Wahid's Blog

Sorry for the lack of updates and posts. I have some ideas that I just haven’t been able to work on. Unfortunately, I’m a bit busy at work and I have been working on my virtual environment.

There’s tons of activity on the blogs and twitter, everyone is excited about the upcoming SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas! I just picked up my (electronic) badge as I will be “Live Blogging” from the conference next week.

Besides the conference, I’m hoping to have my virtual environment up to test some best practices, add-ons (from CodePlex), and 3rd party products. EndUserSharePoint.com has some really exciting workshops coming up as well that extend the functionality of SharePoint. I’ve used some of these techniques at previous work sites and user’s are always amazed! Check ‘em out at EUSP Online Workshops.

This is the 4th and final article of the Free SharePoint Backups series. If you haven’t already, check out:

• Article 1: Back up Site Collections automatically.
• Article 2:Perform a Farm-level backup automatically.
• Article 3:Back up other SharePoint componenets.

So, in the last article of the series we’ll look at some of those 3rd party products. I have to first say that I am not employed or paid by any companies mentioned here. Also, I have not tested every product in detail, these are just some that I have used or seen demos on. You can bing (or google) SharePoint Backup Products and get many many more.

Product: Symantec BackupExec with SharePoint Plugin (link)
Features:

• Supports both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 as well as Windows SharePoint Services 2.0/3.0.
• Using a 32-bit or 64-bit Backup Exec 11d media server, this agent can protect 32-bit or 64-bit MOSS-2007 servers and can protect Single-Server or Multi-Server Farms.
• This Agent also comes bundled with the innovative Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) that helps IT Administrators save time and money by giving them the ability to restore individual documents from a single-pass database backup.

Comments: I think this is one of the less expensive options. BackupExec is good software and you can use it to backup file shares, Exchange and other products.

Product: Idera SharePoint Backup (link)
Features:

Comments: I really like the fact that users can recover their own items. This product looks promising. There are whitepapers and datasheets on the vendors website.

Product: AvePoint DocAve Backup & Restore (link)
Features:

• Intelligent, Business-Aware Protection
• True Enterprise-level SharePoint Backup
• Restore With Minimal Business Interruption and Data Loss
• Satisfy Stringent RTO’s and RPO’s Within Your SLAs
• Reduce Human Errors by Simplifying Full System Backup
• Deployment and Management
• Compliance with Government Regulations

Comment: AvePoint’s product is just one you have to see to realize its power. The site is great and has tons of information including a free download of a backup product. Additionally, AvePoint offers several other SharePoint products for IT Administrators. If you have NetApp hardware, check out SMMOSS.

Product: metalogix Archive Manager for SharePoint (link)
Features:

Comments: I’m not sure if I could consider this a full backup product in terms of disaster recovery. Nonetheless, it seems like a great tool to manage SharePoint.

Product: Mimosa Systems NearPoint for SharePoint (link)
Features:

Comments: This product seems close to Idera’s product. I haven’t really tested it.

For more detailed reviews of backup and other products, check out SharePointReviews.com. This is a great site, it is packed with user reviews of many 3rd party products with ratings and all.

And that’s a wrap!