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Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) and NetBackup

Article: 100032868
Last Published: 2016-08-14
Ratings: 0 0
Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection

Problem

Many SharePoint environments are starting to adapt Remote BLOB Storage solutions to optimize storage within SQL. Unfortunately this complicates the backup/recovery of SharePoint and prevents granular recovery from working properly.
The NetBackup for SharePoint team has successfully tested Metalogix StoragePoint, AvePoint, and Microsoft Filestream solutions for Remote BLOB Storage and found that all support full database and farm backup and recovery. All do not however support granular recovery.

 

Solution

Granular Recovery with RBS providers will NOT work at this time but you can backup and restore the entire farm or databases.

Farm/Database Backup/Recovery - StoragePoint
Metalogix StoragePoint has an additional configuration Database that needs to be protected for Disaster Recovery scenarios. You will want to follow the steps below when using StoragePoint:
  1. Backup the SharePoint Content Database using the “Microsoft SharePoint Resources\” directive as normal.
  2. Backup the BLOB Store(s) using a Windows backup.
  3. Backup the StoragePoint Database (only necessary if StoragePoint configuration changes have occurred) you will need to configure a NetBackup SQL server backup policy to backup this database.
 To do a complete recovery you would use the steps below:
  1. Recovery the StoragePoint Database first (only necessary if StoragePoint configuration changes have occurred)
  2. Recovery the BLOB Store(s)
  3. Recovery the SharePoint Content Database
When using StoragePoint you also want carefully plan your BLOB retention policy to match your restore SLA this will allow you to quickly restore only the smaller content database, as the BLOBs would already exist on the BLOB store.
 
Farm/Database Backup/Recovery - Microsoft Filestream
The Microsoft file stream solution appears to be unique in that when the SharePoint farm or database is backed up, the associated BLOBs are also backed up as well.   This means that you don’t need to backup the BLOB store separately.   Using the SharePoint agent to backup the “Microsoft SharePoint Resources\” directive will result in the BLOBID and associated BLOBs being backed up.
 
We are also investigating the viability of supporting GRT for Microsoft Filestream.
 
Farm/Database Backup/Recovery – AvePoint and other RBS solutions
 In order to backup most Remote BLOB Storage environments you must create a separate backup for the SharePoint database and the underlying BLOB store. The SharePoint farm/database backup can be done using the NetBackup SharePoint agent.   To backup the entire farm choose the “Microsoft SharePoint Resources\” directive as normal.   This will backup the entire farm however it will only backup the BLOBID links to the actual items which are now stored in the Remote BLOB Store.
 
A second Windows Backup is required to back up the BLOB Store.   This must be done AFTER backing up the database to ensure no broken links.

To restore this data simply restore the BLOB store first and then restore the SharePoint farm or databases.

Note: We are working on a solution for this with StoragePoint but this is still in the early stages with no release vehicle announced.   This article will be updated as this joint initiative progresses.

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