Creating a Recovery Farm
Applies To: System Center 2012 - Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager
A recovery farm is a single-computer SharePoint farm running both SharePoint front-end Web server and SQL Server 2005 with SP2. The recovery farm server should have a local instance of SQL Server running.
Note
The version of SQL Server must be the same or higher than what was installed at the time of backup.
SQL Server VSS Writer should be running on the recovery farm. This computer must be separate from the DPM server, Active Directory, domain controller, any server on which SharePoint data is protected by DPM and farm computers.To create a recovery farm
Install the DPM agent on the recovery farm computer through the DPM server backing up the farm.
Run ConfigureSharepoint.exe. For more information on running ConfigureSharePoint.exe, see Using ConfigureSharePoint.
If you protect a MOSS farm, then the recovery farm must also be MOSS.
The features and templates installed on the recovery farm must match those of the target farm as it was at the time of backup. Any customized templates, added or modified, on the production farm, must be added to the recovery farm to ensure a successful recovery.
Note
You can enable all the features and templates installed on the recovery farm and use it for the different farms existing in your SharePoint environment.
If a service pack or update is installed on the protected farm, the recovery farm must have the same service pack or update installed otherwise item-level restore operations could fail.
Both the recovery and target farms must be in the same language and have the same language packs installed.
Create a Web application and name it DPMRecoveryWebApplication. To create a new Web application, see the instructions at Create or extend Web applications (Windows SharePoint Services).
Ensure that no content database is already attached to the recovery web application (DPMRecoveryWebApplication) as this will cause recoveries to fail. The web application name DPMRecoveryWebApplication is a required name and it must be created for DPM to be able to restore any SharePoint data.
When you restore a site, DPM restores the database to the recovery farm, extracts the site from the recovery farm, and imports it into the target farm. During this process, DPM creates a temporary file on the recovery farm at a location specified in the Recovery Wizard. You should periodically delete the temporary files at that location.
Note
The recovery farm must have enough hard disk space to store the largest content database in the environment. Best practice would dictate that an additional 10-20% be allocated on the temporary storage volume to provide a cushion for growth and reduce the risk of running out of space when trying to recover time-sensitive SharePoint data.