7 Steps to a Successful SharePoint Recovery Plan

Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix 1

Paul LaPorte Director of Product Marketing Backup and Storage Products Metalogix

• Expert in business continuity, disaster recovery and security• Previously

• Principle strategist and researcher for Continuity Research, a business continuity research and consulting firm • Senior executive of Evergreen Assurance, a pioneer in real-time disaster recovery for mission critical applications

7 Steps to a Creating a Successful SharePoint Recovery Plan


Sound Familiar?

I can’t meet my Recovery Point

Object

My backups take too long

My network team controls backups

Users complainnon-stop


Backup Emotional Rollercoaster

Pain Frustration

Uncertainty Pitfalls


Learning Objectives

Why a recovery plan is critical to your job

How to make a successful backup-and-restore plan

What is your peer group doing for SLAs What do you do next


Case Study: Disaster at Sea

• Shipping company

• Several planned Dry Dock events

• Logistics Application in SharePoint tracks employees as the travel and work at ports• Supplier Companies and Vendors access to

confirm travel and dates. • Access via Extranet• Company uses this to track and report

• Project was 90% complete. The odd bug and some identified UI issues remained.


Case Study: Disaster at Sea

• Line up for internal Governance Review to GO LIVE / Production

• App was not hardened for Back Up or Recovery. SLA was draft

• Non Project rogue employee convinced business unit decided to do POP

• Dev environment received Production traffic

Major SharePoint crash

• Loss of Time

• Loss of Data

• Confusion and blame game


What is Your Current SharePoint Backup Strategy?

Insta-Poll

⃝% SQL DB backup/SQL tool under my control⃝% Out of the box SharePoint backup⃝% System wide backup tool (Symantec, CommVault, …)⃝% High Fidelity SharePoint backup tool⃝% Other⃝% Don’t know


Recover Point Objective (RPO)

Defined: the maximum tolerable time period in which data might be lost due to a server farm failure

Example: 4 hour RPO means that SharePoint must be backed at least every four hours

Mission Critical SharePoint Organizations Require More Aggressive Recover Point Objectives (RPO)


SharePoint Backup Dilemma

Content Grows



Content Grows

Longer Backups



Content Grows

Longer Backups

More Risk of Data Loss



Content Grows

Longer Backups

More Risk of Data Loss

RPO


Backup Delays Cause Missed RPOs

Time to back up

9 hours

8 hours

7 hours

6 hours

5 hours

4 hours

3 hours

2 hours

1 hour

Reco

ver

Poin

t O

bjec

tive

Time to back up 1 TB Content Database


Backup Delays Cause Missed RPOs

Time to back up

9 hours

8 hours

7 hours

6 hours

5 hours

4 hours

3 hours

2 hours

1 hour

Reco

ver

Poin

t O

bjec

tive

Time to back up 1 TB Content Database

Takes up to 8 hours to backup 1 TB database

If RPO is 4 hours, have exceeded SLA by 4

hours!


What is Your Organization’s SharePoint RPO?

Insta-Poll

⃝% 0-1 hours⃝% 1-4 hours⃝% 4-8 hours⃝% More than 8 hours⃝% Don’t Have One⃝% Don’t Know


Your Role

Disaster Recovery

vs.

Backup and Restore


Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

Defined: the maximum time allowed for your environment to be restored after an outage or data loss

Example: 2 hour RTO means that data or farm must be restore within 2 hours of the system outage.

Users/Organizations Demand Low RTO due to Critical Nature of Content.


Different RTOs for SharePoint

Full SharePoint recovery• Access to content vs. Access to SharePoint

Restores• Farm• Site• Item


What is Your SharePoint RTO?

Insta-Poll

⃝% 0-1 hour⃝% 1-4 hours⃝% 4-8 hours⃝% 8+ hours⃝% Don’t Have One⃝% Don’t Know


Where Do I Start?


Step 1: Get an Executive Sponsor

Legitimize

Socialize

Support

Budget

Align

Protect


Step 2: Define Your SLA

What are you recovery objectives?

• How much downtime per event?• How much downtime per month?• How much content can be at risk?• Which content needs most frequent backups?• Which content needs to be recovered the quickest?• What does SharePoint downtime cost the company?• Do I need to be able to recover SharePoint without dependencies?


Step 3: Create a Recovery Plan

Documented ownership

Tasks

Responsibilities

Demarcation points

Handoffs

A Living, Breathing Document


Do You Have An Executive Sponsor for SharePoint Business Continuity?

Insta-Poll

⃝% Yes⃝% No⃝% Don’t

Know


Step 4: Analysis Content

Analyze current environment

Risk profiles

Impact of downtime

Content categorization for risk and impact

Backup requirements per category

Not All Content is Created Equal


Step 5: Validate

Documented

Signed-off solution

Full tested

Review cycle

You Want Me to Prove This?


Step 6: Testing

Change is inevitable

Change is often undetected

Fire drills detect change

Update your recovery plans and processes

Ongoing Testing is Mandatory


Have You Ever Completed a Recovery Test for SharePoint?

Insta-Poll

⃝% Yes⃝% No⃝% Don’t

Know


Executive Sponsor

SLAs

Document

Risk AnalysisSign-Offs

Fire Drills

Update Plan

Step 7: Repeat For Success


Case - Planning for RPO Success

PharmaceuticalsPersonalized Medicine

SharePoint 2010• Workflows• Custom applications

Business Continuity• All mission critical application get

reviewed bi-annually• Backup was taking 5-6 hours and

growing

Enterprise Backup via Symantec• Owned by another IT group


Case – Planning for RPO Success

Defined SLAs• Peer based RPO assessment used• Established a 4 hour RPO

Identified Core Needs • Cut backup times by more than 50%• Recover individual documents• Improve overall user performance

Evaluated Three Strategies• Find a faster backup technology• Leverage HA data replication• Manage data differently



Evaluation ResultsFind a faster backup technology• Stuck with existing backup solution

due to backup file retention policies• Another group owned and was not

going to change

Leverage HA data replication• Killed option due to budget and

ownership infighting

Manage data differently• Explored externalizing data• Looked for compatible accessory tool


BLOBs: The Root of SharePoint Backup Problems

BLOB = Binary Large ObjectBLOB = binary representation of a file

stored in SQL Server (content database)

SharePoint content consists of structured data (metadata) and unstructured data

(BLOBs)

BLOBs are immutableBLOBs are created and deleted but never

updated


Externalizing BLOBs Makes Content Databases Really Small

Time to back up9 hours8 hours7 hours6 hours5 hours4 hours3 hours2 hours1 hour

Reco

ver P

oint

O

bjec

tive 1 TB Content

Database shrinks to 50 GB

Externalizing BLOBs makes achieving Recover Point Objective easy.

1 TB content database becomes 50GB

BLOBs continuously backed up by StoragePoint

Content DB Automatically backed up by StoragePoint



Added StoragePoint (Remote BLOB Store)

• Shrunk SQL backup by 98%

• Bypassing SQL database API improved I/O and read/write speed by 2x

Added SharePoint Backup• Further reduced backups to under 10 minutes• Provided continuity with current backup tool• Enabled SharePoint granular restores from

existing backup files

Far exceeded RPO goals for foreseeable future


SharePoint Continuity Industry Research

Industry Survey• Companies surveyed for SharePoint business

continuity practices

• Key points researched• RPO• RTO• Executive support• DR testing

• 500+ companies responded

Early Results• Only 7.5% of companies tested and were

successful in a SharePoint recovery

• Less than 2% of companies tested and required no change to the plans following the test


Whitepaper

www.metalogix.com/Resources/Promotions/Protect-Your-SharePoint-Data.aspx

Demo

[email protected] 1 202.609.9100

Other ResourcesOverview: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee663490(v=office.15).aspxPrepare, configure, how-to, and best practices: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662536(v=office.15).aspxBoundaries, thresholds, and supported limits: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787(v=office.15).aspx

What Do I Do Next?

Create a SharePoint Recovery Plan Metalogix Recovery Planning Checklist Will be sent via email as a “Thank You”

Download Free Trial Solutions SharePoint Backup StoragePoint

www.metalogix.com/Downloads.aspx

Demo


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7 Steps to a Creating a Successful SharePoint Recovery Plan

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7 Steps to a Successful SharePoint Recovery Plan