The purpose of this document will be to discuss the steps on how to backup information pertaining to the Microsoft Identity Management Synchronization Manager products.
In this document we will refer to and focus on all of these products as Synchronisation Service.
This document will not explain backing up the other Microsoft Identity Management components. Following components ewill not be covered here:
Please review the bottom of this document for links containing information on backing up these products.
Developing and maintaining solutions built with any of the Microsoft Identity Manager Products will generate the need to back up your information.
Depending on what modifications are being applied, will depend on what items you should back up. You may not need to back up everything and thus the reason for the different scenarios. We will discuss what those areas are, and why you want to backup these pieces of the solution.
A good practice would be to develop some sort of daily and/or weekly backup strategy. It will assist in developing a good disaster recovery plan when executing updates or modifications to the current environment. A possible scenario may be to where the Identity Management Solution runs without issue for months. Then a server crash happens. If the information is backed up, it will allow for less down time.
Microsoft Identity Management products are a client/server application. The backend database is a Microsoft SQL Server database. Depending on the version of the Microsoft Identity Management product, the backend SQL Server could be Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database. Microsoft SQL Server database files have the MDF extension. It is associated with the Logging database which is the LDF file. We will use the Microsoft SQL Server Backup utility to back up the Microsoft SQL Server database.
A good practice for the back-end data is to do a nightly backup of the MicrosoftIdentityIntegrationServer (FIM2010: FIMSynchronizationService) database. This will allow for you to recover in case of a data disaster. You can find more information on database maintenance here. Our focus here is to navigate through the steps of backing up the SQL Server database.
The name of this database should be something that you can remember and identify what it is for future reference.
If you experience problems with the backup process of the SQL Server database, contact Microsoft SQL Server team for support.
A need may arise that will cause you to have to relocate the backend MicrosoftIdentityIntegrationServer (FIM2010: FIMSynchronizationService) database to a new Microsoft SQL Server. Scenarios would include:
Here we will cover the steps to accomplish this task and ensure that you have a backup of the database for disaster recovery purposes.
If you have created any type of Metaverse or Management Agent extensions, you will have source code. It is very important to back up source code and compiled extension DLLs before making any code changes to the current source code. This will allow you to have a backup copy of the previous code should a problem occur when the new code is put in place. Be sure to document your back up location, or utilize a location that your company specifies for source code backups. This information, will allow you to obtain the source code very quickly should you need to revert to an old copy of the source code. A prime example will be if you were to have a consultant come in and develop a Metaverse or Management Agent Extension, you will want to back up this source code and ensure that you know where it is when you need it.
To backup source code, is nothing more than doing a file copy of the source code folder and its contents to your backup location. You could automate something like this with a batch file or Windows Scripting Host file.
Another possible solution for source code revisions and backups is using a tool such as Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010.
If you have created any type of Metaverse or Management Agent extensions, you will have DLLs located in the %programfiles%\Microsoft Identity Integration Server\Extensions folder (FIM2010: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager\2010\Synchronization Service\Extensions). Ensuring that these DLLs are backed up prior to any code modifications, upgrades, or hot fix installations will help provide a way to revert to the previous builds should you encounter a problem with the new DLLs.
Like backing up the source code, this is nothing more than a file copy of the Extensions folder to your provided backup location. Here is a list of folders that would be recommended to back up as well.
This section is designed to assist you in backing up your server configurations. The server configurations consist of backing up all management agent configurations and Metaverse configurations. Doing this step, exports all management agent configurations as XML files to a specific location. The process does not allow you to overwrite files, so you will need to have a new location for each back up.
This section is designed to assist you in backing up the encryption key.