SUMMARY
SharePoint backup strategies
ISSUE
Purpose
Discuss best practices for SharePoint backup strategies.
Description
The simplest backup strategy for protecting your SharePoint environment is to run weekly fulls and daily differentials on the SharePoint farm. Depending on the total amount of data in your SharePoint environment, it may be advantageous to reduce the frequency of the SharePoint farm backup while incorporating backups of the SQL content databases.
Cause
Unitrends leverages stsadm to perform SharePoint backups. When the total amount of SharePoint data exceeds 250 GB, stsadm performance can in some cases be negatively affected.
Resolution
If the total data size in your SharePoint environment is less than 250 GB, run a weekly SharePoint full with daily SharePoint differentials.
If the total data size in your SharePoint environment is greater than or equal to 250 GB, consider running a weekly SharePoint full during the period of least network activity. In addition, run SQL fulls plus differentials (if databases are in simple recovery mode) or transactionals (if databases are in full recovery mode) between SharePoint fulls.
Things to note:
- If you’re running SQL backups in addition to the SharePoint backups, the first SQL backup after the SharePoint full must be a SQL full. You can then run differentials or transactionals.
- It is not possible to perform item-level restores from SharePoint Differentials with Kroll Ontrack PowerControls for SharePoint. Restore from a SharePoint Full or SQL backup instead.
Third-Party Sources