The centralized storage of any data is an inherently risky business. Disasters take many shapes and forms, and they can range from something as small as the deletion of a single document all the way up to the destruction of a key facility by a tornado. Because disasters come in so many shapes and sizes, and because they are inherently unexpected, it is an exercise in futility to attempt to prevent them. The most prudent course of action is to simply accept that disasters occur and to plan for a time when your environment is impacted by one.

This whitepaper introduces the broad topic of disaster recovery (DR) and how its principles can be specifically applied to the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform. Though the technical mechanics of how to backup, restore, and generally preserve SharePoint content are not discussed, backup and restoration are investigated with the intent of explaining how these approaches fit into a more far-reaching DR strategy.