Backup and Restore Strategy

Simply backing up a server is not a viable strategy in and of itself nor is redundancy a suitable substitution for a good backup strategy. A good backup strategy considers uptime and restoration Service Level Agreements (SLA) and the impact of an extended outage.

As in previous versions, there are multiple facets to backing up Lync Server. Obviously, the SQL databases must be backed up. Fortunately, this process is fairly straightforward. There is nothing unique about backing up a Lync Server database compared to another SQL database. However, the Central Management Server (CMS) database must be backed up, too. In contrast, the local SQL express instances on each server role do not need to be backed up because they contain no unique information.

The next consideration is backing up the Lync Server configuration. The familiar LCSCmd process is gone, but it is replaced with the more powerful Lync Server cmdlets. Finally, one must consider a traditional full backup of each of the individual servers. However, in some environments, traditional backups may not be a requirement.

For most, environments in Table 14.1 outlines the best practices related to backup strategy.

Table 14.1 Best Practices for Backup Strategies