Backing Up a Site
It is critical to back up your site. Backing up sites in your hierarchy is the most important recovery preparation step to ensuring a successful recovery in case of a site failure. Although it is possible to recover sites without a backup snapshot, recovering a site with a backup snapshot ensures the least data loss and a less complex recovery process.
To ensure that backing up a site is as easy as possible, SMS provides the Backup SMS Site Server task, which is sometimes referred to as the SMS backup task. The SMS backup task creates a backup snapshot, which is a copy of the site data. The site's backup snapshot is stored at a location that you specify, referred to as the backup snapshot destination. Backing up your site on a regular basis is the main step when preparing for recovery.
Start backing up your site when you have finished configuring the site and that site is functioning properly. Schedule backup cycles to back up your site on a regular basis to ensure having a recent backup snapshot of the site.
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Overview of Site Backup
Overview of Site Backup
An SMS site contains a large amount of data, which is mostly stored in the registry, in system files, and in Microsoft SQL Server(tm) databases. SMS operates properly only when the data in all these data stores is synchronized with each other. If you recover a site and you restore data from one data store but do not restore data from the other data stores, then the data will be out of synchronization, and you might corrupt the site's data.
Backing up only one data store, such as the SMS site database, is not sufficient as a backup strategy. You will not be able to recover a site using a partial site backup because the site's data will be out of synchronization. You must back up all of the site's data as a snapshot. Even if only one data store is corrupted, the entire backup snapshot must be restored as part of a site recovery operation.
There are several SMS systems that contain site data, but it is not necessary to back up all those systems. You can recover a site successfully if you back up a snapshot of the data from the following site systems in your site:
The site server
The SMS site database server
The site provider server
There is no need to back up data from site systems such as distribution points, management points, reporting points, and server locator points. This is because if such site systems fail, then the site server can easily recreate them.
Ideally, every SMS site has more than one computer performing similar site system roles. If a client's default site system is unavailable, the client can reach another site system with a similar site system role and use it until you restore the client's default site system. From the client's perspective, regular operations are not interrupted.
It is not recommended that you back up the site's clients for following reasons:
To properly back up an SMS client, the client services must be stopped. However, there is no reliable way to stop and start the client services. Stopping and starting the client services can potentially corrupt the data on the client's disk or in the backup snapshot. Backing up clients risks data integrity.
Clients are too numerous. It is neither practical nor beneficial to back up and restore thousands of clients.
The effect of losing client data is relatively small.
Backing up a site is automated in SMS 2003 by the integrated Backup SMS Site Server task. Use the SMS backup task to regularly back up data such as SMS files, registry keys, and configuration information from your site server, and from your SMS site database server or provider server, if necessary.
You can use the Backup SMS Site Server task to back up any site in your hierarchy. However, there are some unique issues associated with backing up the central site and backing up secondary sites. These issues are addressed later in this chapter.
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