Migration Archiving - SharePoint Archiver

How to Set Up and Run a Migration Archive Operation

Overview

This section discusses archive information that is specific to the SharePoint Archiver Agent. See Migration Archiving for a general overview.

During archive operations, the SharePoint Archiver Agent will archive versioned and non-versioned documents that meet the preset criteria specified in the Archiving Rules tab of the Subclient Properties dialog box. Information about each archived object is placed into a stub (when enabled) that can then be used as a link to recover the data.

The configuration of the archiving rules is central to customizing archive operations to meet the needs of your organization. Continue on to the following section for an in-depth discussion of the archiving rules for these agents.

How to Set Up and Run a Migration Archive Operation

The following section provides the steps to set up and run a Migrate Archive Operation:

Enable the Archiving Rules for the subclient that contains the content you wish to archive. See Enable (Disable) Archiving Rules for step-by-step instructions.

By default, this option is disabled. When selected, all archiving rules will be enabled except for Stub Rules.
Configure the Archiving Rules for the subclient. In particular, decide if you want to create stubs in your environment. Even if the Archiving Rules are disabled, the Stub Rules will apply. See Configure Archiving Rules - SharePoint Archiver Agent for step-by-step instructions.
Run an archive operation. See Start a Migration Archiving Operation for step-by-step instructions.
- If stubs were created, end-users or applications can recover files with a non-browse recovery operation by simply opening the stub file, thereby causing it to be restored. (see Recover Data from SharePoint Server User Interface).
- If stubs were not created, then you can perform a browse recovery with CommCell Console (see Recover Data from the CommCell Console.

Migration Archiving Considerations

Before performing any archive procedure, review the following information:

When SharePoint Archiver archives data, it creates a database file to track the stubs that will appear in the SharePoint user interface. Stubs contain information about the archived data for recovery purposes. This file, SPDAStubDatabase.db, resides in the Job_Results folder and is not backed up with the SharePoint Database iDataAgent. Therefore, you should back up this file with the Windows File System iDataAgent to ensure that stubs can be recovered.
For successful archiving and recovery, the user performing the operation must have write permissions to the SPDAStubDatabase.db file that resides in the Job_Results folder. Otherwise, you may receive the error Failed to update database with new version number.
The SharePoint Archiver Agent should be installed on all Web Front End servers of a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server or Windows SharePoint Services computer in order to complete successful recalls. However, when SharePoint is configured with multiple Web Front End Servers, archive operations should be run from only one of the Web Front End servers. Therefore, the SPDAStubDatabase.db must be replicated across all Web Front End servers using Distributed File System (DFS) Replication. See Step-by-Step Guide for the Distributed File System Solution in Windows Server 2003 R2 for details. Skip the Deploying a Namespace section and follow the instructions in the Deploying DFS Replication section instead.
Filters can be used in conjunction with the "Items That Failed" list on the data protection Job History Report to eliminate backup or archive failures by excluding items which consistently fail that are not integral to the operation of the system or applications. Some items fail because they are locked by the operating system or application and cannot be opened at the time of the data protection operation. This often occurs with certain system-related files and database application files.
Set the dwDisableAutoDiscovery registry key to 1 if you want to disable auto-discovery of sites for user-created subclients.
If all items in a Library with a Major and Minor Version setting are getting archived, the latest version will remain available and a stub will not be created.
At the completion of an archive operation, the SharePoint Archiver checks for any new Cluster Servers. An alert can be configured to restart Internet Information Server (IIS) Services when new Cluster Servers are detected. See Alerts and Monitoring for more information.
In a SharePoint environment with more than 500 site collections, it is recommended to increase the size and number of log files with the <logfile>_MaxLogFileSize and <logfile>_MaxLogFileBackups registry keys. Replace <logfile> with any desired name (e.g., SPDBBackup, SPDocBackup, SPDocArchive, etc.).