Guest Blog by AppAssure Software's Joshua Hoffman - Simplify SharePoint Backup and Recovery

Backups are boring. In most organizations, oversight of backups is a tedious job of managing media, verifying operations, and waiting for something to happen. Like I said – boring. That is, right up until the moment your CEO accidentally deletes a file he needs. Or right up until that presentation you need to give in two hours won’t open because the file is corrupt. All of the sudden, backup is not so boring. Backup just became very important.

The truth is though, as critical as reliable data and application protection is, we still don’t want to have to think about it. It’s that tedious job I described earlier, remember? But it doesn’t have to be.

Take SharePoint for example. Many of us have probably been there: a document has been accidentally deleted from a library, or a site is experiencing difficulty and needs to be recovered. The process usually involves restoring a production database from last night’s tapes, building a temporary SharePoint recovery farm, and so on. Enter DocRetriever for SharePoint from AppAssure Software.

DocRetriever connects directly to native SQL Server backup files as well as any application aware snapshot and enables browsing of SharePoint objects as though you were connected directly to a live SharePoint site. SharePoint objects such as sites, site hierarchies, list items, libraries and views can be recovered directly to the production SharePoint servers, to alternate SharePoint servers or directly to a file system, with complete preservation of all permissions and metadata.

DocRetriever supports a number of backup sources, including SQL Server 2005 and 2008 databases, SAN snapshots, Microsoft Data Protection Manager backups, and of course, AppAssure’s on Replay 4 data protection platform, so installation is quick and easy.

More information, as well as a free 30-day trial of DocRetriever is available at appassure.com. And as a bonus, AppAssure will continue to offer their free limited version of DocRetriever for SharePoint, DocRetriever Lite until December 31, 2009 with no expiration date once installed. DocRetriever Lite allows for unlimited restorations of individual documents from SharePoint backups.

Why bother with restoring entire databases and building temporary recovery farms when you can restore a document, library or entire site with a simple point-and-click? We don’t need backup and recovery to be exciting, but at least it can be easy!