Dec

SharePoint backup restore and virtualization support

At the moment I have to write a SharePoint backup and restore document and planning for my clients SharePoint farms. All together, production and non-production, there are 10 SharePoint farms.

At first I thought, this is a very straightforward document about what parts of SharePoint and/or file system to backup and restore. After some search queries on the internet I read that virtualization is also very important. I knew that already off course but I did not know what is or is not supported by Microsoft.

Some quotes on the internet:

“Do not use the Hyper-V snapshot feature on virtual servers that are connected to a SharePoint Products and Technologies server farm. This is because the timer services and the search applications might become unsynchronized during the snapshot process.”

“As a best practice, we recommend that you do not use the snapshot feature on virtual machines in a production environment.”

There are all sorts of SharePoint farms at the client. Complete virtual server farms, combined virtual and physical server farms and complete physical server farms. Considering this, there should also be different recovery scenarios. Maybe I will discuss the different scenarios is another article later on, but for the moment I will give you all the information I have read about virtualization support.

SharePoint farm Backup/Restore with VMware Snapshots: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepoint2010setup/thread/e5abf633-9023-4f24-a707-2680cced28e8
Virtualizing SharePoint Server 2007 Series:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/uksharepoint/archive/2009/02/26/virtualizing-sharepoint-series-introduction.aspx
Best practices for virtualization (SharePoint Server 2010):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh295699.aspx
Virtual machine guidance (SharePoint Server 2010):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff621103.aspx

Update 12/22/2011

Resource Center Virtualization for SharePoint Server 2010:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff602849.aspx
Server Virtualization Validation Program:
http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm