Fixyourcpu’s technical blog and tips

I’ve found that the steps to restore a Sharepoint farm can be quite complex.  Since the company I currently work for has become quite reliant on MOSS 2007 I started looking into how I would restore the server in the event of a failure where a new machine would not to be built.  This scenario involves a one server farm running MOSS 2007  with a SQL 2005 database.  The farm is backed up using Symantec BackupExec 12.5 agent.  By no means is this a comprehensive list of exact steps but it is a quick read of the general process and should help you if you are looking for what you need to document about your configuration and what info you might be missing.

What you’ll need to make the Restore easier:

• A backup of your Sharepoint farm made with Symantec BackupExec
• A list of your web applications and associated databases
• The build version of the farm
• A list of domain service accounts
• MOSS 2007 install media and key.

1. Install Windows, updates, IIS basically everything needed for a base install.
2. Install the BackupExec agent.
3. Ass any domain service accounts to local admins group.
4. Install MOSS 2007.  You need to also install any updates as well.  In my case I needed to install the WSS Sp1 update an then MOSS SP1.  If you try the restore to a different build number it won’t work in most cases.
5. Install SQL.
6. Run the Sharepoint Products and Technologies wizard.  Create a new farm.
7. Configure Sharepoint – This is  a good general overview of installing and configuring Sharepoint – http://blogs.msdn.com/martinkearn/archive/2007/03/28/how-to-install-sharepoint-server-2007-on-a-single-machine.aspx
8. On the Symantec server, go to restore, view by resource, browse to your old server and farm, check off the portal database.
9. Go to the MS Sharepoint Redirection, choose redirect Microsoft Sharepoint sets, enter your Portal url and server name.

dmw Sharepoint moss 2007 dr, sharepoint disaster recovery, sharepoint restore, symanec sharepoint agent