Avamar Integration with Sharepoint

Once again, most versions of SharePoint are supported on most server platforms.  SharePoint 2013 on Windows 2012, 2008R2 SP1 down to SharePoint 2007 SP2/3 on Windows 2008 SP2.  Domain privileges are required for backing up SharePoint, and backup can be done to either Avamar or Data Domain on the back end.

Avamar does federated farm backup and recovery in that it discovers the Sharepoint farm topology and backups up data from appropriate hosts, and will automatically recover to appropriate hosts without having to do individual restore to specific components. It will support up to six parallel backup streams if the host has multiple core CPUs, and can do GLR of Sharepoint pieces using 3rd-party tools such as Kroll's Ontrack.

In a standalone sharepoint farm, all that is required is the Avamar client for Windows and the Avamar plug-in for Sharepoint VSS.  To add in the optional GLR, an additional Windows server or workstation running Ontrack Powercontrols for Sharepoint needs to be added for the GUI to restore individual items.  On the standalone Sharepoint farm, we need the client for Windows. the Sharepoint VSS plug-in back-end option and then also the GLR option.  The Ontrack PowerControls Agent for Content Transfer Service (ACTS) also needs to be installed on the Sharepoint farm.

In a distributed Sharepoint farm, Avamar Windows client gets installed on all systems (including the Ontrack Powercontrols system for GLR if in use).  The Sharepoint VSS plug in gets installed in two components, front-end and back-end.  The front-end goes on the web front-end servers and any other WFE servers not containing sharepoint data.  The Sharepoing VSS back-end plug in gets installed on the search server, the database sever, and the central administrator.  The Ontrack Powercontrols ACTS gets installed on the central administrator, also.

Avamar backs up the entire Sharepoint farm.  This is called a Federated backup.

Avamar will do a full DR restore, it will restore the entire farm or individual components to the original or to alternate locations, and the GLR will restore everything from the web app down to the item level to the original farm, an alternate farm or as local files and folders.

Limitations of the Sharepoint VSS plugin are that individual websites, list or list item is handled at the parent site collection level.  Also, the configuration and central administration databases can only be restored as part of a full farm recovery, although individual "non-config" databases may be restored without full recovery.  The Sharepoint VSS plugin does not allow backup to tape (extended retention) nor does it backup the IIS metabase, so all settings should be well documented for each front-end web servers.  Lastly, only SQL full backups are performed and log truncation will not take place.  Set databases to "simple recovery mode" as a workaround.