In addition to the components you identified in Planning for High Availability Supportfor implementing high availability for your organization, you also need to determine the backup and restoration components required for your organization. The components you require are determined by your backup and restoration strategy. The backup and restoration strategy for your organization is determined largely by the degree of criticality of your components. With Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you have several options, ranging from simply backing up individual databases to creating complete secondary sites where hardware and software are duplicated and stand ready to take over in case of a site failure. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 provides tools to help automate the backup and restoration processes, as well as to facilitate effective and efficient backup and restoration.
To understand the requirements and options related to backing up and restoring Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and to implement the most appropriate backup and restoration procedures, you need to understand the following:
- Settings that must be backed up and restored. These settings
include global level settings, pool-level settings, and
computer-level settings.
- Data that must be backed up and restored. This includes
databases and file shares residing on the Front End Server,
back-end server, Archiving Server, Monitoring Server, and Group
Chat Server, as well as domain information stored in Active
Directory Domain Services (AD DS).
- Available restoration mechanisms. This includes whether it is
sufficient to restore service by simply recovering data and
settings by restoring data or rebuilding one or more servers or
pools at the time that restoration is required, or if a providing
the appropriate level of availability requires maintaining a
separate site that can be brought quickly online in the event of
loss of service.
Making these decisions is an important decision that requires understanding and evaluating all available options. It is recommended that you create a complete backup and restoration plan before starting deployment, and then use the information in that plan to determine the components required to support backup and restoration for your organization.
For details about determining the backup and restoration
strategy for your organization, as well as the tools and processes
for backing up and restoring components and sites, see