Create a recovery farm (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Applies To: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Topic Last Modified: 2009-03-10
We recommend that you create a recovery farm when you are recovering an out-of-date site collection or site. A recovery farm is typically a single server farm that you can temporarily restore data to. The recovery farm is not intended to be a live farm. Your recovery farm should not be visible on the network and should not serve users. The recovery farm does not have to have the same hardware as your primary farm and can be a virtual farm.
A recovery farm must match the live farm environment from the time that the backup was taken. This includes the following:
Identical updates and software versions, although you may not be required to match editions.
Identical features and templates enabled.
On the recovery farm, do not enable outgoing e-mail, and do not enable Site Use Confirmation and Deletion. For more information, see Manage unused Web sites (Windows SharePoint Services Central Administration Help).
The recovery farm must be separate from the computer that is running Active Directory directory services or Active Directory Domain Services, from other farm computers, and from the Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) server, if one is running in your environment. The version of SQL Server must be the same as or more recent than what was installed at the time of backup. We recommend that, if it is possible, you use Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with Service Pack 2 (SP2), or a more recent version.
In an environment running DPM, the recovery farm must be a single-server installation.
Create a recovery farm
Create a simple server farm on a stand-alone computer. For more information, see Deploy in a simple server farm (Windows SharePoint Services).
(If creating a recovery farm for DPM). Your recovery farm must be running SQL Server 2005 with SP2 or a more recent version. The SQL Server VSS Writer service (SQLWriter) must be running. For more information, see SQL Writer Service (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=123427).
(If creating a recovery farm for DPM). Install a DPM Protection Agent on the recovery farm, from the DPM server from which the recovery was initiated, by using the DPM Administrator Console.
Create a Web application and name it. For more information, see Create or extend Web applications (Windows SharePoint Services).
(If creating a recovery farm for DPM). The Web application must be named DPMRecoveryWebApplication. Leave the initial content database that is created when you create the Web application, but do not add more content databases to the Web application, or recovery may fail.
The destination farm must contain a site collection with the same path as the original protected site. If the site collection does not exist, you can create an empty site collection with the correct path on the destination farm before you perform the recovery.
See Also
Concepts
Back up and restore the farm (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Back up and restore the entire farm (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 technology)
Back up and restore Web applications by using built-in tools (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Back up and restore site collections by using built-in tools (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Back up and restore content databases (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Back up and recover site objects (Windows SharePoint Services)
Back up and restore an item by using DPM (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Back up and restore a site by using DPM (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)