7 Steps to a Creating a
Successful SharePoint Recovery Plan
Paul LaPorte
Director of Product Marketing
Backup and Storage Products
Metalogix
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Expert in business continuity, disaster recovery and security
Previously
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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
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
1
Sound Familiar?
My backups take
too long
My network team
controls backups
I can’t meet my
Recovery Point
Object
Users complain
non-stop
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Backup Emotional Rollercoaster
Pain
Frustration
Uncertainty
Pitfalls
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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
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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.
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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
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
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Insta-Poll
What is Your Current SharePoint Backup Strategy?
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⃝
⃝
⃝
⃝
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SQL DB backup/SQL tool under my control
Out of the box SharePoint backup
System wide backup tool (Symantec, CommVault, …)
High Fidelity SharePoint backup tool
Other
Don’t know
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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)
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SharePoint Backup Dilemma
Content Grows
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SharePoint Backup Dilemma
Content Grows
Longer Backups
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10
SharePoint Backup Dilemma
Content Grows
Longer Backups
More Risk of
Data Loss
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SharePoint Backup Dilemma
Content Grows
RPO
Longer Backups
More Risk of
Data Loss
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12
Backup Delays Cause Missed RPOs
Time to back up
9 hours
8 hours
7 hours
6 hours
5 hours
Recover
Point
Objective
4 hours
3 hours
2 hours
1 hour
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
Time to back up 1
TB Content
Database
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Backup Delays Cause Missed RPOs
Time to back up
Takes up to 8 hours to
backup 1 TB database
9 hours
8 hours
7 hours
6 hours
5 hours
Recover
Point
Objective
4 hours
If RPO is 4 hours, have
exceeded SLA by 4 hours!
3 hours
2 hours
1 hour
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
Time to back up 1
TB Content
Database
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Insta-Poll
What is Your Organization’s
SharePoint RPO?
⃝
⃝
⃝
⃝
⃝
⃝
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
0-1 hours
1-4 hours
4-8 hours
More than 8 hours
Don’t Have One
Don’t Know
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Your Role
Disaster Recovery
vs.
Backup and Restore
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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.
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Different RTOs for SharePoint
Full SharePoint recovery
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Access to content vs. Access to SharePoint
Restores
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Farm
Site
Item
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Insta-Poll
What is Your
SharePoint RTO?
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⃝
⃝
⃝
⃝
⃝
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
0-1 hour
1-4 hours
4-8 hours
8+ hours
Don’t Have One
Don’t Know
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Where Do I Start?
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Step 1: Get an Executive Sponsor
Legitimize
Budget
Socialize
Align
Support
Protect
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Step 2: Define Your SLA
What are you recovery objectives?
• How much downtime per event?
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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?
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Step 3: Create a Recovery Plan
A Living, Breathing Document

Documented ownership
 Tasks
 Responsibilities
 Demarcation points
 Handoffs
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Insta-Poll
Do You Have An Executive Sponsor
for SharePoint Business Continuity?
⃝ Yes
⃝ No
⃝ Don’t Know
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Step 4: Analysis Content
Not All Content is Created Equal

Analyze current environment
 Risk profiles
 Impact of downtime
 Content categorization for risk and impact
 Backup requirements per category
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Step 5: Validate
You Want Me to Prove This?
 Documented
 Signed-off solution
 Full tested
 Review cycle
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Step 6: Testing
Ongoing Testing is Mandatory
 Change is inevitable
 Change is often undetected
 Fire drills detect change
 Update your recovery plans and
processes
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Insta-Poll
Have You Ever Completed a
Recovery Test for SharePoint?
⃝ Yes
⃝ No
⃝ Don’t Know
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Step 7: Repeat For Success
Executive
Sponsor
Update
Plan
SLAs
Fire Drills
Document
Risk
Analysis
Sign-Offs
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Case - Planning for RPO Success
Pharmaceuticals
Personalized 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
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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
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Case – Planning for RPO Success
Evaluation Results
Find 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
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BLOBs: The Root of SharePoint Backup
Problems
BLOB = Binary Large Object
BLOB = binary representation of a file stored
in SQL Server (content database)
SharePoint content consists of structured
data (metadata) and unstructured data
(BLOBs)
BLOBs are immutable
BLOBs are created and deleted but never
updated
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
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Externalizing BLOBs Makes Content
Databases Really Small
Recover Point
Objective
 Externalizing BLOBs makes achieving
Recover Point Objective easy.
Time to back up
9 hours
8 hours
7 hours
6 hours
5 hours
4 hours
3 hours
2 hours
1 hour
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
 1 TB content database becomes 50GB
 BLOBs continuously backed up by
StoragePoint
 Content DB Automatically backed up by
StoragePoint
1 TB Content
Database shrinks to
50 GB
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Case – Planning for RPO Success
Added StoragePoint (Remote BLOB Store)
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Shrunk SQL backup by 98%
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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
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
35
SharePoint Continuity Industry Research
Industry Survey
Early Results
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Companies surveyed for SharePoint business
continuity practices
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Only 7.5% of companies tested and were
successful in a SharePoint recovery
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Key points researched
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Less than 2% of companies tested and
required no change to the plans following
the test
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RPO
RTO
Executive support
DR testing
500+ companies responded
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
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What Do I Do Next?
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What Do I Do Next?
Create a SharePoint Recovery Plan
Demo
 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
 Sales@Metalogix.com
 1 202.609.9100
Other Resources
Overview:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee663490(v=office.15).aspx
Prepare, configure, how-to, and best practices:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662536(v=office.15).aspx
Boundaries, thresholds, and supported limits:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787(v=office.15).aspx
Whitepaper
www.metalogix.com/Resources/Promotions/Protect-Your-SharePoint-Data.aspx
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Thank You for Attending
7 Steps to a Creating a
Successful SharePoint Recovery Plan
Confidential and Proprietary © Metalogix
39