IBM OEMs New Data Protection for SharePoint

The new version of Tivoli Storage Manager extends to support Microsoft SharePoint environments, which lack backup and restore capabilities.

IBM introduced May 2 a storage software management package for OEM distribution that provides backup and restore capabilities for Microsoft SharePoint environments.

SharePoint is a Web-based workplace for online collaboration, which provides sharing of business data and support of Microsoft Office documents. Deployments are in the tens of millions worldwide, a company spokesperson said.

The new Tivoli Storage Manager for SharePoint, IBM's enterprise data protection software developed with OEM partner AvePoint, aims to reduce the risks of data loss, help users protect the integrity of data and comply with new data-retention requirements, a spokesperson for the Armonk, N.Y., company said.

TSM for MS SharePoint features hierarchical storage management, support for hundreds of devices and automatic policy-based management of stored objects, the spokesperson said.

"SharePoint Portal Server is growing in popularity in companies of all sizes and is fast becoming a standard for information sharing and collaboration," Lauren Whiteside, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass., told eWEEK.

"If the SPS repository contains business-critical information, then end-user productivity will depend on the application's availability and the items in its Microsoft SQL Server-based data store - -think about how quickly end users became dependent on Exchange. So having a copy of the data for recovery has created a new requirement for backup administrators," she said.

No Concept of 'Recycle Bin'

A deleted item in SPS can't be recovered because "there's no concept of a recycle bin," Whiteside said.

"There are basic utilities that ship with SPS; the backup-and-restore utility handles recovery at the portal level only," Whiteside said. "Granular recovery of a single file, list item or document is left to third-party backup applications. In the early days of Exchange this was a similar problem ... - there was - no way to restore one mailbox or piece of mail; this eventually got fixed."

The biggest drawback of the utility, Whiteside said, is that the restore job overwrites existing portal data, causing data loss unless the user redirects the restore to a standby SharePoint server (which means added cost and complexity in recovery), she said.

Most of the major backup applications support SPS through an application-specific module that communicates with the backup engine - with only one or two exceptions, Whiteside said.

Granular Backup and Restore a Key Feature

TSM for SharePoint will offer users backup and recovery of MS SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and MS Office SharePoint Server 2007 (running Windows Storage Server 2.0 and 3.0 software) environments. This includes site-level, subsite-level and item-level restore capability, data integrity, integration with both disk and tape backup environments, and policy-based management of backup data, the spokesperson said.

TSM for MS SharePoint provides data backup at a granular level, allowing for recovery of all lists, libraries and items, including events, links, tasks, contacts, announcements, discussion boards, surveys, issues, portal links, layout templates and security metadata.

Partnering with AvePoint, of Jersey City, N.J., gave IBM a faster time-to-market than developing its own SPS module for TSM, Whiteside told eWEEK. "It's a great strategy that will satisfy TSM users' needs," she said.

"IBM integrated - AvePoint - with TSM to deliver an integrated solution," Whiteside said. "SPS data can be backed up to disk and migrated to tape by TSM - with TSM tracking everything in the TSM catalog."

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Microsoft SharePoint is available through IBM and IBM Business Partners, the spokesperson said. Pricing information was not made available.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International