NetVault Plug-in for SharePoint 12.1 - User Guide

Customizations

In the following link, Microsoft recommends that you package customizations to SharePoint sites as solutions that can contain features, Web Parts, security policy changes, and other files. Features are portions of solutions that can be enabled by the server administrator against the farm, a specific web application, a specific site collection, or a specific website.

http://office.microsoft.com/download/afile.aspx?AssetID=AM102447701033

Packaging customizations into solutions simplifies the backup-and-recovery process by enabling SharePoint administrators to back up each solution package and redeploy the solution to the applicable servers if there is a disaster.

For decentralized systems, or systems in which customizations have not or cannot be packaged as solutions, customization files must be backed up individually. Customization files are stored in several places on the front-end web servers, including:

Also, some customizations also write changes to the web.config file. Quest recommends that you consult with your SharePoint development team or customization vendor to determine a definitive list of add-in software file locations.

IIS configuration

For each front-end web server, Quest recommends that you protect the IIS Metabase in addition to the web.config file in the root directory of the hosting virtual server. You can back up these items by using the Plug-in for FileSystem.

For more information, see: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/240941/an-introduction-to-the-iis-metabase

Alternate access mapping

Alternate access-mapping settings for SharePoint can be dumped to a text file by running the following command and including the resulting backup file in a Plug-in for FileSystem backup job:

Document SharePoint Farm configuration

Configurations in SharePoint are set in Central Administration and stored in the Configuration database. Although the Configuration database and Central Administration are protected with SharePoint PowerShell-based or STSADM-based backups, they contain computer-specific information and can only be restored to an environment configured to match exactly, including all software updates, server names, and number of servers. Therefore, manually documenting all the settings in Central Administration is necessary. Items that should be documented are detailed in: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=102839&clcid=0x409

These items include: