Switching the Front-End Web Server

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Applies To: System Center 2012 - Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager

To protect a server farm on servers running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you start the Windows SharePoint Services VSS Writer service (SharePoint VSS Writer service) and install the DPM protection agent on a single front-end Web server. System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM) uses this front-end Web server to perform backups.

The following procedure uses the example of a server farm with two front-end Web servers, Server1 and Server2. DPM uses Server1 to protect the farm. You need to change the front-end Web server that DPM uses to Server2 so that you can remove Server1 from the farm.

Note

If the front-end Web server that DPM uses to protect the farm is unavailable, use the following procedure to change the front-end Web server by starting at step 4.

To change the front-end Web server that DPM uses to protect the farm

  1. Stop the SharePoint VSS Writer service on Server1 by running the following command at a command prompt:

    stsadm -o unregisterwsswriter

  2. On Server1, open the Registry Editor and navigate to the following key:

    HKLM\System\CCS\Services\VSS\VssAccessControl

  3. Check all values listed in the VssAccessControl subkey. If any entry has a value data of 0 and another VSS writer is running under the associated account credentials, change the value data to 1.

  4. Install a protection agent on Server2.

    Warning

    You can only switch Web front-end servers if both the servers are on the same domain.

  5. On Server2, at a command prompt, change the directory to DPM installation location\bin\ and run ConfigureSharepoint. For more information about ConfigureSharePoint, see Using Using ConfigureSharePoint.

  6. There is a known issue when the server farm is the only member of the protection group and the protection group is configured to use tape-based protection. If your server farm is the only member of the protection group using tape-based protection, to change the front-end Web server that DPM uses to protect the farm, you must temporarily add another member to the protection group by performing the following steps:

    1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Protection on the navigation bar.

    2. Select the protection group that the server farm belongs to, and then click Modify protection group.

    3. In the Modify Group Wizard, add a volume on any server to the protection group. You can remove this volume from the protection after the procedure is completed.

    4. If the protection group is configured for short-term disk-based protection and long-term tape-based protection, select the manual replica creation option. This avoids creating a replica for the volume that you are temporarily adding to the protection group.

    5. Complete the wizard.

  7. Remove Server1 from the protection group, selecting to retain the replicas on disk and tape.

  8. Select the protection group that the server farm belongs to, and then click Modify protection group.

  9. In the Modify Group Wizard, on the Select Group Members page, expand Server2 and select the server farm, and then complete the wizard.

    A consistency check will start.

  10. If you performed step 6, you can now remove the volume from the protection group.