Re: How Safe are Backups?

From: Todd Klindt (usenet_at_klindt.org)
Date: 02/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:48:45 -0600

I thought about submitting an RFP to Tech Ed and doing a talk about this,
but I couldn't find a way to. There is little information out there about
it.

Let me see if I can answer some of these questions.

1) Yes, we do SQL backups as well. It really isn't an option not to. You
need to do SQL backups to keep SQL running happy and to keep log file sizes
down. The two backup schemes serve difference purposes though. SQL backups
are to recover from a catastrophic failure. STSADM backups are for site or
document recovery. Of course you can use either method to achieve either
goal, but in our case we use what we have found to be the best way to
address each vulnerability.

2) I'm embarrased to answer this one. Our largest site, and therefore our
largest STSADM backup file is 18 GB. We have another at 16GB and then
several in the 5 to 7 GB range. The one time I had problems with
restorations I don't remember size figuring in. The largest ones restored.
If I hold my breath more, it's just because the big ones take so freakin'
long to restore. :) I know we restored a 6 GB one just a few days ago
without incident. MS recommends that Site Collections not get larger than 2
GB. I wish we could do that.

3) Like I said above, the STSADM backups are really only for document and
site retrieval, so config information hasn't really figured in. When I
restore our site to another box, I install everything and configure it
manually and then add the Content DBs to WSS. To me, it's akin to backing
up an OS. Rebuilding the OS manually doesn't take much time or effort and
the times I've tried to restore it instead of rebuilding it hasn't gone
well. That being said, I am working on a tool that will import and export
managed paths. That's been one stumbling block we've had in our restoration
process, and there is no way I can find to enumerate the managed paths other
than scraping the central admin screen. STSADM has addpath and delpath but
no enumpath. That's the closest I've come to backup config data. Now, we
do back up the ConfigDB when we back up SQL, but I have never restored it
into service. I have restored it for reference though. Hope that makes
sense.

I hope all that helps,
tk

"Dan" <dpratte@dpratte.com> wrote in message
news:1109246555.631675.228730@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Todd and Patrick...I can't thank you enough for this feedback. There
> has been remarkably little discussion on this important topic
> especially discussion which contains the hard information as you have
> given. Yours is a vastly greater undertaking than mine, having 1100+
> files. Would you mind commenting further?
>
> 1) One might say you have a 99+% recovery rate. In order to get closer
> to 100%, are you suggesting one must rely on SQL content database
> backups? Am I to understand that is why you do both types of backup?
>
> 2) I am wondering approx how large your largest stsadm file is? Average
> size? ... and is there any correlation between file size and
> restorability? Do you 'hold your breath' more with the big ones upon
> restore?
>
> 3) The idea of restoring an stsadm file to a backup server is appealing
> to me, in order to selectively retrieve content. However as I mentioned
> in my initial post, this has been problematic for me. Yet your response
> leads me to believe you do this. Do you have any advice regarding
> backup server configuration or restore procedure?
>
> Again, thanks a million for your insights.
>
> DAN
>

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