Data Backup Techniques for SharePoint Environment

SharePoint is a platform which makes the work with data for the companies more efficent. Data is the core of SharePoint. In fact, the whole SharePoint functionality is about managing data. SharePoint environment can be really large and can host thousands of users using and creating big amounts of data that are crucial for an efficent and undisturbed business process. For importance of the data and the demand of having the data always available, it is crucial and sensibly to have backup procedures in place. This degree presents different technologies and approaches to backup the SharePoint environment. With the presentation of architecture, different approaches and programming interfaces, it gives to the developer the base information about the possibilities that are available for developing a backup application. With the intention of better understanding of the SharePoint technologies and environment, we first introduce SharePoint. We shortly describe the base reasons of SharePoint existance, economic success, history from the first versions to the latest versions with different licensing models and functionality. In chapters following that, we present WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 in more detail, followed by focus on architecture and its essence – storing the data. We present how and where the data is stored and what tools and approaches are available for developing backup applications. We also present two APIs that SharePoint support and which we can use to build our own backup application. We are ending the degree with reasoning about which approach is best for protecting the data against loss