For The User

Work is kicking my butt right now, so I'm going to take care of this now so I can get this information up and give everyone a chance to win a free copy of my book.

I'm doing two different types of giveaways for the SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery Reference Guide, with two copies each for each method available. All entries must be posted either here on my blog or on Twitter by 2 PM EST on Friday, February 6th, 2009. At that time I will draw the two winner's names at random and post the results on this here blog.

1. The first way you can win is by posting a comment on my previous blog post (the book's Table of Contents Preview) with a suggestion for additional material that could go into a subsequent re-write or supplemental material for the book (keep in mind this is simply hypothetical, there's no current plans to do such a thing, I just would love to know your feedback on what we missed). I know that the list may not give you a full idea of what's in the book, but it should give you a general idea of what we've got. Please make sure to include at least your name when you post a comment so that I know who it can be attributed to.
2. The second way you can will is a little bit more goofy, but I wanted to have some fun and use Twitter. So here's the deal: make a post on Twitter as a reply to me (@ferringer) with these two pieces of data: your estimate of how many years I've been shaving my head and the month I started doing it. The number of years will be used to determine the winners, and if there are more than two people who guess the correct amount of time I'll use the month as a tiebreaker. If that still doesn't break the tie, I'm considering either a basket-weaving or macram‚ competition (it's all about the arts and crafts!). Please make sure to make the Tweet as a reply to me, otherwise I might not see it. As a not-so-special but added bonus, I'll also start following/stalking everyone on Twitter who participates
3. If you don't win those, there will be a special second chance drawing for all entrants for one last book.

If you're related to me, work with me, or married to me, you are not eligible for this contest (sorry). Winners will have their names (and/or Twitter accounts) posted here. If I am unable to contact the winners for a viable mailing address, a runner-up will assume the duties of the winner if for some reason he or she cannot fulfill those responsibilities. Void where prohibited, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera /The King and I

Ok, best of luck to everyone, I'm looking forward to your ideas and guesses.

Below is the Table of Contents (ToC) for the SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery Reference Guide along with my personal descriptions and commentary. You can also see the book's ToC on Amazon for a complete outline of each chapter right here.

NOTE: I'll be firing off an additional blog post shortly detailing how I'll be giving away five copies of our book. I recommend reading through this list and maybe even checking out the ToC link on Amazon, as it will be useful for you if you're interesting in winning one of those copies.

1. Getting Started with SharePoint Disaster Recovery – To quote Rage Against the Machine, “It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here, what better time than now?”
2. End User Resources – In this chapter we cover some of the ways end users can help themselves preserve critical resources, documents, and data with functionality built right into SharePoint. The two big topics are Recycle Bins and Version Control, but we also talk about exporting list templates, WebDAV, and the Explorer View option.
3. SharePoint Designer's Backup and Restore Tools – Now we're starting to move away somewhat from SharePoint's end user Disaster Recovery (DR) resources, but not completely. SharePoint Designer (SPD) sits in an interesting place, positioned as a tool that can be used by end users, developers, designers, and administrators. The chapter covers the mechanics of the various ways a site can be backed up and restored via SPD and discusses the advantages and drawbacks to those approaches.
4. The Central Administration Site's Backup and Restore Tools – Now we're getting into the administrative experience for SharePoint DR. Chapter 4 provides information on the Central Administration (CA) site, prerequisites for using it's DR tools, detailed steps for how to backup and restore SharePoint through the CA site, and the pros and cons of its use.
5. STSADM's Backup and Restore Operations – This chapter is very similar in its approach to the CA site's chapter, except that now we're covering the STSADM.exe command line tool for SharePoint administration. It dives into the differences between using it for site collection backups and restores versus catastrophic backups and restores, and the pros and cons section also details with the differences between STSADM's backup/restore and export/import operations.
6. Tips and Tricks for SharePoint's Built-In Backup and Restore Tools – This chapter rolls up quite a few best practices, gotchas, tips, and tricks that you may encounter when using the CA site or STSADM for DR. A lot of them are pretty self-contained, but the chapter is basically divided into two sections, one dealing with specific common problems and one for SharePoint DR administrative best practices.
7. Custom Development and Scripting for SharePoint Disaster Recovery – Chapter 7 covers the groundwork you need to understand before developing your own custom solution for SharePoint DR. This can fall into two main categories: scripting and full application development. We didn't really get into a lot of specific code for this topic, because there are so many different directions you can go in to accomplish your goals for SharePoint DR. Instead, we show you some of the options available as well as the various implications your decision may have.
8. SQL Server 2005 Backup and Restore – The name of this chapter pretty much says it all: it details how to backup and restore databases in SQL Server 2005. We do discuss the other database options for SharePoint, but at the time we wrote this chapter we felt that the 2005 release was the one most likely to be in wide use and our time was best spent focusing on it. While the actual procedures shown in this chapter can really be used with any SQL Server 2005 database, we also spend a good amount of time discussing their implications in a SharePoint environment and how SharePoint's specific needs and configuration can impact your approach.
9. SQL Server 2005 High Availability – A comprehensive DR approach goes way beyond simply backing up and restoring your data, files, and environment; you also need to design it to stay up and running in the face of adversity, known as High Availability (HA). Chapter 9 covers the three methods available for making SQL Server 2005 highly available and weighs the pros and cons of each with regards to SharePoint.
10. Windows Server 2003 Backup and Restore – Much like SQL Server 2005, we decided to focus on backing up and restoring Windows Server 2003 and SharePoint's crucial supporting platforms that run on it. Specific resources to backup such as the 12 Hive, IIS, the Global Assembly Cache, etc are discussed, as well as how to use Server 2003's built-in backup and restore tool
11. Windows Server 2003 High Availability – The two main topics here are load balancing your SharePoint servers (discussing both software- and hardware-based load balancers) and other targets for HA design (storage, server clusters, infrastructure redundancy).
12. SharePoint Disaster Recovery Planning and Key Concepts – This is where we start to move away from the technical aspects of SharePoint DR and start to deal with the concepts and procedures of a comprehensive SharePoint DR approach. DR Planning is not unique to SharePoint, and this chapter is intended to give you an introduction to some of the terminology and activities that go into creating a well-design DR plan for SharePoint.
13. SharePoint Disaster Recovery Design and Implementation – Chapter 13 walks you through the key aspects of creating and implementing a SharePoint DR plan. It is intended to get you thinking about what you should include in your plan, what it's goals are, and what resources you will need to have to be successful.
14. SharePoint Disaster Recovery Testing and Maintenance – It isn't enough to just write a SharePoint DR plan, if you think that's all you have to do you will be painfully disappointed the first time you need to implement it. We walk you through how to test your plan to make sure it is effective and can be successful, as well as the crucial need to continually maintain that plan once its in place. These aren't necessarily easy things to do, but can make or break a SharePoint DR plan.
15. Conclusion – To quote Ferris Bueller, “You're still here? It's over!”

We also included two appendices for the book, but because of printing constraints they're available online as opposed to being printed in the book:

• Appendix A – This is a summary of a wide variety of Backup/Restore and DR tools available for SharePoint.  Most of them are offered by third party vendors, some are free, and all of them require an additional install beyond SharePoint. We really tried not to show any favoritism (especially since we really don't have much experience with any of the tools), but still give you some idea of what each tool's vendor says it is capable of.
• Appendix B – At the end of each chapter we have several review questions designed to test your understanding of the material we covered in the chapter. This appendix has our answers to those questions, just like your old grade school math book.

As an aside, we really tried to make a point to detail pros and cons for each SharePoint DR task, tool, or approach that is covered in the book.What we found is that there's a lot of different tools, approaches, and methods that you can use as a part of your SharePoint DR plan, and they each can make sense to a wide variety of audiences. Which one is best for you largely depending on your specific needs, requirements, and resources. We really tried to give you the best perspective possible to make that decision, but ultimately its your call.