Mastering: System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

Chapter 9. Protecting SharePoint Servers

"How does it work?"

"Well, you have front-end servers in a farm hosting the websites, an application layer that handles advanced services like Excel, search, and InfoPath forms, and a database that holds the information."

"OK, how does it work?"

—Ryan, trying to explain SharePoint to someone who has never used it

Ryan's not the only person in the world who has had a tough time explaining the concepts behind SharePoint. For many years, the trick was finding people who'd even heard of it. Although Share-Point has been around as an actual product since 2001, it wasn't until Microsoft released the Office System 2003 wave of products that people really began to hear about it. Even if you could corner someone who knew about SharePoint, getting a coherent description of what it was and what you could do with it was as entertaining as Ryan's quote.

Before we can really start talking about how to protect SharePoint data with DPM, let's first explore SharePoint's history, see how it has developed into the product it is today, and get an understanding of where that data is stored. The modern versions of SharePoint are vastly different from their origins, and the architectural changes between even the last two versions are great enough to produce a significant effect on your ability to protect the data within them.

SharePoint's evolution as a product starts back in the late 1990s, before the introduction of Windows 2000, Active Directory, and the .NET framework. ...