14.8. Third-Party Backup Tools

There are alternatives for the backup tools that come with SharePoint; both specific SharePoint backup utilities, and SharePoint agents for general backup applications. They will often make it easier to do backups and in some cases make it possible to restore things that SharePoint cannot do, such as restoring a specific version of a document.

The purpose of this section is to give you a general overview of these third-party tools to make you aware that they exist and how they can be an alternative to SharePoint's own tools. This is not a complete list of everything that is available, so please do not get upset if I don't mention your favorite tool. As of this writing, only the backup tools from AvePoint are available for SharePoint 2007, but the other tools will most likely be released sometime during 2007, so they are mentioned here as well.

14.8.1. General Backup Agents

Practically all popular backup applications available today know how to back up SharePoint sites besides the file system, MS Exchange, and other applications. Mostly you will need to purchase a special "SharePoint 2007 Agent" to enable these applications to back up and restore SharePoint information. Below is a table with the most common backup tools and their SharePoint add-ons.

Backup ProgramSharePoint Add-OnComment
Veritas BackupExecFor WSS and MOSS 2007Can restore single items, sites, site collections, and portal sites.
Veritas NetBackupFor WSS and MOSS 2007Can restore single ...

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