Hi
I am trying to create a backup strategy that will enable me to failover to a DR farm in the event of a disaster
I need to backup Content DBs, Service applications, Web Applications and File system locations
We are using AOAGs - the plan for content is to use DPM to backup from a secondary replica in the DR datacenter
Can also use DPM for the file system locations (15hive, GAC, ULS logs etc) but what about Service Applications? We can also backup the service application databases from the replica - but do I also need to backup the Service application proxies (must be done by Central admin/PowerShell)? Or can I restore to the DR farm just by attaching the Service App DBs and then creating new service apps pointing to the DBs (will that even work?)?
Web Application backups - The SharePoint tools (GUI and PowerShell) don't allow a config only backup which means either backing up all the Web apps and their content DBs to a network share (size, performance implications etc) - or nothing. By nothing I mean creating empty Web applications in the DR farm with the same configuration as the Primary and in the event of disaster attaching the restored Content DBs to the relevant web applications - again though, will that work?
What is the best way of ensuring that if we lose the Primary farm - we can not just recover the data but also ensure that the service applications also work as expected
At the moment I am thinking of using DPM to back up all the Databases except Search, use SharePoint to backup the Service app proxies and create empty web applications in the DR farm -
Thoughts anyone?
Cheers
J