EMC Replication Manager and Kroll Ontrack PowerControls for Granular Recovery of SharePoint Items

Transcription

1 EMC Replication Manager and Kroll Ontrack PowerControls for Granular Recovery of SharePoint Items Applied Technology Abstract This white paper discusses how Kroll Ontrack PowerControls integrates with EMC Replication Manager to provide granular recovery of SharePoint objects. November 2009

2 Copyright 2009 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED AS IS. EMC CORPORATION MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part number h6714 Applied Technology 2

3 Table of Contents Executive summary...4 Introduction...4 Audience... 4 Terminology... 5 Solution overview...5 Replication Manager setup...6 Kroll Ontrack PowerControls setup...8 Conclusion...12 References...12 Applied Technology 3

4 Executive summary Fully restoring a Microsoft SharePoint site from backup can be an expensive and time-consuming process. Restoring directly to the production server will overwrite all current data, which is usually undesirable. It may also take several hours and could render the server inaccessible for some time. Users cannot access SharePoint websites while a database recovery is taking place, and having SharePoint databases offline for a farm restore could hamper productivity. Item level or granular recovery of SharePoint content database objects using Ontrack PowerControls is a faster solution for documents that are missing from the Site Recycle Bin or Site Collection Recycle Bin. The default time period for each recycle bin is 30 days, so users who want to recover items older than two months will need an item level recovery tool. A farm recovery could take several hours, and any changes made to the SharePoint farm are lost when the farm is fully restored from backup. In contrast, restoring a single item using Ontrack PowerControls for SharePoint may take just a few seconds and will affect only that data that is being restored. The SharePoint farm is fully accessible during an item level recovery, so users will not be affected by any changes being made on the database. The item level recovery is essentially a new document upload if an item is missing from the target location, or it will overwrite an existing document with a previous version in the target location. It is possible to restore items, lists, libraries, and folders back to the production SharePoint farm, to another location, or to a file system. EMC Replication Manager is a software application that simplifies the creation and management of diskbased replicas. Replication Manager automates the creation of exact point-in-time copies of mission-critical databases that can be used for rapid recovery or repurposing. Use Replication Manager to create application consistent replicas of Exchange, SQL Server, and Oracle for physical drives or for Microsoft iscsi initiator discovered disks. These replicas will be used by PowerControls to restore or overwrite production SharePoint items. For more information on Replication Manager, see the white paper EMC Replication Manager and Microsoft SQL Server A Detailed Review. Introduction This white paper is intended to highlight the operation of Ontrack PowerControls for SharePoint item level recovery. The paper will describe how a single file is recovered from a mounted snapshot of the SQL database and copied to the SharePoint content database. The restore of a single item is very simple and fast and does not affect operation of the SharePoint site. If the item already exists at the target location, a warning is issued to ensure the correct file is being replaced, as an older version of the same file will overwrite the current version in the production database. Audience This white paper has been written for the following audiences: Administrators who may be called upon to restore items that are unexpectedly deleted, edited, or corrupted in a SharePoint web page EMC internal and field personnel who assist customers with the replication of SharePoint databases using Replication Manager Applied Technology 4

5 Terminology Site Site collection Content database Web application A site is one or more related web pages that are hosted inside a site collection. A site collection is a set of websites that have the same owner and share administration settings. Each site collection contains a top-level website and can contain one or more subsites. By default, all content for a web application is stored in one content database. You can separate content into multiple content databases at the site collection level. A content database can include one or more site collections, but a single site cannot span multiple databases. Backing up and restoring sites take place at the content database level. A web application is an IIS website that is created and used by SharePoint Products and Technologies. Each web application is represented by a different website in IIS. You assign each web application a unique domain name, which helps to prevent cross-site scripting attacks. Solution overview Replication Manager and Kroll Ontrack PowerControls can be installed on the same server. Figure 1 shows the architecture of the tested solution. Figure 1 Solution architecture A medium size SharePoint farm was set up using VMware ESX servers. The agent for Replication Manager was installed on the SQL Server virtual machine. Ontrack PowerControls and Replication Manager Server were installed on the same physical server. Applied Technology 5

6 Replication Manager setup The first step in providing item level recovery for a SharePoint farm is to create a replica of its content databases. Replication Manager uses the public network and the iscsi network to communicate and control storage replication. Production data is accessed by SQL Server, while Replication Manager Server mounts a replica of the production data with help from the Replication Manager Agent. The replica is mounted and used as source data for Ontrack PowerControls as seen in Figure 2. There Figure are 2 two parts Replica to the set mounts up of SharePoint replicas: The following procedure illustrates setup of the replica that Ontrack will use to provide granular restore capability. First, create an application set using the Application Set Wizard shown in Figure 3. An application set will specify the data objects to be replicated. Ontrack will accept replicas based on either SQL Server objects or volumes. Figure 3 Application Set Wizard Applied Technology 6

7 Next, create a job. A job specifies how to replicate each application set. Figure 4 shows the Job Wizard for a job named moss snap. Mount options and scheduling options are also configured using the Job Wizard. Figure 4 Job Wizard Job Name and Settings Replication Manager is fairly simple to set up and offers wizards to ease administration of tasks, such as changing the mount host or scheduling automatic replications. Applied Technology 7

8 Kroll Ontrack PowerControls setup The next step in providing item level recovery for SharePoint farms is to set up Ontrack PowerControls. Open the Target Server and the Source Path in PowerControls. The target is the SQL server that holds the SharePoint content databases. Figure 5 Data Wizard Target Server Selection From the Data Wizard shown in Figure 5, enter the SQL server name, select the configuration database, and provide authentication information to the SQL server. Applied Technology 8

9 The Source Path Selection shown in Figure 6 opens the mounted replica you have set up with Replication Manager. You can connect to more than one source at a time. This allows for recovery of the same object from different points in time. Mount the replica that contains the correct version of the file, click Add, and navigate to the folder that holds the mounted replicas; they will have file extensions of.mdf,.ldf, and possibly.ndf. Figure 6 Data Wizard Source Path Selection Applied Technology 9

10 After the Finish button is clicked a window appears showing the progress of opening the source files. Figure 7 shows an example of what you should see. Figure 7 Open Source progress window Applied Technology 10

11 Repeat the Open Source Path Data Wizard for each content database that may hold items that need to be restored. Once the sources and target have been added, it is simply a matter of dragging and dropping items from a source to the target as illustrated in Figure 8. The item can be dragged from the mounted replica to its original location, or to another location in SharePoint, essentially creating a copy of the source item. Figure 8 Item restore in PowerControls If the item does not currently exist in the target location the Copy Progress indicator window will appear, giving a length and status of operation. Applied Technology 11

12 Figure 9 Copy Progress window If the file does exist in the folder, an Overwrite Duplicate Item window appears confirming the file should be overwritten. The choices are Yes, Yes to All, No, No to All, or Cancel. A Confirm window asking Are you sure? appears next if the overwrite decision is made. After Yes is clicked a Copy Progress window appears showing a completion status. See the example in Figure 9. Once the copy is finished, go back to the file listing in SharePoint. The file shows the same file size and timestamp as the original, but now has the! NEW logo next to it. Figure 10 illustrates the recovered file listing. Figure 10 Recovered file listing Displayed in the drag-and-drop functionality of Ontrack PowerControls is not only the ease of use, but also the negligible system impact to current users and the continued availability of the system. Ontrack PowerControls avoids downtime while easily recovering SharePoint objects. Conclusion Using Replication Manager and Ontrack PowerControls together simplifies the recovery of SharePoint objects for the administrator. The operation is simple and easy to understand. Warning messages prevent overwriting incorrect files, a situation that may upset users. This addition to the SharePoint backup strategy will save time if a single item restore becomes necessary. References EMC Replication Manager and Microsoft SQL Server A Detailed Review Replication Manager page on EMC.com Ontrack PowerControls page on Kroll Ontrack website Applied Technology 12