Hi, what's the bottom line on how to restore a FE or Application server in a medium size farm? If the FE or AP server blows up, is it possible to just restore the entire server from backup, boot it up, and life goes on? Does anyone have any experience recovering a FE or AP server? What are common issues that might require a restore? We have a medium size MOSS 2007 farm, with 2 load-balanced FE servers, 2 application servers (one of which hosts Search), and a dedicated SQL 2005 server. We use BackupExec 12 for our BR solution. Right now I'm pretty sure what has to be done to recover the SQL server (basically restore system databases, restore content databases, reboot, restore config database, reboot web servers). But uncertain about how to restore the web servers. Assuming it's just a system restore from last full backup? Spent quite some time looking for a definitive answer to this question, but it seems every source on SharePoint Restore is always a list of what to backup, tools you can use, and gotchas. Even the book "SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery Guide" doesn't have procedures for specific DR scenarios. Many thanks in advance!

Hi, Firstly, before you ask this question, you need to know what data did you put on your web front-end servers and application servers. Rebuilding WFE servers from the application binaries is a straightforward process. Because they are stateless by default, any server can serve any content once they have been populated with required information from the SQL Server Configuration database. However, if any customizations have been made to the WFEs they need to be reinstalled after the WFEs have been rebuilt. This can be accomplished using SharePoint solutions or the Windows Server 2003 Backup Tool (Ntbackup.exe). Secondly, you need to determine which role did you deploy on the application server. Search servers are best restored from server images. If indexes are small, the search server can be returned to the farm with a rebuild of the indexes after the image has been restored. The native tools available in SharePoint handle the backup of the indexes, along with the Shared Service Provider(s). For SSP, You should back up the SSP on a regular schedule to ensure that you can restore the content and settings in case of a server failure. Other roles, such as Excel calculation services, which can be backed up by a combination of the SSP backup and a backup of the application server. Thanks, Rock Wang Forum Support Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff@microsoft.com. Regards, Rock Wang Microsoft Online Community Support

Hi Rock, thanks very much for your reply. Sorry, but I'm still not clear. It seems to me that because the FE and App servers are stateless, they can be fully restored from backup without a manual rebuild, say, for example if some server hardware breaks and is replaced. Is this true? If so then I don't understand why it's necessary to know what data is on the FE or App server, or what role it serves. Simply restore from the last Full backup, and it's back to normal, right? Can you think of any other scenarios in which a restore from last Full backup would not work? Sorry if I'm not understanding you correctly. Again, we use Symantec BackupExec 12 with the SharePoint agent. It's configured to backup all SharePoint components on each server. Many thanks, Chris