

17. Policy and Process
•Document and publish all policy and process
•Make sure task ownership and hands offs are
clear and agreed to by senior mgmt.
•Change control to govern changes to
environment
•Important items include;
–How to manual
–Help desk call routing
–Communications plan
–Service levels

18. Training and Awareness
•Training involves a mix of orientations for
business stakeholders and IT staff
•Operational and service level aspects must be
highlighted
•Specific training includes:
–Help desk call routing
–Operator training
–Business stakeholder orientations
–Ongoing re-inforcement

19. Test plan
•Contains key tests for validating the backup will
meet SLA.
•Consists on initial solution certification testing
and ongoing correct operation.
•Plan must be documented and signed off by all
stakeholders
–Business units
–IT department(s)
–Third parties (Contractors, service providers)

20. Test plan
Test Expected Outcome Actual Outcomes Pass/Fail
Farm recovery Ability to recover farm end
to end.
 Recoverability
 Identify any gaps
 Time required
Yes or no
Servers Ability to recover each
server individually (e.g.
WFE fails)
Same as above Yes or no
Site Collection /
Application
Ability to recover a site
collection and associated
application
Same as above Yes or no
Site Recover a site and its
associated settings
Same as above Yes or no
Lists and libraries Ability to recover a Web
Part and its associated
settings
Same as above Yes or no
Data Ability to recover Data
such as documents,
pictures etc.
Same as above Yes or no

21. Proof of concepts and Pilots
•POCs and Pilot are controlled limited
employments
•POCs and Pilot prove the solution works in
your environment
•Enables you and others to carry out the test
plan proving the works and possibly finding
gaps in the technology and or stakeholder
expectations
•Use project manage controls to manage the
POC and Pilot.

22. Sign off with stakeholders
•Present POC and Pilot findings to stakeholders
•A walk through the test plan results is helpful
•Obtain a sign off from the stakeholders in
writing
•Conduct a demo of the solution if need be
•If there are gaps in the testing or errors that
occurred these must be highlighted and a plan
assembled to address the deficiencies

23. Backup schedule
• Plan your backups carefully to ensure proper
data backup occurs while not overloading
servers due to running multiple jobs
• Consider the following:
– When to run full backups –Weekly?
– When to run incremental backups – daily?
•Monitor and report on duration of backup jobs
•Avoid job overlap such as indexing, profile
imports, virus scans etc.

24. Backup schedule
Job Start Completion Duration
Incremental S-F 10:00pm M-F 12:00AM 2 hrs
Full Backup Saturday 10:00pm Sunday 4:00am 6 hrs
Virus Scans Daily 4:00am Daily 5am 1 hrs
Profile import Daily 7 Daily 10pm 3 hrs
SQL Maintenance Sunday 6:00am Sunday 10:00am 4 hrs

25. Governance and Communications
•Manages the backup solution (SharePoint
service) as a program of its lifecycle
•Consists of stakeholders (business, IT,
purchasing, third parties)
•Executive sponsors help guide and steer
•Decision and communication framework keeps
people aligned
•Also deals with grievances and disconnects

26. Next steps
•Document the SLA for your SharePoint service
offering – get sign off from stakeholders
•Create a business case to obtain funding
•Create project controls for a POC (Charter,
Communication plan, schedule, risk plan, test
plan etc.)
•Build POC environment and carry out tests and
document results
•Review findings and decide on next steps

27. Further Reading
•Create a SharePoint backup and recovery plan
•SharePoint Disaster Recovery Guide
•SharePoint Backup Overview
•SharePoint OOB Backup
•Optimize SQL Server for Backup
•Best Practices

28. Contact Information
• Questions? Ideas or suggestions you want to
share?
• Text chat or contact me at
– roncharity@gmail.com
– ca.linkedin.com/in/ronjcharity/