Farm Backup and restore

sns 9,241 Reputation points
2023-06-01T16:37:41.2766667+00:00

Please clarify my below 3 points:

How do we take farm backup and is there any PowerShell command for that to do in the SharePoint server,? Please clarify

once backup is done. and we are planning to perform some Maintenace activity and how do we restore the farm backup if some things wrong?

I heard our backup team will take VM snapshot backup for SharePoint servers.

is VM snapshot backup is equivalent to farm backup? and how do we restore VM snapshot backup?

FYI: It is Sharepoint 2016 with 2 wfe, 2 app and 2 DC servers in farm.

Thank you.

SharePoint Server
SharePoint Server
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  1. Emily Du-MSFT 50,006 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2023-06-02T08:41:41.3533333+00:00

    1.You could backup and restore an entire farm through PowerShell or CA.

    (1)PowerShell

    Backup-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -BackupMethod {Full | Differential} [-Verbose]
    
    Restore-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -RestoreMethod Overwrite [-BackupId <GUID>]
    

    (2)CA

    Go to Central Administration -> Monitoring -> Backup and Restore -> Perform a backup.

    Go to Central Administration -> Monitoring -> Backup and Restore -> Restore from a backup.

    2.Per my research, VM snapshot/backup is not equivalent to SharePoint farm backup. SharePoint farm backup only backups all data about SharePoint, VM snapshot/backup backups all data in the VM, including other software data and system settings.

    References:

    https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-9720B104-9875-4C2C-A878-F1C351A4F3D8.html

    https://www.nakivo.com/blog/vm-snapshot-vs-backup/


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  1. sns 9,241 Reputation points
    2023-06-04T16:07:59.0566667+00:00

    Hi Emily Du,

    Thank you for the response.

    Could you please clarify following 3 follow up questions:

    1. I am aware that it depends on farm size , backup depends. but for 10000 users with 4 servers in farm , how long it may take for farm backup to finish. I just want to know approximately
    2. After backup started for farm, all site collection and web apps will switch to read mode or no access mode? Please confirm
    3. so for any activity to perform on SHarePoint servers. so we should take followig 3 actions am i correct?

    a. farm backup

    b. VM snapshot backup ( server backup)

    c. backup of all sharepoint content databases from respective SQL server instance


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