I wanted to post a quick overview of how to install a DR farm to protect your main farm by log shipping your content databases to the second farm. The trick with the secondary farm is that the log shipped databases will be attached to the web application from the get-go. This allows you to browse the content at anytime using the secondary farm's local url and as bonus you get to search the attached sites so that search is functional all the time as well. See my earlier post for more information.

Here are the high level steps:

  1. Install SQL
  2. Configure log shipping for each content database that needs to be log shipped. Make sure to use the option to leave the database in standby mode and not to disconnect users when restoring logs. This particular configuration will not work without these settings.
  3. Install SharePoint configuring the DR SQL instance as the default SQL server.
  4. Patch to primary farm’s version.
  5. Configure/Start all services.
  6. Create SSP instance. Alternatively, you could restore the latest SSP backup to the farm. This would ensure all relevant settings are synchronized.  You’ll need to disable any content source crawl schedules that should not be crawled while the farm is inactive.
  7. Configure profile import.
  8. Create a new web application for each web application that exists on the primary farm. Specify any database name for the content database. It will be deleted later.
  9. Once the web application is created, DO NOT create a site collection. Instead, navigate to content databases and remove the default content database associated with each new web app.
  10. Add each log shipped content database to the corresponding web application. Ensure the correct number of sites are displayed.
  11. Export the primary farm’s SSL certificate (if applicable) and install it on the DR web servers.
  12. Navigate to the web application AAM and add an AAM that corresponds to the primary site(s) url. Ensure SSL sites are referenced by “https://”
  13. Open %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts with notepad and add an entry for the AAM pointing at the local loopback address as follows:

127.0.01               WebServerUrl

  1. Navigate to the SSP and click on search settings > Choose content sources and crawl schedules.
  2. Locate the “local office server SharePoint sites” content source and choose edit.
  3. Remove any url’s referring to the local farm or server(s) url. Replace with http://<primaryserverurl>. Do the same for the profile content source.  sps3://primaryserverurl. Create or adjust the appropriate schedules and choose OK.
  4. Navigate to mysite settings on the SSP site. Make sure the mysite settings mirror the primary farm.
  5. Finalize the farm by ensuring any specific customizations, modifications, and configurations are installed.

Now you should be able to browse any site and use all the features with the exception that the databases are read-only and functionality that requires alteration won't work until the databases are brought online. See this article for more information on the ramifications of read-only databases. Additionally, any new site creations created on the primary farm won't be available on the secondary farm until those databases containing the sites are reattached. See my earlier post for more on this problem. I will post a slick solution that does this for you automatically in the coming days.